My love and hate relationship with the Philippines.

I love the Philippines. It is my home country. Ito ang aking lupang sinilangan. Ito ang tahanan ng aking lahi. But I am based elsewhere now and my job requires me to leave the country and my home-base every week. Good? Stressful is more like it. You don’t get a sense of permanency. I feel like I’m a gypsy. I feel like I don’t belong anywhere else yet I feel at home in my two homes.

Living in Hong Kong is like looking at your life with a strict timeline. Every second counts or rather every millisecond counts! It is stressful indeed.

How I miss my own country. Where in the world can you get the luxury of having 3 or more maids and a driver?  You can even throw in a gardener or caretaker for dogs (like my friend)! If only I can find a good excuse to hire a nanny for my husband I would do so in a heartbeat!  When you get hungry you can get a $.50 Goto + $.50 killer tokwa’t baboy (lechon kawali style) and a $.50 sprite. At $1.50 you will be burping and smiling at the same time because not only did you get your money’s worth…you had a sumptuous merienda!

When I go back to the Philippines I sometimes recoil at the backwardness of my own country. It is slow paced yet busy when it comes to traffic. You know the joke about how many lawyers would it take to change a lightbulb? In the Philippines it is different…let’s try how many sales person would it require to make your purchase complete?  

Let’s have an experiment. I want you to count how many steps it would take you to find one saleslady from the other once you enter an SM Department store. You won’t be counting for too long! In a way I’m happy because that means my countrymen have jobs to sustain their daily needs but sometimes I find it ridiculous. Imagine shopping for a Christmas tree, decorations, a child’s trolley bag, some toiletries and more Christmas decors…then being held up for a good 30 minutes or more just to have my credit card approved just because it was issued in Hong Kong! I’ve never experienced that in the countries I’ve been to. Sometimes it’s just sad…I don’t know if I will blame this unfortunate incident in Filipino’s uncanny ability to get away with modi operandi (credit card frauds and the like) or for the system’s inefficiency. 

Now I understand how the people who have been away for a long time feel.  They are so used to living in the fast lane or to their hi-tech countries that they cannot endure the Philippines anymore. I used to cringe when my ex-neighbor steward used to bicker about how rusty our system is. Nowadays I’m guilty of the same sin (if it is indeed a sin!) I wonder if I could still live in my own country without complaining about its flaws. Living in content with the only world I used to know. I wonder…