GCB

Working and living in the Philippines means having to work with acronyms. Filipino's love acronyms. I work for the GIZ, which is a German acronym, but I work for the DRM (Disaster Risk Management) department. Sometimes people get confused about are intentions so we add Reduction so it becomes DRRM. As if anyone outside of a Bond-movie would be interested in working for DRIM (not that I would turn the job-offer down, mind you), or - if they did - would admit it to people often enough to warrant an acronym.
Obviously the DRM department Ms more than one D. We work on FEWS (Flood Early Warning Systems), sometimes calles LFEWS for local FEWS. Other people work on this project called SIMPLE: Sustainable Integrated Management and Planning for LGU Ecosystems. That's right, nested acronyms. LGU means Local Government Unit. There is nothing simple about SIMPLE, it's just to have a nice acronym.

Quite daunting for the initiate, but not for locals. As I said, Filipino's love acronyms, and they use them even outside of the professional jargon. Because divorce doesn't exist in the Philippines but separation obviously still does, some people are MBA (Married But Available). Some people just don't stand a chance in the world of boyfriends and girlfriends and relationships and these are SSB (Single Since Birth). That's a bad thing. And, of course, not all tourists come to the Philippines with the most innocent of vacation plans. These can usually be filed under the category DOM (Dirty Old Man).

But wait, there's more! Some people are so used to acronyms that they start believing abbreviating their names will shave valuable minutes off of their day. I've heard of people named B-boy (no experience in break-dancing), and J-boy (respected politician), for example. But the self-abbreviation is an old phenomenon here. So old, that some people have names that are phonetic spellings of acronyms: Bee-Jay for example (that's an actual person).

Weird.

Modern Family

Worries over. I'm not turning into one of them. I have some new worries though, I might be turning into Marvin from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I know, dreadful isn't it?

Mostly, I'll never be a true Filipino because I don't like children (don't worry, people-that-I-know-that-read-this, when you get children I'll totally like all of them). Filipino's love their children. Which is good. I'm not saying 'loving your children' is a bad move. That would be a bad move.
What I do think is a bad move is the assertion that loving something means you have to be nice to it all the time. I would imagine that this assertion would melt away quite organically when you have children, when they start being annoying. Not on this island though. Kids basically rule the world here. I've seen kids get away with a LOT of stuff here.
Sure there's the always-popular running and screaming and shouting that children quite naturally do. I've seen children stealing groceries from other peoples carts at the supermarket (admittedly a brilliant prank). They usually get away with this stuff, and I guess that's not really enough to bother me.
What bothers me is that I've noticed that the kids are actually in charge. I've seen children commanding their parents to take them somewhere. Not in a whiny way. Whining is for children that don't get what they want right away. Just a simple, down-to-business, almost militaristic command.
"We're going to get ice-cream."
"Now I want a toy."
or sometimes it's just a word.
"Chicken"
At this point the parents will look at the child with not even the slightest disdain, maybe look at each other with parental pride and endearment, and follow up the children's latest whim. Sometimes, a pressing matter makes its way to the parent's frontal cortex: "Okay, but we have to get you new clothes straight after, alright?" The kid won't listen. It's knee-deep in a bucket of fried chicken. You can hear the fabric of his shirt tightening.
Precious.

Black Books

I'm three months into this internship and something weird happened to me today. It wasn't a big thing. And it didn't really happen today; it was more of a thing that was going on for awhile that I just realized was happening today. And then I thought that was pretty strange. I'm usually quite perceptive about the weirdness of stuff. At least that's what I thought. Apparently, self-asserting perceptive capabilities is a flawed procedure as there is no way to know how much you're missing. Wow, that turned out really profound. I'm proud of me.
Pride and profundity* aside, the weirdness I failed to realize for a month or two (I've had conversations about this when I just got here) is that book shops in the Philippines are really weird. Most bookshops I have walked into mostly sell office supplies and educational textbooks. And bibles obviously, but I categorize that as an educational textbook. At face value that sounds pretty useful, but I don't really see the point of buying "MS Office '95 for dummies" at this point. Although now that I think about it, I wouldn't be incredibly surprised if some government institution somewhere is still using Office '95. I've seen and heard more disturbing things.
At the chain bookstores they do have novels, about two shoulder-high racks worth of novels in the store I checked out. That's on a total store size of 1.5 floors of around 75 square meters. Incredible, I know, but the real gem is the selection. I don't know what the acquisition-philosophy is exactly, but here's my interpretation on the categories (in ascending order of amount of books):

1. Books that high-schoolers might need to read in school, e.g. Shakespeare, the Bronte sisters, Twain. It's not all useless.
2. Books that have been made into movies and novelizations of movie scripts, e.g. Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, the Bourne whatever, Godzilla.
3. Romance novels about men without shirts and women in stables or whatever. 

The last category fills one of the two racks.

So how did I not realize this was weird for two consecutive months? AM I BECOMING ONE OF THEM?

p.s. We can buy real books at a second-hand bookstore in town. They also have a book called Gynomite, and I think that's wonderful.

 * I'm copyrighting that. It's an amazing book title. How do you copyright stuff?

Political Animals

If you thought election times were hectic in the Netherlands, you are either involved in the process or your doctor makes you take pills every morning. The style of political campaigning in the Netherlands is best described as "Ninja". By the time I have the red pencil in my hand, campaigning must have had some effect on my choice, but I have no idea what. Consciously, I watched some debates and made a decision based on that, or I've filled out an online questionnaire and disregarded the results entirely. Usually, the questionnaire says I have to vote for some christian party; I refuse to based on my beliefs. But what of all the money the political parties spent on campaigning? It must have had some effect. Somewhere. Somehow. But these are just my impressions. I don't go outside much, that could have something to do with it.
So maybe it's just that I'm outside more often, but political campaigning here is anything but "Ninja". Where the dutch ninjas whisper in you're ears whom to vote for, the nuclear missiles of the Philippines are blasting you're senses until you're deaf to the opposition. During campaigning time, the streets are littered with posters with a face, a name and a party affiliation. As elections grow nearer, more politicians and politicians' advocacy groups take to the streets to ride around in vans performing pop songs cleverly working their name into the lyrics.
The only thing missing from this veritable overload of information are the issues. It seems as though saying what you stand for only confuses voters into not voting for you, so it's best to stick to popularity-contest style politics.
Sadly, politicians do realize that the results of popularity contests are fickle if not outright random. That means the only way to reliably win an election is to either buy the votes you need, or kill the opposition. It's not all fun and games and karaoke.

Heroes

First of all I'd like to pat myself on the back for how quickly after the previous post this one is going up. It's especially impressive considering I have to type this with one hand (the other one is still patting me on the back, it's incredibly uncomfortable). The reason this one is going out so soon is because this one is a spontaneous post! Instead of thinking of the best way to talk about this for days, I'm just going to type it all out and put it online. You know, like a blog, or YouTube-comment.
So let's get down to it. I went to the movies on Friday  and I saw Iron Man 3. Iron Man 3 is obviously an amazing film, because there are two others, so they could learn from the mistakes they made in the other two movies (mainly the second one, the first one was almost flawless) and rectify them in the third. That's how it works with movie franchises; the third one is ALWAYS the best.
But the most amazing part was going to a Filipino movie theater. You get an oldskool american-style movie ticket that looks amazing, and then at the theater entrance they take the entire thing away from you. No ticket stub, nothing. Have you ever gone out somewhere without some object you always have on you (a phone, a bag, glasses)? It feels weirdly naked, like you forgot something.
Of course there is no seating arrangement, so everyone sits wherever they want to sit. Seat selection isn't done in the same way you would do it back home, where you would like to sit about halfway through the theater, somewhere in the middle. In the Philippines that's obviously where you would LIKE to sit, but this is made impossible by the fact that they only clean the theaters once a day. I suspect these seats are inaccessible around lunchtime.
So you find yourself a seat, dust it off, sit down, and watch a really long clip in Tagalog about turning your phone off and staying quiet during the movie. It takes at least 5 minutes. After this, they show you all the trailers they have available, until the movie starts at exactly the time it says on the ticket. The transition between trailer and movie is seamless. Jean-Mineur Mediavision has not yet dug his claws into these theaters, and I have to say that watching a movie without seeing a seemingly hour-long Grolsch commercial is a real eye-opener. Why is president Obama in New York in that commercial anyway? I can't think of any reason why he would be driving through there without sniper-support. Dumb commercial.
So the movie has started, and you think you've taken the brunt of culture-shock, so you can now relax and watch the movie without being amazed by something else, right? WRONG!
Do you remember watching a movie as a kid, and you could not keep your noise-level down while something amazing happened on screen? They still do that! It hasn't been beaten out of them by years of school teachers, other children and their parents telling us that we're weird enough already when we're just acting normally. So when Iron Man lands spectacularly on the ground, you can hear adult Filipino men and women going "Wow!". How amazing is that? Pretty amazing. It turns watching a movie into a shared, interactive experience.
I think it's time for revolution. And revolution is just around the corner, with elections coming up next week.

-- Okay, so I waited a few days uploading this. I didn't change anything.

Transporter

Haha! I totally said I would write this a week ago. But this time I have an even better excuse than 'I was on holiday'. I bought a smartphone: I call him Lil' Timesucker.

I said I would write about how to get around on the Philippines, and I will. Clearly I am a man of my word. Getting around on the Philippines can be somewhat confusing, just like everything else here. Of course  you have the standard set of getty-aroundy vehicles: Airplanes, ferries, buses, taxis, and I think Manila has some sort of train. But where the rest of the world walks the rest of the way themselves, the magnificent people of the Philippines decline to do that. I still walk some distances, but I do understand the sentiment. It's really warm over here. So how do they do it? There is an entire layer of extra public transport everywhere, consisting of Jeepneys, multi-cabs, tricycles, and pedicabs.
Jeepneys are sort of short-range buses. Often elaborately decorated, these things cost around 16 to 20 cents and get you and around 19 of your peers from one village to the next. If you want to get on one you signal it, and you yell 'Stop!' when you want to get off. Crazy system, I know. Where are all the buttons? But surely these still only ride their own route and don't deviate from it. How do you get to the front door?
That's where the tricycle comes in. Tricycles are motorcycles with a side-span and roofing. While not as beautifully decorated as the jeepneys, every area has their own tricycle design. In Tacloban, the side-span holds 2 Europeans or about 4 Filipino's with 1 European or 2 Filipino's on the back of the motorcycle. Meanwhile, in Ormoc, a city 2 hours away by car, they not only have a sidespan but also a back part that holds another 2-4 people. These cost another 14 cents to ride, and take you anywhere within the same town.
But when the bus-stop is only at the end of the street from your house, isn't it a bit excessive to take a motorcycle for the 100-meter stretch? Obviously it is, but it's certainly not excessive enough to walk, and that's where pedicabs come in. These are similar to tricycles, but with a bike! These are the ones I never take, and I think they cost 10 cents.
So what are multi-cabs? The truth is that I don't know. I don't think I've ever seen one. Then again, maybe I've taken one. I heard they're similar to jeepneys, but blend in slightly better with traffic. In any case they are elusive and undoubtedly redundant.

I would promise to write another one in a week, but in a weeks time that would be another broken promise. All I can say is that this probably won't be the last posting on this blog.

Glee

Congratulations for making it past the title! I'm sorry I haven't written this sooner, but I was on an almost-deserved holiday. I'll be more vigilant with the next one, I promise.
Let's talk about music. Anyone who's heard me talk about music before probably got the idea that mainstream music isn't really my thing. Good job if you did. Very perceptive of you. It's not that I categorically dislike all songs and music the pop-scene produces. It's just that, as a whole, the music scene in the Netherlands is dominated by mediocre songs sang by okay singers that only sing the song, and don't actually write them. As a result, the emotion that is poured into the lyrics doesn't go past "happy" or "sad" or "angry" with topics ranging all the way from "girls/guys" to "jewelry", with a large gap in between except for the little spike at "Christmas". The music that is meant to accompany these lyrics might have been good at some point, but producers usually smooth it out to the point nothing unexpected happens, and twists and turns don't go further than a simple modulation (where they sing slightly higher to make you cry).
So how does this relate to my adventures in the Philippines? Simple. However bad music gets in the Netherlands, it is SO MUCH WORSE over here. Because the national pastime here is Videoke (it's like Karaoke, but completely the same), the music that is most popular on the radio is the stuff that eventually makes it onto the videoke machines. If you've ever been to karaoke or a camping trip or in a mid-to-large group of people for longer than 25 minutes, you can easily identify the whole range. Just start with the Backstreet Boys's 'You Are My Fire' and go from there. But the Filipino record executives have gone further than that. To save space on the videoke machines the music behind 'You Are My Fire' is replaced by one guy playing it on an 1980s keyboard. Naturally, someone found a way to rip the music off the machines, and now that's what they actually listen to.
Don't worry too much though, I'm having fun with it. Til next time, when maybe talk about how I get around on the Philippines. Or maybe something else.