Excommunication, Anyone? Thoughts on RH Bill No. 5043

WTFriendship Day!!!

Aw c'mon! This is too much, we are reverting back to the ancient times when opinions opposing the Church merit threat to the infernal fires!!!

"The CBCP threatens politicians who support the RH bill with excommunication. But our representatives are not backing down. To ensure the passage of the bill, they are willing to risk being excommunicated," according to the article from filipinofreethinkers.org.

It is so sad that things have come to this.

Surely, the higher ups in the Catholic Church are doing their job according to the teachings of the Vatican, etc. But sadly, I must say that oppressing people who share a different view is unloving, the total antithesis of what Jesus taught.

It is true that humans are biblically told to multiply. But I believe that it should be responsible reproductive health that we must go for, for the sake of the next generation.

How?

First of all, get into the context of the day. The media is the number one worldly ruler of this era. Everyone is exposed to media. And media, for better or for worse, is a reckless, if happy, laissiez-faire of all things under the sun. Needless to say that includes the implicit sensuality and outright pornography in the radio, prime time TV and in the web.

We can use this as a spring board to teach responsible reproductive health to our children, which does not exclude the teaching of moral values (such as how to choose the right partner, when the right time to get married and have children is; and on a more basic note teach them about what hormones do to their bodies and the alternative activities to deal with changes in the bodies and the resulting reactions to these changes; how to protect themselves from pedophiles, molestation and being physically violated and on and on and on).

The Church has taken an offensive tactic which is working to their disadvantage. But then again, they could always say that Jesus lashed out a couple of times in the Bible (for sure, once in the temple where people put up a bazaar). But still, this bullying via the threat of hellfire is not helping the Philippines and its wards towards its goal of progress.

Progress (even in this issue) can be attained but not with this "religious and civil" war of words.

In RH Bill No. 5043, the people are given a choice between natural and modern family planning methods with the bill but not the option of abortion (Thank God!). In fact, this bill broadens the assistance it gives to the grassroots members of society, beginning in the barangay, reproductive healthcare assistance, not limited to, but neither excluding family planning.

Our country has too many children who are either living in the streets or living in poor emotional conditions due to parents' and extended families' lack of real education (whether they are college graduates or not). The education we are talking about here is the basic knowledge of knowing one's body, how it works by itself and in relation to another (meaning sexually). We can even point the truth to ourselves and to impressionable minds what ignorance of the matter can result to!

If the family is to be saved, we have to teach our children how to take care of their bodies, minds and souls. And how can we freely teach our children these things if even our Church plays guilt trips on the adults?

I commend the authors of the RH Bill in the Philippines. Your dedication towards education and healthcare is one concrete step towards our nation's progress. Your courage in standing firm in this controversial issue is much needed and appreciated.

God is blessing our country right now.

"Education costs money, but then so does ignorance."
-- Sir Claus Moser

Travel Love: Camiguin Lanzones Festival 2010

I had the chance to visit Camiguin, an island which is a 1 hour and 20 minute plane ride from Manila and a 2 and a half hour fast-craft ride from Cagayan de Oro City last week, in time to witness the Lanzones Festival highlights which are the Miss Camiguin Tourism and the streetdancing the next day.

This year's festival was blessed with fair weather, which is unusual at this time of the year for the Island Born of Fire. Camiguin is a pear shaped island with a 68 km coastline that can be traveled by motorcycle in half a day or less. It has 7 active volcanoes responsible for the fertile land that produces the sweet Lanzones. It has retained its old world charm and still boasts of the marriage between the indigineous culture and Spanish heritage. One can tell by the smiles and hospitable gestures of the Camiguinons that their beautiful virgin island has not yet been adulterated by the uptightness of "progressive city life".

This is not to say that Camiguin is backwards, as most of its resorts have Wi-Fi access and other modern amenities. In fact, because tourism is one of their strongest industries, Camiguin banks on it's almost untouched environment. There are still vast expanses of greenery: forests, rice fields, front and backyards. There are beautiful coastlines of un-littered beaches. It is also a photographer's paradise with the silhouette of Hibok-Hibok looming over the island.

A week's stay in Camiguin rejuvenates one's weary soul. With the local scenery and the locals' smiles, their delicacies (pastel - a custard filled bun, tablea - native chocolate, dried squid and etc.) and the restful ambiance of this tourists' paradise, Camiguin is absolutely perfect!

Book Love: Ilustrado

I can hear the supercilious, syrupy singsong - mellifulous - lilt of the women from Manila; their Tagalog peppered with English or the other way around. The normalcy of pretense and the pronounced dysfunction in a family dinner where the protagonist guests is a total riot. The ubiquitous Filipino world-view (from my vantage point) of finding the right to be citizens of the world, finding passports from Goethe ("National literature no longer means much these days, we are entering an era of Weltliterature.") and being well-heeled and -traveled is palpable in each rich chapter of Miguel Syjuco's award winning novel Ilustrado.

The book is erudite, no doubt about it. There is a myriad of high-sounding words (get your dictionaries ready!) and intelligent jokes (deftly translated from the hysterical dialect to the equally hilarious English conversion) that lend to the true Ilustrado appeal and parody even. All in all, the book has its attraction on both the honesty and the self-depreciating quality Syjuco weaves his Filipino-universal Ilustrado story.

While it is wittily engaging, it is a modern-day exhortation of sorts for Filipinos to look at our culture straight in the eye and see it for what it is. You've got a good eye, Syjuco. Kudos! You have made this Filipino book lover proud!

Kasambahay Bootcamp

We have to admit the benefits of living in the Philippines is the availability of domestic help within our capacity to employ and add as a member of our household. Hiring a household helper will change the family's lifestyle for better or for worse, so it would be beneficial to consider some important things.

This post will attempt to answer the question: Any tips on hiring, training and hopefully keeping a house helper?

On hiring:
1. Employment agencies - they have the advantage of trained helpers and midwives (as "yayas" for infants).
2. By recommendation - from friends, relatives, employees, co-workers.

(It would be good to ask for a barangay clearance, police clearance & valid ID; cellphone numbers of relations in the helper's hometown).

Meeting the kasambahay (the interview):
1. Things to look out for:

• a. Respectful bearing and language, eye contact.
  
• b. Hygiene (check out for body odor, bad breath)
• c. Manner of dressing (tacky, sexy? neat? respectable?)
• d. Intelligence (Street smarts and common sense)

2. Things to ask about:

• a. Name, age, address, occupation of parents, siblings, cellphone number
• b. Educational attainment
• c. Health problems (asthmatic? allergic? arthritic?)
• d. Ambition in life
• e. Basic household skills
• f. Expected salary (optional*)
• g. Relatives and friends in the city
• h. Opinions on children, housework, etc.

Give yourself a day or two until you decide whether the applicant in question suits your needs (based on the first impression and the interview). This will also test the applicant's decisiveness in having you as her employer.

Should you decide not to hire the applicant, tell her so politely.

When you and the applicant have agreed with the employment, take a week's off to personally train the helper. This will benefit you greatly as it will also be the time to test the new employee's trustworthiness and thoroughness with work. This time can be used to show the new employee the household's routine and needs. A few things first:

Before training:

• a. Inform the new employee how much her salary will be and when payday will be.
• b. Indicate the benefits of employment (include the comparison between renting a room and the free room that comes with employment, free meals and snacks).
• c. Indicate the boundaries of the benefits (what do free meals include? coffee, tea, milk? or none? Be specific with the boundaries (Is the detergent she will use for your laundry be the same she will use for hers? Who will buy her toiletries?).
• d. Inform her of her rest day and what time and day she is expected to return.
• e. You can have a trial period of one month and inform her if she decides this.
• f. Inform her that should either of party decide to terminate the employment, all her bags will be checked before she leaves.
• g. Tell her of the boundaries you feels strongly about. ("I don't want to smell my perfume on you.", "Never take things that are not yours.", "Use your own slippers, comb, towel, etc.", "Take care while washing and ironing the clothes.")

Training:
On the first day:
1. Orient the new staff on the daily routine, integrating a house tour and what you want done everyday. Make sure to give her enough lunch and rest in the middle of the day.
2. Write down her schedule (daily, weekly).

Within the week:
1. Check if she was able to follow through the schedule you gave on the first day.
2. Always put your valuables in a safe place. Tell your family to do the same. Always check pockets before putting it in the laundry.
3. If you should test the trustworthiness of a household helper, make sure you willing to risk firing her and losing the "test" item. Go back to square one.

How to keep a good helper:

1. Treat her well. There is a Kasambahay Bill Situationer which will help to protect your own and the employees interests.
2. Appreciate her good efforts through kind and sincere words and occasional tokens of gratitude.
3. Give her a raise.
4. Give her used items (clothing, etc.)
5. Feed her well (but remember your personal boundaries).
6. Give her enough rest and respect her personal space.
7. Nobody's perfect: she may be a good cook but a lousy cleaner or vice versa. If she's worth keeping (maybe because she's trustworthy), you might be willing to overlook her imperfection based on your own need.
8. Treat her the way you would want to be treated if you sought domestic employment in a king's palace (you are the queen of your home after all).
9. Be honest with her. Pay her on time and give her the rest day you agreed upon.
10. Take care of her health. (Her physical well-being is her investment. She will not be able to serve you well.)
11. Add your own.

(image from wikimedia commons)

Hotel Review: Makati Shangri-La

Shangri-La is a mythical place authored by James Hilton. It is located up in the Himalayas where one is eternally happy and ever so young.

While Shangri-La has been synonymous to utopia since The Lost Horizon's inception, in the business world, Shangri-La is well known as the world-class business address for topnotch fieldwork. Indeed, the Shangri-La I visited with my mom and son last weekend was nirvana, albeit a consumerist one.

The monumental landmark is conveniently located in the country's business capital, Makati. Small wonder it was a place where well heeled businessmen and socialites and people of all colors and races converge. There is an endless stream of pleasant greetings from the charming and dapper bellhops and guest service ladies, nodding becomingly to each tourist, wedding guest and all and sundry. The marbled floors of the lobby and chandeliered high ceilings are palatial. And if that's not enough for the senses, the scent of Eternity for Women by Calvin Klein wafts through the pleasantly airconditioned hall.

Our room was overlooking the adjacent Glorietta area, with a panoramic view of HardRock Cafe, Saisaki and Dad's. The bathroom was marbled with a nice bathtub and a separate shower room. There was a nice complimentary fruit bowl of banana, mandarin citrus and Fuji apples.

That night, before dinner, my son frolicked in the fourth floor pool area where he was got first-class treatment, Zack and Cody would be jealous! "I wish we lived here, Ma," my son would muse repeatedly.

The next day, I experienced the world-class breakfast buffet. Upon entering Circles, their breakfast hall, one is greeted with the assortment of fruit juices (some laced with alcohol [early in the morning!]), Japanese food, bagels, croissants, puddings and waffles. And then a long row of casseroles with every mouthwatering, culinary delight. Across the buffet counter was a another table filled with chilled milk, fruits and cereals. It was a feat to choose from the variety. Eventually, I settled for myself old-fashioned ham, steamed mushrooms, eggs Benedict and a waffle. I took a glass of Carrot and Orange juice and within minutes, I felt a lovely buzz between my ears and decided that it's definitely laced with vodka.

Relaxed and pleased from my wonderful breakfast, I milled around the hotel and struck a conversation with a lovely lady New Yorker on a business trip. The company she's with is into outsourcing, a very lucrative business enterprise and employment opportunity in the Philippines. I also talked with some locals, asking them what their affair was in the hotel. They had a call center office event in the posh venue. (They're the guys in front of the facade).

I was intoxicated with the consumerist sensuality of the hotel, the scent, the sights, and the gastronomical delights such that when a nice-looking Indian guy who happened to be a Service Manager greeted me, I gushed to him "You're hotel is beautiful!" I was bowled over when he said with a twinkle in his eye, "Not as beautiful as you."

I took a lot of pictures in hopes of encapsulating the materialistic idyll I was in. After interviewing two elegant and charming Guest Service ladies (a graduate from De La Salle College of St. Benilde, the other one from "Iceland"), I asked them to pose in front of an immense seascape of a gorgeous sunset. "Shangri-La smile!" I cheered while clicking. Just then, a tall white man in a sharp business suit, looked solicitously amused, "Would you like to join them?" he asked. He was the General Manager (with the bellhop in the photo). "You're hotel is beautiful," I seemed to say this a lot. He was delighted, "Not as beautiful as you!" (That seems to be a standard form of flattery. After all, it is Shangri-La).

On our ride to the airport for our flight home, my mother said to my eleven year old son, "There's no place like home, is there? Home sweet home."

"There's a place like home, grandma," my son said.

We both looked wonderingly at my son. Without missing a beat he said with much conviction and nostalgia "Shangri-La feels like home."

I certainly know what he means.

Proving a Bal-Bal

Tomorrow is the first Friday of the month. It would be a good day to go to the mananambal, or faith healer to inquire about a person's otherworldly status; to ask whether he is dating true, blooded human being... or a bal-bal.

According to Wikipedia, the Bal-Bal is a mythological monster that steals corpses whether it is in a funeral or grave and feeds on them.

My friend is seeing a lovely girl from a nearby town that is known to be infested with bal-bals. Contrary to the Wikipedia definition, the term bal-bal in our region describes an otherworldy creature/being with a human appearance and demeanor but has powers one of which is the ability to fly (and yes, think bat wings). Bal-bals are attracted to the scent of the dead or pregnant mothers. More frightening, their condition is contagious. Bal-bals can contaminate persons who offend them by patting the latter in any part of the body. Other ways of contamination is murmuring spells on a person and blowing a breath on a person's skin. Eating food prepared in bal-bal's homes can also infect a normal human being.

When my friend told his colleagues that he was seeing this girl, his co-workers burst his romantic bubble by telling him the long standing rumor that this girl was a bal-bal. Her parents, though well off and highly educated, are reputedly bal-bals as well. My friend and I then decided to interview my hilot, or masseuse on what she knows of bal-bals.

I presumed that my hilot, a devout Catholic, didn't believe in such backwards superstitions. But she did know some faith healers and she traveled in such circles so my friend and I took our chance on her.

Apparently, she did believe in the existence of bal-bals and taught us how to detect one.

Faith healer friends of my hilot would always gift her with lana, or oil from herbs that has been prayed over. This was said to protect her from bad spirits and yes, bal-bals. She always brought lana in a small flask, making sure that the outer surface of the bottle was dry. One night, she and her children were in an area in our city thought to be ridden with bal-bals. The hairs on her neck were standing as she and her children took a row boat or bangka that would bring her to the other side of the river. Her flask of lana was "boiling", and warm oil spewed from the bottle. A bal-bal was in the vicinity.

According to my hilot, when the bal-bal would detect the odor of the lana, the flask of oil would sweat while the oil would boil inside . In turn, the bal-bal would feel uneasy and uncomfortably warm, and even avoid the person carrying the native, blessed concoction.

"I thought you didn't believe in these things," I told her.

"Oh, but I do!" she said, "I'll tell you more."

One night, her son came home from basketball practice. He complained that his shoulder blades felt weird, like something wanted to come out of his body, and that he felt like flying. He climbed the walls of their home. She asked her son what happened. "Ma, an old man came to me tonight and asked me hat time it is. I answered him and then he patted me in the back and left." Frantic, my hilot went to their neighbor, a faith healer, knowing her son had been contaminated. The spell had to be undone. The son was ordered by the faith healer to take in a concoction of lana. Something was lodged at his throat. He threw it up and out came what looked like a bird's embryo with wings. He vomited some more and out came fine feathers, like a lovebird's. He puked some more and out came another bird that had soft bones, like a balot (a Filipino delicacy). "He's going to be weak in the next 24 hours," the faith healer said. "Don't let him eat anything that is cooked with blood for a year. No dinuguan (pork blood stew), chicken and pork entrails for a year. And always let your children bring lana."

Bal-bals are also known to keep on asking the time, though it is obvious that you belong to the same time zone. Their purpose is to know that it is the hour of contamination.

By the time we had finished our interview with my hilot, my friend and I were in a stupor. We couldn't believe that we were actually taking this seriously.

His date who was a suspected bal-bal was a prospect for a relationship. She seemed nice. She looked nice. She even has a nice job! Besides, the first decade of the millennium is almost over and here we are regressing to myths on the kapres, diwatas and bal-bals!

I feel bad for the lady/bal-bal suspect. I feel bad for my friend too. My friend has it in him to find out the truth. Off he goes with the lana. Seriously. But I did tell him I wish he'd call the whole thing off - for his safety's sake.

"Can you believe this?" he asked quietly, but incredulously.
"Can't say I do, can't say I don't," I said.

God bless us ALL.

This is not fiction.

*Comic relief: This is so in the tune of the Twilight Saga. But I swear, it's not funny at all. Ironically it makes me laugh.

Picture from http://mokong2007.blogspot.com/2008/11/halo-halloween-3.html

Venus Raj! Raj! Raj! & Beauty Pageant Conondrums

The MAJOR MAJOR trend in Facebook statuses is Venus Raj's now-a-mega-hit Miss Universe 2010 answer to the brains and wits test by William Baldwin: "What is the biggest mistake that you’ve ever made in your life and what did you do to make it right?"

Facebook posts range from fellow Filipinos tearing their hair and their clothes over Ms. Raj's off the mark reply to spectators who are more sympathetic of Ms. Raj's human error.

I just watched the 46 second video of the Q&A and I have to admit that I quite cringed...

It is not without shame that I reacted that way because after all, if anyone one of us was Venus Raj, it wouldn't be easy being up there in front of the Universe, being weighed for beauty and wits.

In fact, it's an irony that i had laughed, having joined local beauty contests myself.

Last week, a friend of mine invited me to anchor the local pageant which I had joined lifetimes ago, and because I had a flu attack, I declined.

Over the week as Venus Raj's answer has been talked about in grocery aisles where acquaintances meet, or used as a humorous reference to whatnot ("I'm having a MAJOR MAJOR headache!"), I thought about how I was supposed to be part of our city's beauty contest once again.

I recoil at the thought of how women (myself in the past, included) subject ourselves to judgment over a short period of time (some, merely hours), to be placed in the annals of local history, booboo's, "wits" and all.

Although beauty contests will be here to stay, unless some MAJOR MAJOR universal paradigm shift deems it irrelevant, I do, though, advocate guidance to beauty contestants that though preparation for the big night is good, winning is not everything, and life in the limelight (win or lose) has its price. It is good to remind contenders that there are more things in life that matter than glitz and glamor, fame and glory.

I hope that Ms. Venus Raj will use this paradoxical fame to her advantage and learn how to laugh at her faux pas. Laughing at one's own chagrin can be disarming. She has lots of chances to show the world and herself that she is more than the seemingly shallow seconds-long answer she made.

My male cousin was still proud of Ms. Raj, despite her embarrassing response. And in turn, I'm proud that my cousin saw past that. Indeed, Venus Raj's beauty is a true representation of our beautiful islands, tall, strong, dark-skinned, and beautiful. And if she hasn't had any "MAJOR, MAJOR problems in her 22 years of existence," - now she does, and I'm sending her all the light and love in hopes that she can do something good about it!

Go, go, go Venus Raj!!!