Week 1 -- Safe and Sound

This place is not America. The Philippines is a society organized around waiting for extended periods of time and then hurrying very fast and working very hard to make up for it. For example, it is customary to be 30-40 minutes late to an appointment; any less is considered rude. The government has egregiously failed, again and again, to install a highway system sufficient for the needs of the population, resulting in some of the worst traffic in the world. Last night, I waited for 2 hours in traffic (“trappic”, as the drivers say, and which seems to have evolved into an adjective – “Makati Ave. is trappic”) to travel about 5 miles. Our lunch break can be two hours (siesta!). Yet everyone works incredibly fast; the driving here is insane – it’s not uncommon for a car to swerve out into incoming traffic just to bypass a slow bus or cart. People get angry when something is done slowly, so that when something is done, it is done with maddened haste and exertion. A servant bringing your eggs late is grounds for dismissal.

I arrived here last Sunday at 5AM. The first thing I saw was a huge crowd of people staring at me because I am white. This is something that I am still not used to. Everywhere I go, stares follow me. I am about a eight or nine inches taller than most people here. I stick out, but I have learned that sticking out in a good way has its advantages. Now I know what people like Matt Lottich feel like at Stanford parties – things just work easily; people are nicer; they give you a wider berth. Security guards don’t hassle you. Chicks drop to their knees – all because you are deemed attractive (white) and because you have cash, which brings me to my second point.

Everything is cheap. I eat dinner at places like UVA and Ocean Garden, sharing menus with Manila’s crème de la crème – the family of president Arroyo, professional models, actresses, titans of industry. I will spend about $15. This includes lobster salad, filet mignon, beers, a round of shots for the hot girls at the next table, dessert, and a 5 minute complementary neck massage. This is all because of the ridiculous exchange rate; the city bows to the almighty dollar. America may be a great place to earn money, but nothing beats the third world for spending it. Let me quote for you some more statistics:
average salary of a driver (monthly) $20
San Miguel beer (think Corona) 30c
Negra beer (think Guinness) 40c
Lacoste shirt (fake, NWT, high quality) $10
Polo shirt (fake, NWT, high quality) $8
movie ticket $1
model (drinks, nothing illicit) $10
massage $2-$10

Please pay special attention to the next two:
text message 1/50c
phone call $2

Two dollars is a lot of money for many, many Pinoy. So much that the telecommunications sector here has shifted away from actual voice communication. There are over one hundred million text messages a day in the country. Even when you consider that cell phone penetration in this third world country is an astoundingly high 27.3%, that is an average of 18 messages per day per cell phone owner. Socially active people send about 50 to 100 in a night. I blew through the 35 free texts that came with my phone in a couple hours. Text messaging is a huge phenomenon with the young. It has superceded AIMs, phone use, and, of course, good old face-to-face communication. It has been officially labeled a vice by the archbishop.

This has a number of interesting effects. It takes me about a minute to dash off a ten word “text”; the Pinoy can do it in about 20 seconds. Still, this takes time. I woke up this morning with a bad hangover and five unanswered texts; it took me an hour and a half to sort out business with these callers, going back and forth painfully slowly, correcting the god-awful Nokia word guesser, inserting words, symbols, smilies, blah blah blah. In the states, these conversations would be handled by phone in a matter of minutes. This all goes back to the duality of time in the Philippines – the country has embraced the efficiency of modern telecommunications, but resorts to using its slowest and most tedious feature, exclusively.

I have a computer now and should be updating this more frequently. I forgot my camera cable at home, so no pictures until I get it shipped over. Sorry. I've uploaded two pictures I found on the web. The first is Makati, the business district of Manila where I work. The second is a jeepney; the city is PACKED with these ridiculous things. The cheapest form of public transportation, they are responsible for most of the accidents in Manila -- their drivers have to bring in 1000 pesos ($20) a day or they get fired, so they drive about as dangerously as you can imagine. If I don't get kidnapped, I'll probably get run over by one of these.