Today is Wednesday, May 12th, 2010 and it is now 559 PM here in Brooklyn New York City.
Recap: My last entry spoke a bit more about the horrid baby shower I was "Shanghaid" into attending on Satyrday, May 8th, in the South Bronx.
The shower ended promptly at 6 PM, which is the great thing about afternoon gatherings, none of the horrendous "hanging on until tomorrow" bullshit that goes hand in hand at evening soirees. I am not anti-social per se, just that I do not drink alcohol, I do not dance and do not much see the point in enforced socialising. If I enjoy your company, why would I not be seeing you all through the year, as opposed to these inane gatherings? Like the book and movie say, "No man is an island" and so I allow myself, from time to time, to be dragged kicking and screaming to these "things."
I was in a rather shitty mood because Jackie and I had last talked Thursday evening NY time. Regular contact with the Philippines has always been an issue. Until the present, bush towns in Mindanao, and I am sure any smaller islands, are without any kind of reliable mail service. Post offices exist but mail delivery does not. Feeding outlying post offices does not depend upon any set system of affairs so that even posting domestically, from Manila to my town of San Francisco on Mindanao is usually going to end up without success.
Posting from the US or Israel is guaranteed to not work out. There are, as of the last couple of years, air freight companies, like the Federal Express contractor, "Airfreight 2000." The delivery usually arrives, if about a week after it was supposed to and without knowing until the last minute whether or not it even passed Customs...
Phones are another aggravating issue. Until about 2004 there were only landlines in the bush and they basically consisted of "Call Centres" semi-funded by the government. If anyone has ever dealt with calling outlying areas of Mexico (as I do for my daughter) they will know what I mean by "call centres."If you wanted to call someone, and were even able to get a connection to the call centre, you would tell the clerk the name of the recipient, and their "address" (another spotty issue), or in lieu of existing addresses some kind of identifying information anout their residence. You would be told to call back in between 1 and 3 hours. IF at that time you are still able to make the connection, you had an "iffy" chance that they would have found the person and that they would have made it back into the town/village proper.
Then, in 2004, technology not only caught up with the rural Philippines, it lept past its existing level of infrastructure and created a totally connected population. The Philippines are literally the most connected of any population if one judges such things by "SMS" ("texting").
I have a mate who contracts in Afghanistan and he told me, about 2 years back, how ironic it felt to be travelling some gravel track in the wilds near Tajikistan, and to come across a nomadic tribe of herders, living much as their ancestors did when Alexander the Great's troops passed through, and then to look a bit closer at that pastoral scene and see a youth of 14 babbling away in Tajik, into his Nokia!
Technology, as they say, is both a blessing AND a curse.
In the Philippine's case it is indeed a blessing but as I said the infrastructure needs to play a lot of catch up. The transmission towers are not exactly top notch, and of course there is the ever present insurgency to deal with. A frequent target for both the Maoists and the MILF ("Moro Islamic Liberation Front" an Islamo-Fascist band of undisciplined nutters) is to blow up pylons.
Even when they are not playing "Che Guevera" with pylons the service is intermittent, so that IF one regularly calls Mindanao, more often than not they will be out of luck.
That leaves the internet. In 2005 Rizza and I were living here in New York as I worked at the World Trade Center site. She felt pent up as I had been, since 9/11, working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. So off she went to visit her family on Mindanao. One day she did not come on line, which is not unusual given, as I have said, the lack of infrastructure. At that point DSL was the best the entire island had to offer and even then it was spotty. The day turnes into "days," and then a "week." On the 10th day I finally found out that a "Bottom Trawler" (a fishing boat with a gigantic net that is weighted down to drag the sea bed) had snagged a fibre optic cable off of Taiwan. Amazingly, the entire Philippine archipelago (7,107 islands) depended on that single cable!
In the end we didn't have internet, phone and of course mail for 3 weeks.
But in 2010 things are different. 2008 saw broadband arrive along with a plethora of providers...We have had a day without contact but that has been so rare.
Jackie didn't contact me until Tuesday morning NY time, and at that point I had already been making arrangements to fly out there. My passports have me with military-short hair, so I went and got my head shaved down, booked a flight for Thursday, May 13th and put in for 25 bottles of methadone...but of course, as I just said, she made contact.
In past entires I have mentioned how Jackie and I must keep our relationship very low key. Bisaya Culture dictates that even if the Philippines allowed divorce, and it does not, a married woman stays married forever. This is changing slowly in places like Cebu that have a lot of foreign influence but on Mindanao it is as strongly dictated as it ever was.
Jackie's situation is unusual though. Although she lives as a Bisaya, her dad is a "Lumad" (loo-mad), a Hilltribesman (Higaon-an Tribe) and they are married for eternity, not even widows remarry though even in Bisaya widows rarely do so.
Then there is Jackie's "marriage" to consider. Her ex is a Tausug Tribesman, one of the 13 tribes collectively known as "Moro," which is itself an ethni-religious catchphrase used to describe Filipino Muslims. Tausug DO allow divorce per Islam but it is considered so shameful that they will usually just kill the woman.
About 2 weeks ago her eldest sister asked her, half seriously, if she had a "secret boyfriend." In just about all Philippine ethnicities the eldest daughter assumes a rome much like the mother that increases in responsibility with age. Her eldest sister evidently takes this role quite seriously.
Jackie ignored the question and this caused the sister to go apeshit. She ran to their parents and complained about how disrespectful Jackie was being. Her younger brother, the methamphetamine addict, volunteered that it was because Jackie had a "Kano" (white man). This caused a huge argument that continued, while getting progressively worse, until Wednesday. That day her eldest sister stole Jackie's ID and her smart phone. Since her addict brother had stolen her PC, we had relies on that phone to IM. Her father, all her sisters and brothers (3 each) told her that she only wanted a Kano for money.
That is ironic because back in October I tried to convince Jackie to let me support her financially. I didn't like the fact that her ex was paying her rent, etc, although in truth it was for their daughters.
He is an NCO, and the AFP (Philippine Military) pays 12,000 Pesos (60 US with the Dollar weak as it is now but usually 240). While being very well paid in the Philippines, he was giving her 10,000 a month. It left A LOT of questions in my mind, such as, how he could afford to support himself, let alone his 2nd woman and new baby they had. Still, Jackie reminded me that IF she stopped taking the money (paid via ATM so they never saw each other) the family would know she and I were a couple). Besides, she did not want me giving her money.
After Valentines weekend when he tried to forcibly move back in to her house, he cut off the money. At that point she STILL would not accept money from me so they nonsense was especially hurtfull to her.
Then they told her that IF she was going to go with me it was better for her to forgive her ex and make a life because otherwise she would just be a whore. She was so insulted and hurt.
So, Thursday, after she IMd me from the cafe, and walked into her house a few doors down from the cafe, her addict brother screamed that he had seen her in the cafe and slapped her face.
All her siblings and even her father began berating her horribly and not seeing a way out she grabbed some bleach and maaged to drink some before they pinned her down.
They called the ambulance and she was hospitalised until Monday evening, and only able to get to the cafe Tuesday night, NY time...
I will continue....
Recap: My last entry spoke a bit more about the horrid baby shower I was "Shanghaid" into attending on Satyrday, May 8th, in the South Bronx.
The shower ended promptly at 6 PM, which is the great thing about afternoon gatherings, none of the horrendous "hanging on until tomorrow" bullshit that goes hand in hand at evening soirees. I am not anti-social per se, just that I do not drink alcohol, I do not dance and do not much see the point in enforced socialising. If I enjoy your company, why would I not be seeing you all through the year, as opposed to these inane gatherings? Like the book and movie say, "No man is an island" and so I allow myself, from time to time, to be dragged kicking and screaming to these "things."
I was in a rather shitty mood because Jackie and I had last talked Thursday evening NY time. Regular contact with the Philippines has always been an issue. Until the present, bush towns in Mindanao, and I am sure any smaller islands, are without any kind of reliable mail service. Post offices exist but mail delivery does not. Feeding outlying post offices does not depend upon any set system of affairs so that even posting domestically, from Manila to my town of San Francisco on Mindanao is usually going to end up without success.
Posting from the US or Israel is guaranteed to not work out. There are, as of the last couple of years, air freight companies, like the Federal Express contractor, "Airfreight 2000." The delivery usually arrives, if about a week after it was supposed to and without knowing until the last minute whether or not it even passed Customs...
Phones are another aggravating issue. Until about 2004 there were only landlines in the bush and they basically consisted of "Call Centres" semi-funded by the government. If anyone has ever dealt with calling outlying areas of Mexico (as I do for my daughter) they will know what I mean by "call centres."If you wanted to call someone, and were even able to get a connection to the call centre, you would tell the clerk the name of the recipient, and their "address" (another spotty issue), or in lieu of existing addresses some kind of identifying information anout their residence. You would be told to call back in between 1 and 3 hours. IF at that time you are still able to make the connection, you had an "iffy" chance that they would have found the person and that they would have made it back into the town/village proper.
Then, in 2004, technology not only caught up with the rural Philippines, it lept past its existing level of infrastructure and created a totally connected population. The Philippines are literally the most connected of any population if one judges such things by "SMS" ("texting").
I have a mate who contracts in Afghanistan and he told me, about 2 years back, how ironic it felt to be travelling some gravel track in the wilds near Tajikistan, and to come across a nomadic tribe of herders, living much as their ancestors did when Alexander the Great's troops passed through, and then to look a bit closer at that pastoral scene and see a youth of 14 babbling away in Tajik, into his Nokia!
Technology, as they say, is both a blessing AND a curse.
In the Philippine's case it is indeed a blessing but as I said the infrastructure needs to play a lot of catch up. The transmission towers are not exactly top notch, and of course there is the ever present insurgency to deal with. A frequent target for both the Maoists and the MILF ("Moro Islamic Liberation Front" an Islamo-Fascist band of undisciplined nutters) is to blow up pylons.
Even when they are not playing "Che Guevera" with pylons the service is intermittent, so that IF one regularly calls Mindanao, more often than not they will be out of luck.
That leaves the internet. In 2005 Rizza and I were living here in New York as I worked at the World Trade Center site. She felt pent up as I had been, since 9/11, working 7 days a week, 12 hours a day. So off she went to visit her family on Mindanao. One day she did not come on line, which is not unusual given, as I have said, the lack of infrastructure. At that point DSL was the best the entire island had to offer and even then it was spotty. The day turnes into "days," and then a "week." On the 10th day I finally found out that a "Bottom Trawler" (a fishing boat with a gigantic net that is weighted down to drag the sea bed) had snagged a fibre optic cable off of Taiwan. Amazingly, the entire Philippine archipelago (7,107 islands) depended on that single cable!
In the end we didn't have internet, phone and of course mail for 3 weeks.
But in 2010 things are different. 2008 saw broadband arrive along with a plethora of providers...We have had a day without contact but that has been so rare.
Jackie didn't contact me until Tuesday morning NY time, and at that point I had already been making arrangements to fly out there. My passports have me with military-short hair, so I went and got my head shaved down, booked a flight for Thursday, May 13th and put in for 25 bottles of methadone...but of course, as I just said, she made contact.
In past entires I have mentioned how Jackie and I must keep our relationship very low key. Bisaya Culture dictates that even if the Philippines allowed divorce, and it does not, a married woman stays married forever. This is changing slowly in places like Cebu that have a lot of foreign influence but on Mindanao it is as strongly dictated as it ever was.
Jackie's situation is unusual though. Although she lives as a Bisaya, her dad is a "Lumad" (loo-mad), a Hilltribesman (Higaon-an Tribe) and they are married for eternity, not even widows remarry though even in Bisaya widows rarely do so.
Then there is Jackie's "marriage" to consider. Her ex is a Tausug Tribesman, one of the 13 tribes collectively known as "Moro," which is itself an ethni-religious catchphrase used to describe Filipino Muslims. Tausug DO allow divorce per Islam but it is considered so shameful that they will usually just kill the woman.
About 2 weeks ago her eldest sister asked her, half seriously, if she had a "secret boyfriend." In just about all Philippine ethnicities the eldest daughter assumes a rome much like the mother that increases in responsibility with age. Her eldest sister evidently takes this role quite seriously.
Jackie ignored the question and this caused the sister to go apeshit. She ran to their parents and complained about how disrespectful Jackie was being. Her younger brother, the methamphetamine addict, volunteered that it was because Jackie had a "Kano" (white man). This caused a huge argument that continued, while getting progressively worse, until Wednesday. That day her eldest sister stole Jackie's ID and her smart phone. Since her addict brother had stolen her PC, we had relies on that phone to IM. Her father, all her sisters and brothers (3 each) told her that she only wanted a Kano for money.
That is ironic because back in October I tried to convince Jackie to let me support her financially. I didn't like the fact that her ex was paying her rent, etc, although in truth it was for their daughters.
He is an NCO, and the AFP (Philippine Military) pays 12,000 Pesos (60 US with the Dollar weak as it is now but usually 240). While being very well paid in the Philippines, he was giving her 10,000 a month. It left A LOT of questions in my mind, such as, how he could afford to support himself, let alone his 2nd woman and new baby they had. Still, Jackie reminded me that IF she stopped taking the money (paid via ATM so they never saw each other) the family would know she and I were a couple). Besides, she did not want me giving her money.
After Valentines weekend when he tried to forcibly move back in to her house, he cut off the money. At that point she STILL would not accept money from me so they nonsense was especially hurtfull to her.
Then they told her that IF she was going to go with me it was better for her to forgive her ex and make a life because otherwise she would just be a whore. She was so insulted and hurt.
So, Thursday, after she IMd me from the cafe, and walked into her house a few doors down from the cafe, her addict brother screamed that he had seen her in the cafe and slapped her face.
All her siblings and even her father began berating her horribly and not seeing a way out she grabbed some bleach and maaged to drink some before they pinned her down.
They called the ambulance and she was hospitalised until Monday evening, and only able to get to the cafe Tuesday night, NY time...
I will continue....