My immigrations guy wasn't the friendliest, but he managed to choke out 2 words that made me stop and think. He inspected my immigration stamps, looked at my passport picture and then up at me (and probably thought to himself...NEVER, EVER cut your hair that short again) and then muttered, "Welcome home" as he stamped my passport.
Home. The United States of America as my home. A year ago, I would have disagreed with this line of thinking, but after this last trip to the Philippines and a brief stint in Singapore, I'm starting to warm up to the idea of calling the U.S. home. I've been here for 20 years now, after growing up in Zambia and then moving back to the Philippines for high school. I think it's time I considered this home eh?
I visit the Philippines once a year, but for some reason this time around, the beahvioural differences which I once overlooked, became quite glaring. Here are a few things I don't get about Filipinos or Pinoys as we fondly call ourselves:
1. When lining up in the ladies room, why do people line up in front of a particular bathroom stall instead of making just one line? I feel like I'm in some kind of race - "And they're off! 3 Stalls Down has galloped to the front of the pack, meanwhile Breaking Wind has stank up their stall and now no one wants to use it..." Studies have shown that the 1 queue system works a lot better than multiple queues (many thanks to Prof. Silverman for hammering this into my head.) I kept eyeing all the other ladies who were lined up at different stalls getting ticked off when I noticed that the line to my left had moved up 2 people and mine hadn't moved at all.
2. Speaking of queues - people have no concept of queues in the Philippines. While checking in at the airlines counter, I couldn't figure out why our line wasn't moving at all and everyone else's was. Turns out that a "secondary" line had formed for our counter so there were actually twice as many people in my line as the others. You gotta love it though. Filipinos are so patient and polite (a concept called "bigayan") that no one was annoyed about this. Save for the 4' 11" girl who refused to let anyone ahead of her. Not going to mention any names *cough*Shmarronn*cough*
3. What's up with all the whitening soaps and creams people?! Native Filipinos weren't light-skinned to begin with so it is what it is folks...we're actually a wonderful shade of tawny brown...not the "Flesh" colour that comes out of the Crayola box. This is such a stark difference from the values we have here in America. Here, the more tanned one is, the better looking they are. To Filipinos, whiteness is a thing of beauty. Me - I like my colour just the way it is. Brown and lightly sun-kissed in the summer. Red after a run. Pale brown in the harsh winter days.
These are just a few things that baffled me during this trip. I think the fat/not fat debate deserves an entire post. I also took pictures so I'll have to post these soon too.
Okay gotta go now. I am in the process of re-organizing the studio and I really need to get my act together so I can open up shop soon.
