a continuation...
Aunt Gemma is what Filipinos call a "Japasuki," or in her particular case a retired Japasuki. The term sounds alot nicer than "Cock Sucker," or even, "Blow Job Queen" because that is indeed the Japasuki's colourful job description. Oftentimes, teenaged Filipinas are offered jobs in Japan as "Entertainers" and told that they will be doing song and dance numbers in Japanese night clubs. Gullible as gullible gets, these teenaged girls step off of the plane in Japan and after clearing Customs and Immigration, are strongarmed by Yakuza handlers into surrendering all travel documents. Taken to a dingy dormitory where they are kept under guard, a Filipina Mamasan goes to work breaking down whatever defences the young Filipina may have...because of course not all arriving "Entertainers" disembark believing that they will actually be doing choreographed dance numbers in some un-named Japanese dive.
Oftentimes the girls know exactly what is in store for them. In a nation without a social welfare net, where the average family subsists on less than $3 daily, the ability to draw $25 a night is just about irresistable...even if it inevitably involves smiling as an elderly Japanese man pees on you. Still, even today, with most Third World hellholes like the Philippines being well entrenched in the Information Age, more than a few young ladies actually do believe they are being plucked from a squatter slum to do costumed dance numbers despite their having absolutely no dance or voice training whatsoever...and standing a foot shorter than the shortest professional chorusgirls. To describe the average Filipina as "naive" would be an understatement.
Whether-or-not Gemma was as naive as those starry eyed Filipinas, I can't say. What I do know though, is that fourteen years after landing in Osaka, Gemma returned to the Philippines as the kept woman of an elderly Japanese man. Joining the now teenaged son ahe had left behind was Gemma's young daughter, Maikhee, or "Khee" for short. Gemma, her son and Khee then moved into a cinderblock home built for them by her elderly patron who conveniently- for Gemma- only leaves his family in Japan once every 18 months to "collect" on his "investment."
As the most financially secure of all Joysa's maternal relatives, Aunt Gemma serves as the de facto clan matriarch. When Tita (Auntie) Gemma says jump you don't even ask how high, you just start moving. Seeing as how I had more or less decided to let Joysa go, I could not in good conscience start demanding that she throw a wrench into that family dynamic. So it was that I hopped the Philippine equivalent of a commuter bus and made my way north out of Makati in Metro Manila en route to Angeles City and what would prove to be one of the more interesting New Years Eves I have ever had.
Some time ago I wrote about how I had decided to start stepping back into the wonderful world of romance...I wrote about a few girls who had all come to my attention. One was an Orang Asli from Malaysia. The term "Orang Asli" is the Politically Correct term used to describe what anthropologists usually label "Proto-Malayan Tribes." The first inhabitants of peninsular Malaysia were the Negrito. Next to arrive were the Orang Asli, rain forest tribes who physically look quite different than the Modern Malay...then came the Malay. So it is that Orang Asli are deemed to be "indigenous."
I have quite a bit of experience in Eastern Malaysia, which is how Malaysia describes its non-peninsular territory. Sabah State, on Borneo, is 20 minutes by motorboat from the islands ringing Mindanao's southernmost island province, Tawi Tawi. In fact, Sabah is home to nearly half a million Mindanowans, most undocumented having arrived as refugees from our fair island's decades old insurgencies. The Sabah - Tawi Tawi nexus is a smuggler's paradise but enough about that...
On Sabah, the equivalent of the Orang Asli are known as "Bumiputra," a term that politically active Orang Asli find eggregious since it was externally imposed by the Malaysian Government. As most of my sojourns to Malaysia have been relegated to Sabah, I of course use the term Bumiputra. On my last trip to Manila, again on a flight, I was seated next to an attractive woman. The flight between Butuan on Mindanao and Makati in Metro Manila is little more than an hour, but apparently it is sufficient enough time to engage myself in a major faux paux.
Our conversation began innocently enough; introducing each other I discovered that she was in Mindanao for an ASEAN trade conference, "ASEAN" being the regional trade bloc. The woman, 30 years old, was an economist with an indigenous-centric NGO. As conversations inevitably do in this part of the world, where religion is interchangable with ethnicity, she revealed she was Protestant. A Protestant in Malaysia is alnost always going to be an indigenous tribesman thanks to the evangelical zeal of obnoxious Western missionaries during the 19th Century. From Arachnal Pradesh o the Indo-Burmese border, across through Laos, and then from Korea down the Pacific Rim as far south as Indonesia, these missionaries spewed their intellectual and cultural poison and indelibly altered this part of the world forever.
In one of the more interesting outcomes, it was the head hunting tribes that became the most faithful of Protestant converts. Ergo, if you meat a Malaysian citizen of the Protestant faith, you can bet your bottom dollar- or in this case RM- that that person is Bumiputra...or...Orang Asli.
Asking my companion if she was a Bumiputra set off a firestorm, at least in the relative sense. I was rather suprised then that she warmed up just as we entered Luzon's airspace. By the time we landed 15 minutes later I was ready to seal the deal with an invite to the studio I sublet in Makati, and what I had hoped would be at least an earnest attempt at knocking boots...though having discovered that my companion was a virgin- or so I thought- I wasn't at all certain what the day might hold. As it turned out she had to immediately connect with her flight home to Kuala Lampur. After exchanging contact info and promising her that indeed, we would talk again, we parted ways and I caught a taxi to my studio pn De La Rosa Street...
To be continued...
Aunt Gemma is what Filipinos call a "Japasuki," or in her particular case a retired Japasuki. The term sounds alot nicer than "Cock Sucker," or even, "Blow Job Queen" because that is indeed the Japasuki's colourful job description. Oftentimes, teenaged Filipinas are offered jobs in Japan as "Entertainers" and told that they will be doing song and dance numbers in Japanese night clubs. Gullible as gullible gets, these teenaged girls step off of the plane in Japan and after clearing Customs and Immigration, are strongarmed by Yakuza handlers into surrendering all travel documents. Taken to a dingy dormitory where they are kept under guard, a Filipina Mamasan goes to work breaking down whatever defences the young Filipina may have...because of course not all arriving "Entertainers" disembark believing that they will actually be doing choreographed dance numbers in some un-named Japanese dive.
Oftentimes the girls know exactly what is in store for them. In a nation without a social welfare net, where the average family subsists on less than $3 daily, the ability to draw $25 a night is just about irresistable...even if it inevitably involves smiling as an elderly Japanese man pees on you. Still, even today, with most Third World hellholes like the Philippines being well entrenched in the Information Age, more than a few young ladies actually do believe they are being plucked from a squatter slum to do costumed dance numbers despite their having absolutely no dance or voice training whatsoever...and standing a foot shorter than the shortest professional chorusgirls. To describe the average Filipina as "naive" would be an understatement.
Whether-or-not Gemma was as naive as those starry eyed Filipinas, I can't say. What I do know though, is that fourteen years after landing in Osaka, Gemma returned to the Philippines as the kept woman of an elderly Japanese man. Joining the now teenaged son ahe had left behind was Gemma's young daughter, Maikhee, or "Khee" for short. Gemma, her son and Khee then moved into a cinderblock home built for them by her elderly patron who conveniently- for Gemma- only leaves his family in Japan once every 18 months to "collect" on his "investment."
As the most financially secure of all Joysa's maternal relatives, Aunt Gemma serves as the de facto clan matriarch. When Tita (Auntie) Gemma says jump you don't even ask how high, you just start moving. Seeing as how I had more or less decided to let Joysa go, I could not in good conscience start demanding that she throw a wrench into that family dynamic. So it was that I hopped the Philippine equivalent of a commuter bus and made my way north out of Makati in Metro Manila en route to Angeles City and what would prove to be one of the more interesting New Years Eves I have ever had.
Some time ago I wrote about how I had decided to start stepping back into the wonderful world of romance...I wrote about a few girls who had all come to my attention. One was an Orang Asli from Malaysia. The term "Orang Asli" is the Politically Correct term used to describe what anthropologists usually label "Proto-Malayan Tribes." The first inhabitants of peninsular Malaysia were the Negrito. Next to arrive were the Orang Asli, rain forest tribes who physically look quite different than the Modern Malay...then came the Malay. So it is that Orang Asli are deemed to be "indigenous."
I have quite a bit of experience in Eastern Malaysia, which is how Malaysia describes its non-peninsular territory. Sabah State, on Borneo, is 20 minutes by motorboat from the islands ringing Mindanao's southernmost island province, Tawi Tawi. In fact, Sabah is home to nearly half a million Mindanowans, most undocumented having arrived as refugees from our fair island's decades old insurgencies. The Sabah - Tawi Tawi nexus is a smuggler's paradise but enough about that...
On Sabah, the equivalent of the Orang Asli are known as "Bumiputra," a term that politically active Orang Asli find eggregious since it was externally imposed by the Malaysian Government. As most of my sojourns to Malaysia have been relegated to Sabah, I of course use the term Bumiputra. On my last trip to Manila, again on a flight, I was seated next to an attractive woman. The flight between Butuan on Mindanao and Makati in Metro Manila is little more than an hour, but apparently it is sufficient enough time to engage myself in a major faux paux.
Our conversation began innocently enough; introducing each other I discovered that she was in Mindanao for an ASEAN trade conference, "ASEAN" being the regional trade bloc. The woman, 30 years old, was an economist with an indigenous-centric NGO. As conversations inevitably do in this part of the world, where religion is interchangable with ethnicity, she revealed she was Protestant. A Protestant in Malaysia is alnost always going to be an indigenous tribesman thanks to the evangelical zeal of obnoxious Western missionaries during the 19th Century. From Arachnal Pradesh o the Indo-Burmese border, across through Laos, and then from Korea down the Pacific Rim as far south as Indonesia, these missionaries spewed their intellectual and cultural poison and indelibly altered this part of the world forever.
In one of the more interesting outcomes, it was the head hunting tribes that became the most faithful of Protestant converts. Ergo, if you meat a Malaysian citizen of the Protestant faith, you can bet your bottom dollar- or in this case RM- that that person is Bumiputra...or...Orang Asli.
Asking my companion if she was a Bumiputra set off a firestorm, at least in the relative sense. I was rather suprised then that she warmed up just as we entered Luzon's airspace. By the time we landed 15 minutes later I was ready to seal the deal with an invite to the studio I sublet in Makati, and what I had hoped would be at least an earnest attempt at knocking boots...though having discovered that my companion was a virgin- or so I thought- I wasn't at all certain what the day might hold. As it turned out she had to immediately connect with her flight home to Kuala Lampur. After exchanging contact info and promising her that indeed, we would talk again, we parted ways and I caught a taxi to my studio pn De La Rosa Street...
To be continued...