On March 23, The Straits Times published a story written by its news correspondent in the Philippines entitled “Back home in Manila, and feeling out of place.” Here is our response.
It’s tempting to read Straits Times Philippines correspondent Raul Dancel’s recent piece on feeling out of place in Manila as yet another example of the dreaded LSS — not “last song syndrome,” but the less popular, more insidious “Lea Salonga Syndrome.” You may remember that the internationally renowned actress raised hackles here many years ago, after returning home from a few months of Miss Saigon rehearsals in London with a British accent to put any native speaker of the Queen’s English to shame. She was young at the time — a mere 17 or 18 years old — and has put that nonsense well behind her, thank goodness.
READ: Brickbats for Singapore’s Pinoy reporter for ‘culture shock in Manila’ statement
But Dancel is, by his own admission, 40-odd years old now. He would have been thirty-something when he began his seven-year stint in the Lion City. Perhaps it’s not unreasonable to expect that, by the time one hits his thirties, one has backbone and character enough not to be so utterly dazzled by the comforts of the First World that one grows so alienated from the Third World country where he grew up.
The fact is, there is no such thing as a perfect place or country, and very often, the thing that makes a country great is the very same thing that makes it — well, not so great. Dancel appears enamored of Singapore’s efficiency and safety, its clockwork precision. But many of its locals will tell you an excessively strict adherence to those very qualities hampers creativity, independent thinking, the ability to find joy in everyday life. He’s dismayed by the seeming inability of his countrymen to follow basic rules and to “color within the lines,” as it were; and yet, extended to such aspects of life and society as art, music, and even democracy, these qualities make our cultural and political life vibrant and exciting.
Dancel makes a fuss about not using the common English terms for “toilet,” “takeaway,” and “elevator” in the Philippines. But that’s puzzling to us here at Coconuts, knowing as we do how adept Filipinos are at code-switching. Many overseas Filipinos we know — from top executives, to nurses, to domestic helpers — have been able to pick up bits of Arabic, French, Cantonese, as well as the many variants of English spoken all over the world, including Singlish. They use this knowledge as a means of adaptation in their overseas life, as a way to make themselves more intelligible to the foreigners they deal with on a daily basis. And yet, when they come home, most will recognize that it’s silly to use any code that your kababayan won’t understand. That’s not rocket science; that’s just common sense. Why would you expect anyone in Manila who’s never been to Singapore or isn’t Singaporean to know what ang moh (Caucasian) means? It’s almost like expecting Kris Aquino to wrap her head around the meaning of the word restraint.
Dancel complains about jaywalkers, about motorists and honking horns, about dirty toilets and the ubiquitous security guards, as though all these were rare phenomena, to be found only in his home country. But that, too, is puzzling, as is his talk of “culture shock.” Many of us who have lived overseas for any length of time and come home to Manila — or, indeed, travelled to any part of the world that is less-developed than what we might have grown accustomed to — are well-acquainted with the phrase “managing your expectations.” It’s a sign of both maturity and — dare we say it — urbanity, that you don’t expect the same behavior, the same level of comfort or degree of progress or efficiency, and that you adjust your own behavior and expectations accordingly.
But to us, the most disturbing thing about Dancel’s lengthy lament about being away from his adoptive country is the implied sense that he feels he already belongs there. Which, to our minds, is a bit sad, knowing that Singapore has, in the last six or seven years, become increasingly hostile to foreign workers wanting to plant roots there. We know of Filipinos who’ve spent ten, twelve, 20 years there, contributing to the Singapore economy, paying taxes dutifully, caring for Singapore’s young or old or sick, helping to spark creativity and innovation in Singapore’s schools and companies; they applied for permanent residency or for citizenship but learned, to their dismay, that while the Lion City is happy to have them for as long as they’re productive, they’re not really wanted over the long term. Because at the end of the day — and this is their Policy, with a capital “P” — Singapore is for Singaporeans.
Now look at the Philippines. It’s everything that Singapore isn’t: loud, inefficient, dangerous in places, dizzyingly corrupt, hurtling gleefully — karaoke mike in hand — toward ever more chaos. It’s a barrel of monkeys, as far as countries go.
And yet, in its quiet spaces — and yes, there are many if one knows where to look — it is also a country of deep compassion, of great suffering and even greater endurance. It is a country of grit, one that takes its hard knocks and soldiers on regardless. Today we signed a peace deal to end decades of armed conflict in Mindanao. We stuck to the process, no matter how tough it was and how long it took. That’s backbone; that’s character.
In his essay, “To the Young Writer,” F. Sionil Jose says: “write wherever you can do it best, in exile perhaps, but never, never leave your village, your town, your beginning. Enshrine it in the heart, sanctify it in your mind, for your beginning gives you your soul, your humanity.” We’re reminded of that old Filipino adage, “ang hindi lumingon sa pinanggalingan, hindi makakarating sa paroroonan.” (“He who does not remember where he came from, will never reach his destination”).
Dancel is entitled to his opinion, of course, and we think that some of the brickbats and ad hominems flung his way are excessive and uncalled for. We sincerely wish him well in his new-old life here in Manila, and hope that he will eventually feel that he is, truly, “home,” among people who love, value, and respect him. The Philippines is not perfect; life here is flawed in the extreme. But the key to living a good life, in any latitude and longitude, is balance: that one is not so blinded by the good that he fails to see the bad, or that one doesn’t see only the bad when there is a world of good — of soul, of humanity — lying just underneath the surface.
This story first appeared on Coconuts Manila.
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