Kung Hey Mai Fut!

Kong Xi Fa Tsai!

“Uragon ka man! Taw-an ka nin Dios ki masaganang taon!”

Imagine:  You are a decent, quiet, hardworking, patriotic Ilonggo with a 2.5 bedroom thingy in one of Manny Villar’s pastel-colored suburban sprawls.  Your wife’s on the way,  you just got a Mitsubishi Adventure and a Magic Sing, with an extra memory chip for good measure.  Fuel prices just came down another half a peso.  Life is good.  The Dinagyang’s ongoing and the Lunar New Year’s a-coming.  Suddenly, a friend you’ve recently seen but don’t really care for much drives by in a Ford SUV and greets you, “Uragon ka man! Taw-an ka nin Dios ki masaganang taon!”

That my friend is as jarring a greeting as we decent, hardworking, patriotic Fujianese get when we hear “Kong Hei Fat Choi!” every time Chinese New Year (CNY) rolls along our way.  The Fujianese comprise nearly 90% of the Chinese population in the Philippines (sez me) and it doesn’t feel quite right to be greeted by well-meaning brown locals in a dialect belonging to a Chinese province down south associated with sooty factories-turned-snooty colony, in the same way that Ilonggos are jarred with a Bicolano greeting. Add to that, the newspapers and morning shows stepping over each other with animalistic predictions for the coming year.  And it certainly doesn’t help my cause a bit that the local Chinaman slash hardware store owner suddenly morphs into a feng shui expert, traipsing around town in a red and gold jacket, dangling tacky gold plastic trinkets with red tassels, advising anyone who cares to listen (and that’s all of us) which way to face when we sit and do our business.

For generations, Filipinos have been doing Hong Kong more frequently than is good for them, imbibing everything Cantonese that came their way, including a disproportionate desire for name-brands and one-upping the other.  Maybe it’s the British colonial background, maybe it’s the fact that ole’ London town is simply too bloody far away, but here we are, having become in some respects a colony of a former colony.

While I certainly don’t mind Cantonese cuisine, can’t get enough of the Bank of China and HSBC skyscrapers and continue to be fascinated by CX and the CLK airport, I am (by blood and for this article’s sake) a true blue Fujianese (with a healthy dose of Ilonggo-flavored Filipino mixed in).

So it is therefore an affront to us decent, hardworking, patriotic Fujianese to be greeted in some minor dialect of some minor former provincial outpost of some has-been colonial power.

Having said that, I full-heartedly (and foolhardily) add my voice into the snowballing, international movement (remember folks, you heard it here first!) to greet in proper pudonghua every Chinese New Year, as in “Kong Xi Fa Tsai,” or as they put in Pinyin, “Gong Xi Fa Cai.”  (A strange way to spell it but it’s the proper pinyin way, deviously designed to make white bumbling foreigners sound funny when they speak Chinese.  But that, as they say, is another story.)

For CNY, a decent, hardworking, patriotic Fujianese reporting.

What It Means To Be A Racist. Or To Be Called One.

Dateline: January 20, 2009.  8pm Iloilo, 7am Washington DC.

Dinner at home with my parents.  Made it a point to watch CNN for
the O inauguration, and my mom in all her aged, senioriffic innocence made a
comment that is now part of the family’s lore. “Is it dark in there or
is it because there are so many black people around?”

Now you may label that statement any way you want to, but it
was a factual, honest comment from my mother, an Asian
immigrant of a generation ago.

Meaning to share it with my friends, i texted it in the spirit of
shared humor to a few of them, leaving moral judgment to hang in
the air.  By actually doing so, I may have revealed about my views more than
i intended to, but as expected, the responses came rapid and
rabid, and in turn, revealed in my mind, a lot more about the
people who did reply than they wanted to as well.

It was an anecdote that Chris Rock or Eddie Murphy would have made themselves in a comedy routine; this wasn’t even from a stereotyped oppressor class.  They say that an advantage of a minority is that you can get away with the jokes.  But this was different.  This was from another minority (in more levels than one) made in reference to another, with my own mother as an unintentional protagonist.

I was called a racist by a few, some in the spirit of fun, some i would gather from the limits of the text medium, a seriously toned reprimand.  Now, at this point, I am not one to be fazed by these responses but it got me to think how one text message could elicit such a wide spectrum of responses.  Some, in all earnestness, took to explain the time difference, the late sunrise in the western hemisphere, the cold hazy weather.  Even the bad cable tv reception.  Or that it was broadcast in black and white for dramatic effect.  It wasn’t.  Most sent back a short, simple “Ha ha!” confirming a shared moment in private humor.  My favorite: “Neither. Oprah just arrived.”  I will not tell anyone to loosen up, much less get a life.  But i must say that it struck me that it was a serious affront to their sensibilities.  Sus ah!

The Obamas and the Bushes are getting off the new First Car as I finish off this entry, riding from one building to another.  Even before the primaries, I believed Clinton was a better candidate but Obama has gone beyond what I expected from him, and it’s all to his credit that he’s starting to make me question my original opinion.  An article today from the NYT (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/20/us/politics/20transition.html?hp) puts very well why he has the right approach to start off as the leader of the United States of America.  It is doubly fortunate to have Clinton and Obama, but had been doubly unfortunate as well for the two Bushes that came their way.

But i remain optimistic.  I am not an American citizen but I will be, in some indirect way down the road, be positively affected by what I hope will be a new age in America and the world.

Sige na, ma speech na si Obama.  Namaste!

Hark The Insular Life Lightboard!

While the remodeling of the Insular Bank building is a change for the better, the avowed objective of the fancy, new “lightboard” is suspect.  Press reports have it that it will only show good news.  Good news?

What constitutes good news?  Gas prices coming down 1.5 after increasing more than 20 the past months?  The Philippine economy doing better than Burma and Sierra Leone?  Leah Salonga in yet another standing ovation?  Sulpicio Lines finally getting someone to float the ship without damaging the sea corrals?

Who decides what’s good news anyway?  One’s good news is another man’s bad.  Paquiao’s victory is what’s-his-name’s and his country’s shame (though let me be clear about this – beating another man black and blue till his eyes nearly pop out and he can’t stand by himself is revolting and certainly no cause for national celebration).  Mon Tulfo’s bad news is Mike Arroyo’s cause for rejoicing.  Obama’’s victory is Clinton and Bush’s worry (though I am not so sure about the latter basing on some conspiracy blogs.  Hey, that 8.1 earthquake was a no-show, but that’s another story).

So who?  Let me guess.  Nonong Pedero, Alejandro Roces & Sonny Ramirez teaming up to tweak the knobs, to cut and paste, to cook and baste so all who drive through Paseo de Roxas are cheered up with hourly quotes of empowerment (half-hour during rush hour).  Dolly Ann Carvajal, Ricky Lo & Boy Abundant dishing out celebrity dirt, on the premise that any celebrity’s dirt helps my linen look cleaner.  Or maybe Conrado Banal, Ron Nathan and Victor Agustin throwing us those morsels of self-enrichment that leaves the clerk on his/her way to hop on the crowded bus to Novaliches no choice but to laugh in self-mockery but grieve in his/her soul.

I say, Give us a break!  We don’t need good news.  We need news, period.  Don’t pretend to be Big Brother.  Or at least, let us not delude ourselves with the belief that by reading good news often enough, we can put a stop to the bad.  Or to put it bluntly, we cannot stop a gangrenous left limb by focusing on the healthy right.

At any rate, I find it interesting that more than a month after i see it installed and in running condition, it remains either dark, or blank (if lit).  When dark, but one little light on the lower right corner is aglow – one good news among the deluge of bad ones?  Or maybe at this time, there really is no more good news worth reading?

Now that’s good news for the vultures on the lines, but bad news for the rest of us.

At the end of the day, it does make a lot of sense that the company (Insular Life) that earns on our fears of the unexpected, tries to take our minds off what is inevitable.

(As i was posting this, a chanced on a new NYT article saying that granite countertops have considerable levels of radiation, about 10x the norm.  Now is that news hot or what?  There goes my kitchen remodelling plans).  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/24/garden/24granite.html