Still Sunday, Janurary 3rd, 2010 and it is 11:55PM here in Brooklyn, NYC, USA.
Back in Brooklyn on 12/10...Deciding what to do with my clusterfuck of a marriage...and now that wonderful subject:
When I left to come here for my HCV (Hepatitis-C) treatment Rizza insisted on being allowed to return to school. She already has a degree in Computer Science, but had of late decided she wanted to study Nursing.
We have a house in Cebu City (Barangay Tisa), and 1 brother-in-law (Nigel) living in it as he finishes his Nursing degree. We discussed ith with Mom, Dad and our eldest auntie (Mom's eldest sister) and wedecided that it would be good for Rizza to do so but that she ought to study there on Mindanao and commute to school in Davao, the largest city on the island (about 240 km south of us). Rizza though was adamanat that she wanted to go to Cebu.
Most Bisaya (Rizza's tribe/ethnicity) are Cebuano, meaning their roots are on Cebu island. Since the late 19th Centiry but especially post-WWII the powers that be have tried to get poor Bisaya to come south and populate the island. Cebuano is the main language on Mindanao for this reason.
In ourcase, Dad was raised on Cebu and only came south when he married Mom who had gone to Cebu for university (after Muslim guerillas attacked her school in Davao). So even more than most Mindanaon Bisaya we have connections to Cebu.
Cebu City itself is much different than anything on Mindanao. For one thing, it has the 2nd largest Red Light District in the country, and for another it is the nation's most crime ridden city. It also has more than its share of sleazy foreigners, etc and so forth.
So we all agreed Rizza could only go, grudgingly, IF Yaya (her childhood nanny accompanied her. The word "Yaya" simply means "Nanny" or "Personal Maid." This Yaya, 1 of 3 we have, is "Yaya No Teeth" as I affectionately call her.
It is difficult to explain but inter-personal relationships in Mindanao are very complicated. In this Yaya's case, her late husband wasn an NPA guerilla commander whom our family killed. We then assumed responsibility for her young children, since they were a local family.
Unlike Moros (Philippine Muslims), Bisaya will not attack anyone but the subject unless involved in a wider family feud.
Yaya No Teeth has been with us now almost 24 years and is as good as they come.
Rizza agreed, but we said we would stilll discuss the rest of the arrangements within the next 2 weeks and I left for America.
I call home about a week later and Mom tells me Rizza and Yaya had left for Cebu on the ferry! Rizza had told her parents that I had said it was OK! I wasn't angry because we did after all say it was going to happen, only that we were going to flesh out the situation. Still, I found it a tad bit out of character.
So Rizza began her Nursing School, and seemed very happy. I began my treatment, and life settled into a reoutine of sorts. Each day,we would IM (Chat) for 3 hours or so, and call as needed.
Then Rizza started IMing less and less. She would come every day, but would be late or leave sooner. Now I have known my wife since she was literally born, and I do know her mannerisms throughly. This is a girl who has here-to-fore insisted we IM for 10 to 14 hours a day and throw tantrums when we could not.
I chalked it up to her new school, etc. Indeed, rationalising it that way I was even pleased that she had finally found her niche. Oh she found her "niche" alright, but I will get to that...
So the IMs began tapering off. Then she began missing days. We have a PC in all our houses so there is no excuse but she explained that it had caught a virus, something that does actually happen a lot when your have young brothers-in-law and Class D porn sites hahahaha.
Then she began IMing only 3 or 4 days a week for 2 or 3 weeks and I knew something was happening. I tried to pin her down, get her to talk about it but she always denied anything had changed.
I was IMing with Mom just about everyday and when I brought up my concerns the best advice she could offer was to simply let Rizza see how it feels by also staying offline. This sounds perfectly logical to most Pinoy (Filipinos) but in my mind it borders on the retarded. Yeah, Rizza is suddenly ignoring me so I should ignore her as well and this will cause her to pay attention??? Hahahah, whatever...
Finally almost 4 months go by, and when we do IM it is dead, nothing of interest. Finally she missed 4 days in a row. I called her, it was 2 AM there, and I hear voices. In our home Yaya and Nigel will always be asleep then, and this was a multitude of voices.
I naturally asked her what is happening. She non-chalantly tells me that the noise is from her "job." By Philippine standards we are wealthy, she has never worked a day in her life. I was shocked. I asked her when she had begun working and she told me it had been a few weeks.
I asked her where the job was but she was evasive. I asked her what her job was and she told me it was a "SariSari" (conveience store) with internet cafe, but only 2 PCs.
Now this is all incredibly bizarre. I asked her WHY she felt she wanted to work. She says she wants to earn her own money. She has always had decent bank accounts, an allowance that is 5 times whatthe average worker makes (in Philippines) but she wanted to experience being fully independant.
Sounds reasonable enough, right? Thing is, in the Philippines the culture is nothing at all like the West. If you talk to 10 girls, 18 years old, 9 will always wish to be married and have children. Most do not know how to handle finances, etc. I have no problem either way, as long as my woman is happy.
My issue though was in making these radical changes without discussing any aspect of it with me. In addition, the incredibly radical shift in personality disturbed me.
I told her that working at 2 AM is not acceptable and that I wanted her to either leave her "job" or switch to daylight hours.
I then immediately called Mom, woke her up, and was nervously telling her about my discovery. I got an even greater shock when she told me she already knew. I angrily asked her why she hadn't told me. She calmly replied that 3 weeks prior Rizza had gotten into a huge argument with Yaya and stormed out of the house! She had not returned since!!!
I was floored, absoloutely floored. In Bisaya Culture you respect elders, even those that work for you. You show the utmost respect. Further more, Yaya had raised Rizza since birth as her personal nanny.
Then, the fact that this had happened almost a month before and I was only now being told! Mom explained that their not telling me mainly due towards their own great embrassment and anxiety but also because of my on-going treatment (stress adversely effects the outcome).
I called Rizza back immediately and I told her I now knew everything. I demanded that she give me the address of both her job and where she was living. All she would say was that she was in Cebu and living with friends. She kept changing the subject but swore that in the morning she would return home and make amends with Yaya. I then bid her goodnight and uneasily waited for the afternoon, to call her.
Welll that was 7 months ago hahahahaha, still don't know where she is living or working.
Since I discovered that the family had kept her leaving from me I suspected that a lot more was going on and being kept from me. Finally Dad told me that a cousin had accidently seen Rizza in Cebu and that she looked pregnant. WOW.
The family wanted to kill her, that is how such things are handled. Me? I just wanted her happy. After all, longtime readers will recall my writing about my realisation(s) that although I was very fond of her, I did NOT love her. Indeed I wondered if I was evencapable of such heartfelt emotions.
At the present she and I communicate via offline IMs a couple of times a week.
Sad that its ending, but one door closes so that another may open. Indeed, it has not taken long for one TO open though I am not sure how much of THAT I wish to touch upon given the fact that Rizza and other family members may still be reading my online posting(s) (she mentions shit now and again).
On 12/16 I left NYC for Israel, a direct hop from JFK to Ben Gurion. I visited with a new grandson (2nd grandkid),visited with all 3 of my kids there. My daughter is still serving and may stay on as a pro, she is now training as an Instructor at Mikan Adam (IDF Sniper School) but is getting married to a Samal (my rank was Rav Samal which is a Sr Captain but basically equal to a US Major, Samal is Captain). I met the boy and his parents. I set the dowry.
Westerners either do not know what a dowry is or at best almost always misunderstand the concept. They equivocate it with a "Brideprice," as if we sel females.
The idea is that females leave their families when married, and join the family of their husbands. In doing this the girl's family loses another pair of bhands, someone whose product (work) will no longer benefit her own family but now her husband's family. The dowry offsets this loss.
Males stay with their own families so no reciprocating practice is required. Interestingly though, many Ashkenazi Jews (Jews whose recent roots are in Europe) provide their sons-in-law with a source of income which is counter-intuitive, but advantageous none-the-less.
For example, an Ashkenazi father will offer a prospective son-in-law a job, or full income for 2 or 3 years so that he may pursue higher education, etc.
I settled my daughter's dowry, held a "Kiddushin," a Betrothal Party, and my eldest son and I headed to Hong Kong to transfer for a flight intp Brunei.
Back in Brooklyn on 12/10...Deciding what to do with my clusterfuck of a marriage...and now that wonderful subject:
When I left to come here for my HCV (Hepatitis-C) treatment Rizza insisted on being allowed to return to school. She already has a degree in Computer Science, but had of late decided she wanted to study Nursing.
We have a house in Cebu City (Barangay Tisa), and 1 brother-in-law (Nigel) living in it as he finishes his Nursing degree. We discussed ith with Mom, Dad and our eldest auntie (Mom's eldest sister) and wedecided that it would be good for Rizza to do so but that she ought to study there on Mindanao and commute to school in Davao, the largest city on the island (about 240 km south of us). Rizza though was adamanat that she wanted to go to Cebu.
Most Bisaya (Rizza's tribe/ethnicity) are Cebuano, meaning their roots are on Cebu island. Since the late 19th Centiry but especially post-WWII the powers that be have tried to get poor Bisaya to come south and populate the island. Cebuano is the main language on Mindanao for this reason.
In ourcase, Dad was raised on Cebu and only came south when he married Mom who had gone to Cebu for university (after Muslim guerillas attacked her school in Davao). So even more than most Mindanaon Bisaya we have connections to Cebu.
Cebu City itself is much different than anything on Mindanao. For one thing, it has the 2nd largest Red Light District in the country, and for another it is the nation's most crime ridden city. It also has more than its share of sleazy foreigners, etc and so forth.
So we all agreed Rizza could only go, grudgingly, IF Yaya (her childhood nanny accompanied her. The word "Yaya" simply means "Nanny" or "Personal Maid." This Yaya, 1 of 3 we have, is "Yaya No Teeth" as I affectionately call her.
It is difficult to explain but inter-personal relationships in Mindanao are very complicated. In this Yaya's case, her late husband wasn an NPA guerilla commander whom our family killed. We then assumed responsibility for her young children, since they were a local family.
Unlike Moros (Philippine Muslims), Bisaya will not attack anyone but the subject unless involved in a wider family feud.
Yaya No Teeth has been with us now almost 24 years and is as good as they come.
Rizza agreed, but we said we would stilll discuss the rest of the arrangements within the next 2 weeks and I left for America.
I call home about a week later and Mom tells me Rizza and Yaya had left for Cebu on the ferry! Rizza had told her parents that I had said it was OK! I wasn't angry because we did after all say it was going to happen, only that we were going to flesh out the situation. Still, I found it a tad bit out of character.
So Rizza began her Nursing School, and seemed very happy. I began my treatment, and life settled into a reoutine of sorts. Each day,we would IM (Chat) for 3 hours or so, and call as needed.
Then Rizza started IMing less and less. She would come every day, but would be late or leave sooner. Now I have known my wife since she was literally born, and I do know her mannerisms throughly. This is a girl who has here-to-fore insisted we IM for 10 to 14 hours a day and throw tantrums when we could not.
I chalked it up to her new school, etc. Indeed, rationalising it that way I was even pleased that she had finally found her niche. Oh she found her "niche" alright, but I will get to that...
So the IMs began tapering off. Then she began missing days. We have a PC in all our houses so there is no excuse but she explained that it had caught a virus, something that does actually happen a lot when your have young brothers-in-law and Class D porn sites hahahaha.
Then she began IMing only 3 or 4 days a week for 2 or 3 weeks and I knew something was happening. I tried to pin her down, get her to talk about it but she always denied anything had changed.
I was IMing with Mom just about everyday and when I brought up my concerns the best advice she could offer was to simply let Rizza see how it feels by also staying offline. This sounds perfectly logical to most Pinoy (Filipinos) but in my mind it borders on the retarded. Yeah, Rizza is suddenly ignoring me so I should ignore her as well and this will cause her to pay attention??? Hahahah, whatever...
Finally almost 4 months go by, and when we do IM it is dead, nothing of interest. Finally she missed 4 days in a row. I called her, it was 2 AM there, and I hear voices. In our home Yaya and Nigel will always be asleep then, and this was a multitude of voices.
I naturally asked her what is happening. She non-chalantly tells me that the noise is from her "job." By Philippine standards we are wealthy, she has never worked a day in her life. I was shocked. I asked her when she had begun working and she told me it had been a few weeks.
I asked her where the job was but she was evasive. I asked her what her job was and she told me it was a "SariSari" (conveience store) with internet cafe, but only 2 PCs.
Now this is all incredibly bizarre. I asked her WHY she felt she wanted to work. She says she wants to earn her own money. She has always had decent bank accounts, an allowance that is 5 times whatthe average worker makes (in Philippines) but she wanted to experience being fully independant.
Sounds reasonable enough, right? Thing is, in the Philippines the culture is nothing at all like the West. If you talk to 10 girls, 18 years old, 9 will always wish to be married and have children. Most do not know how to handle finances, etc. I have no problem either way, as long as my woman is happy.
My issue though was in making these radical changes without discussing any aspect of it with me. In addition, the incredibly radical shift in personality disturbed me.
I told her that working at 2 AM is not acceptable and that I wanted her to either leave her "job" or switch to daylight hours.
I then immediately called Mom, woke her up, and was nervously telling her about my discovery. I got an even greater shock when she told me she already knew. I angrily asked her why she hadn't told me. She calmly replied that 3 weeks prior Rizza had gotten into a huge argument with Yaya and stormed out of the house! She had not returned since!!!
I was floored, absoloutely floored. In Bisaya Culture you respect elders, even those that work for you. You show the utmost respect. Further more, Yaya had raised Rizza since birth as her personal nanny.
Then, the fact that this had happened almost a month before and I was only now being told! Mom explained that their not telling me mainly due towards their own great embrassment and anxiety but also because of my on-going treatment (stress adversely effects the outcome).
I called Rizza back immediately and I told her I now knew everything. I demanded that she give me the address of both her job and where she was living. All she would say was that she was in Cebu and living with friends. She kept changing the subject but swore that in the morning she would return home and make amends with Yaya. I then bid her goodnight and uneasily waited for the afternoon, to call her.
Welll that was 7 months ago hahahahaha, still don't know where she is living or working.
Since I discovered that the family had kept her leaving from me I suspected that a lot more was going on and being kept from me. Finally Dad told me that a cousin had accidently seen Rizza in Cebu and that she looked pregnant. WOW.
The family wanted to kill her, that is how such things are handled. Me? I just wanted her happy. After all, longtime readers will recall my writing about my realisation(s) that although I was very fond of her, I did NOT love her. Indeed I wondered if I was evencapable of such heartfelt emotions.
At the present she and I communicate via offline IMs a couple of times a week.
Sad that its ending, but one door closes so that another may open. Indeed, it has not taken long for one TO open though I am not sure how much of THAT I wish to touch upon given the fact that Rizza and other family members may still be reading my online posting(s) (she mentions shit now and again).
On 12/16 I left NYC for Israel, a direct hop from JFK to Ben Gurion. I visited with a new grandson (2nd grandkid),visited with all 3 of my kids there. My daughter is still serving and may stay on as a pro, she is now training as an Instructor at Mikan Adam (IDF Sniper School) but is getting married to a Samal (my rank was Rav Samal which is a Sr Captain but basically equal to a US Major, Samal is Captain). I met the boy and his parents. I set the dowry.
Westerners either do not know what a dowry is or at best almost always misunderstand the concept. They equivocate it with a "Brideprice," as if we sel females.
The idea is that females leave their families when married, and join the family of their husbands. In doing this the girl's family loses another pair of bhands, someone whose product (work) will no longer benefit her own family but now her husband's family. The dowry offsets this loss.
Males stay with their own families so no reciprocating practice is required. Interestingly though, many Ashkenazi Jews (Jews whose recent roots are in Europe) provide their sons-in-law with a source of income which is counter-intuitive, but advantageous none-the-less.
For example, an Ashkenazi father will offer a prospective son-in-law a job, or full income for 2 or 3 years so that he may pursue higher education, etc.
I settled my daughter's dowry, held a "Kiddushin," a Betrothal Party, and my eldest son and I headed to Hong Kong to transfer for a flight intp Brunei.
