Author’s note: I was inspired to write this article after reading a piece in Christopher Alexander’s seminal book A Pattern Language. My article was published in the Nordis Weekly issue of July 30, 2006.
Many of us well-settled city folk bear a “siege” mentality. We view our homes as a fortress where we can safely rest and refresh ourselves, before we sally forth anew into the chaotic urban war zone. So we do most of our sleeping at home. We would be appalled to even consider the idea of sleeping in public places. Or should we?
Many of us well-settled city folk bear a “siege” mentality. We view our homes as a fortress where we can safely rest and refresh ourselves, before we sally forth anew into the chaotic urban war zone. So we do most of our sleeping (when we are most vulnerable) at home – in our bedroom or living room. Continue reading “Sleeping in public”
Why settle for fun when our country, in presenting itself to tourists and other countries in general, can scale up to "great and awesome."
Whether for the right or wrong reasons, whether in all sincerity or tinged with irony, many Filipinos have cheerfully taken to the official tourist slogan, “It’s more fun in the Philippines.”
I don’t doubt that some kinds of pleasures or pleasantries are partaken in the Philippines with a lot more fun than elsewhere. We seem to offer a lot of them with a helping hand, a song and dance routine, a fiesta smile, and endless tables of sumptuous banquets. Centuries of foreign colonial rule made sure to erase the fierce looks of Lapu-Lapu and Bonifacio from our faces, relegating them to stone-cold statues weeping alone in the rain. Continue reading “Why settle for fun? We could gun for awesome instead.”
Author’s note: This was first published on 18 May 2003 under my Pathless Travels column published by Northern Dispatch (Nordis) Weekly. I’m reposting it here in three parts, with some revisions to update my own understanding of the issue, and to make it more timely. This is Part 3. Read Part 1 here and Part 2 here.
A native Filipina, caught in a sudden downpour without her Chinese-style umbrella, innovates with a broad banana leaf. This, at least, isn't a myth. But why do we continue to believe in a mythical Pinoy summer?
Again, let me wonder aloud: Why is it that despite the evidence to the contrary, the twin myths of a “Pinoy summer” and a “Pinoy rainy season” persist in the public mind?
In the same light, one wonders about the stubborn persistence of those other undying myths, about Filipinos for example having descended from “three waves of migration” — you know, the fantastic but now-debunked story about Indonesian A and B, then Malay, that many of us still believe as true.
Or how about the Code of Kalantiaw, which has been shown to be a hoax? Let’s mention too the story of the Ten Datus of Borneo, which is a folk legend that might have some historical basis but with no hard evidence so far. Or the myth that there is only one Philippine language, or five or eight at most, while the others are merely “dialects.” Continue reading “A myth called Pinoy summer (3)”
