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Eto posporo, sindihan mo na yan!

Eto posporo, sindihan mo na yan!
Eto posporo, sindihan mo na yan is a friendly taunt commonly traded among Metro Manila jeepney drivers when they pass by a stalled vehicle, most often (but not always) another dilapidated jeepney. The English translation cannot capture the accompanying smirk and mocking tone that’s typical of the jeepney driver, who has long adopted a fatalistic sense of humor to survive the metropolitan jungle. Image courtesy of thumbs.dreamstime.com

It’s Election Day in the Philippines today. My ears are glued to the wall-to-wall radio coverage of the proceedings, while my Twitter feed is focused on the #vote2013 and #halalan2013 hashtags. Occasionally I check the KontraDaya site for updates.

Reports have started pouring in, and they are mostly worrisome. They are confirming many fears about the Automated Election System (AES) and the PCOS machine’s many hitches and glitches, and the possibility of poll failures at the local level.

Voters and BEIs are getting frustrated about PCOS machines that don’t work, CF cards that can’t be read, ballots rejected because they are too wide or smeared easily by ink, paraphernalia sent to the wrong precincts, and so on and so forth. This is not to mention the older methods of electoral cheating—some subtler, some more brazen, which have long existed and have merely adjusted to the new AES environment.

At this point, I’m sorely tempted to shout, “Eto posporo, Sixto, sindihan mo na yan!” Continue reading “Eto posporo, sindihan mo na yan!”

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Boatless Badjaos

Badjao houseboat
Badjao houseboat in modern times. (Photo from http://carrieannt.blogspot.com/2011/02/badjou-people-forsaken-but-not-god_16.html)

I was just telling my neighbor here, Kabsat Kandu, about a chance encounter I had with a Badjao beggar family who were stranded in flooded urban streets, minus their boat.

I was recently in Manila, gulping down my second cup of coffee in a rush to catch an appointment, when someone banged on the steel gate of the old family home (which now housed a printing press) where I was staying. She was waving a letter and shouting in an unfamiliar language. The noisy machine drowned her out, and no one else in the house seemed to want to indulge a visibly desperate beggar.

“My lucky day,” I told Kandu with no trace of irony. Continue reading “Boatless Badjaos”

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Wika Notes 01b

Tagalog lessons
I dedicate this series to my increasing number of foreign friends who want to learn, are starting to learn, or have acquired some fluency in, Tagalog. It’s also for my fellow Filipinos who want to refresh and deepen their knowledge of the language. Click here for Part 1

Guideline 4. Modern Tagalog recognizes several loan consonants—Ch, Sh, F, J, Ñ, V, X, and Z—although they are often convertible into double consonants and so are not absolutely needed, except in proper names such as names of people and places.

Continue reading “Wika Notes 01b”