A Lost Generation

I am reading Anne Frank's "The Diary of a Young Girl" and I must say that though it was a tedious read (it's a diary, after all), I think it is a gem.

History through the eyes of someone the same age as my students.

And if it takes a war to come up with a masterpiece like this. I wouldn't mind another war.

I wouldn't mind another war just for the kids today to realize that they are totally fine.

Don't shoot me for saying what I just said.


I always wondered how my students would react if they were put into a situation like Anne. Would they write a diary? Would they study while in hiding? Would they still flirt? Or would they still whine and complain that things are not going their way? I always thought that my students are sheltered spoiled brats that even if they already have all the material things their parents could provide them, still, they are angry.  These children leave the school without their parents and they come home without their parents. They only have their parents' mobile number or Yahoo messenger account, which are poor substitute for flesh and blood parents. These children do not have any direction at all. They're just screaming for help, their angst are their unshed tears, their rowdiness are their imploded frustrations, and they are angry. They are bored, and they do not know what to do with their lives.


But still, I wonder how they would react if we are living in a war. Would a war change their perspective? Would it make them realize that what they're whining about do not even measure up to the sufferings of children who experienced wars?


This generation is a lost generation, and if we need a war to shake these children up into responsibility and discipline. Then let it be.

James Soriano Rant

After the hoopla that was the arrogance of Christopher Lao, we have now James Soriano. A newspaper columnist in the Manila Bulletin, his article,  "Language, learning, identity, privilege," has earned him the ire of the Filipino people. The Manila Bulletin has deleted his article in its online version, but luckily, some people were able to save it and the article is still circulated among Filipino netizens. The article is basically a reflection of how he, raised and schooled in English, found Filipino difficult, but that his surroundings forced him to learn it, lest he found himself misunderstanding his many nannies and drivers. Before the article ended though, he claimed that Filipino could be a "language of learning" and not the "language of the learned."


Before we judge this man though, here is his article.


_________________________________________________________________


Language, learning, identity, privilege
By JAMES SORIANO

English is the language of learning. I’ve known this since before I could go to school. As a toddler, my first study materials were a set of flash cards that my mother used to teach me the English alphabet.
My mother made home conducive to learning English: all my storybooks and coloring books were in English, and so were the cartoons I watched and the music I listened to. She required me to speak English at home. She even hired tutors to help me learn to read and write in English.

In school I learned to think in English. We used English to learn about numbers, equations and variables. With it we learned about observation and inference, the moon and the stars, monsoons and photosynthesis. With it we learned about shapes and colors, about meter and rhythm. I learned about God in English, and I prayed to Him in English.

Filipino, on the other hand, was always the ‘other’ subject — almost a special subject like PE or Home Economics, except that it was graded the same way as Science, Math, Religion, and English. My classmates and I used to complain about Filipino all the time. Filipino was a chore, like washing the dishes; it was not the language of learning. It was the language we used to speak to the people who washed our dishes.
We used to think learning Filipino was important because it was practical: Filipino was the language of the world outside the classroom. It was the language of the streets: it was how you spoke to the tindera when you went to the tindahan, what you used to tell your katulong that you had an utos, and how you texted manong when you needed “sundo na.”

These skills were required to survive in the outside world, because we are forced to relate with the tinderas and the manongs and the katulongs of this world. If we wanted to communicate to these people — or otherwise avoid being mugged on the jeepney — we needed to learn Filipino.
That being said though, I was proud of my proficiency with the language. Filipino was the language I used to speak with my cousins and uncles and grandparents in the province, so I never had much trouble reciting.

It was the reading and writing that was tedious and difficult. I spoke Filipino, but only when I was in a different world like the streets or the province; it did not come naturally to me. English was more natural; I read, wrote and thought in English. And so, in much of the same way that I learned German later on, I learned Filipino in terms of English. In this way I survived Filipino in high school, albeit with too many sentences that had the preposition ‘ay.’

It was really only in university that I began to grasp Filipino in terms of language and not just dialect. Filipino was not merely a peculiar variety of language, derived and continuously borrowing from the English and Spanish alphabets; it was its own system, with its own grammar, semantics, sounds, even symbols.

But more significantly, it was its own way of reading, writing, and thinking. There are ideas and concepts unique to Filipino that can never be translated into another. Try translating bayanihan, tagay, kilig or diskarte.

Only recently have I begun to grasp Filipino as the language of identity: the language of emotion, experience, and even of learning. And with this comes the realization that I do, in fact, smell worse than a malansang isda. My own language is foreign to me: I speak, think, read and write primarily in English. To borrow the terminology of Fr. Bulatao, I am a split-level Filipino.

But perhaps this is not so bad in a society of rotten beef and stinking fish. For while Filipino may be the language of identity, it is the language of the streets. It might have the capacity to be the language of learning, but it is not the language of the learned.

It is neither the language of the classroom and the laboratory, nor the language of the boardroom, the court room, or the operating room. It is not the language of privilege. I may be disconnected from my being Filipino, but with a tongue of privilege I will always have my connections.


So I have my education to thank for making English my mother language.


_________________________________________________________________


James Soriano is a 21-year old student of Ateneo De Manila University and has been writing in the Manila Bulletin since 2008. 


First time I read it, I was like, "That was just fucking arrogant!" Here we have a pure Filipino, born and raised and educated in the Philippines, and he dare belittle his own language? Some people say it's satire. Fuck satires, this is not. If he intended this really as a satire, then he did an epic failure, a monumental bastardization of the language and the fuckin' genre. Even I do not understand what he wanted to point out it in this essay. Was he thankful that English was his mother tongue? Does he feel remorse that he doesn't fully grasp Filipino? It seems to me that he doesn't feel any regret for not knowing Filipino. I cannot believe that he would choose not being able to know it since he was just living in a society of rotten beef and stinking fish. So what if Filipino is the language of the streets? It ought to be! By virtue that it is the language of the fucking country. He says that it is not the language of the learned, so what ought he to do? Intellectualize the language, so that it would be what he wanted it to be. He says that with English, he would always have his connections, and he would stop at that? His mind is fucking narrowed by his bourgeouis upbringing.


Learning English per se is not bad, but to deride Filipino in your own country is just plain distateful. He doesn't even look like a foreigner! He was implying that everybody who knows Filipino is a nanny or a driver. This basically shows how narrow his bourgeouis experiences are.  I also do not understand his bragging of his learning of German, was it mentioned just to emphasize that he is educated? Apparently, the very article itself is a work of an uneducated, unrefined, arrogant elitist. Fuck. His way of thinking isn't even elite. 


What a fucking way to end Buwan ng Wika (National Language Month).

A Son's Love

How would you react if you saw a son kissing his father?

Now imagine an adult son doing this...Can't, can you?

It's rather surreal for my part, really. I was being a nanny to my students last Saturday for an international competition and while I (and the helicopter parents of my students) was loitering around the corridors, I saw this boy of twelve wrap his arms around his father's neck and kiss him. The father looked undisturbed, so it's safe to say that his son really does this.


I cannot accuse the boy of impulsivity, it's his father anyway (and he's a kid, so he doesn't really have a concept of propriety). But for him to show his affection for his father in a semi-public place (there are kids his age in the classrooms; parents and teachers are in the corridors) takes a lot of guts, affection, and childish innocence, of course.

Some of you might be disturbed with this, but for me, it's more an insight of what really goes inside the family. Our society has programmed boys not to show to any signs of affection to their family and other people, so seeing that fleeting kiss from a son shows that yes, society programs us, but sometimes, we need to break that programming and show people how we truly feel.
So how did I react? Nothing. I was unflinched, seeing that any boy who would do that makes the other one a relative. 


But it's rather heartwarming. A son's love to a father is underrated.

The Christopher Lao Very Late Post

In the very rare event that I watched news, I saw this segment where a man braved the floods of Manila with his car...And well, you know, the car just stopped. Luckily, the people around the streets have been very kind enough to get the car out of the waters.

But you know, when I saw the driver and heard him speak, well, let's just say that I started bitching 'till my housemates told me to shut up.

Dialogue Translation of the video clip:

Reporter: The bystander was surprised when this car descended…The car was helpless….When the driver of the car got out, he was blaming the government.

Christopher Lao:This is..ah..problem with the traffic enforcers.

Reporter: That deep?

Christopher Lao: Who will tell me? Who will tell me? Really? Did you tell me? Did you guys even tell me?

Reporter: Well, We were here 

Christopher Lao: Ok, Who were there? Who were those? (pointing)

Reporter: We were here. We were surprised.

Christopher Lao: So who were those? On that side? (pointing) Did anyone tell me? None. Nobody even stopped.

Reporter: But didn’t you even realized that it might be deep?

Christopher Lao: Wah, why me? Why me? (laughing sarcastically) They should inform, they should inform, I should’ve been informed!

Reporter: He will surely have to spend for all the water that went in to the car.

Mr. Lao is not stupid, since things like that really do happen. But what irked most me was his arrogance, and blaming the government for your own ass is just plain stupid. 

Remember about Existentialism Mr. Philosophy Summa cum Laude Graduate? ("Bakit ako?" means "Why me?" in English)

But I just let the matter pass because, you know, I was tired from a long day's work and I do not want to bitch about a random person. But lo and behold! I never thought that he has actually become a trending topic not only in Twitter but in the whole cyberspace. He was no.8 trending topic in twitter and no. 4 in the Philippines. He even has a hate page on Facebook. I was rather amused that I was not the only one who was irked.

This person is a philosophy graduate and is currently in Law school. And knowing this, he should be the first person who must know self-determinism; your ass, your responsibility; your car, your goddamned responsibility. He must have the hindsight that the fucking road is fucking flooded. His car is not a 4x4, chrissakes. Even a jeepney would give up with that kind of flood.

You could not blame the people who ganged on him. But I think the reason people bitched about him is not really because of him, it was his arrogance. He underestimated the flood, and now that the car stopped, he blamed the enforcers and the government? Any person can experience that, we have news like this before, but the drivers are not arrogant enough to blame the fucking traffic enforcers and the fucking government. 

There have been people who defended him, and of course, that is good. It was said that he was rushing to his 3-year old daughter because his wife is also stranded from the office. Well, it puts things in perspective, but that does not give an excuse to flare up and to blame everybody in his mishap.

And to that friend of his who was talking about suing people, well, who can they sue? It will just validate the belief that he is arrogant. 

He has forgotten that he is living in a third world country, and that nobody will really inform him unless something bad already happened (he has a point in that part), but his concern about flooded roads and information dissemination was diminished by his bitching and blaming spree. And in the end, he wasn't able to get his message across to the authorities while being a laughing stock of the people.

Lessons learned:

1. Eat vegetables so that you'll have clear eyesight and you will see flooded roads clearly without anybody informing you.

2. The government might be the eternal scapegoat for everything, but fuckin' don't blame them if it was you who put the car in the flood in the first place.

3. Never bitch on national television.

Good thing for Mr. Lao here, he issued an apology. At least he has the common decency to admit that he has indeed been arrogant.

Life Lessons For Twenty-Somethings

1. Learn how to drive.

But learn not to wreck cars.

2. Move out from your parents' house.

Chrissakes, move out!

Very important. We cannot be forever sucking the life out of our parents.

3. Live life and live it according to your age.

Don't postpone being a teenager in your teenage years because you might end up acting like one in your adult years.

4. Once you start comparing your youth's time to this generation's time; you're well on your way to becoming old.

Well on your way to smelling the flowers and tending to some Nazi grandkids.

5. Man up and be responsible with the choices you make.

This is actually my concern with our schools. The school culture of blaming everything to the teachers doesn't teach the students accountability at all. If you get drunk and wind up waking at somebody's house; don't blame the bartender. It is you who chose to be drunk so shut you lazy fat-ass mouth up and own your actions.

6. Treasure your friends
Keep in tabs. Call them. Find a way to make them feel that you still care.

7. Learn to fucking take a break

Learn to live

There will always be work and it will sprout up as many times as you want to pee, but you will only have one life, so enjoy it while you're at it.

8. Document your life

Be a camera whore

So you know that you happened and that you are not just a name on a birth certificate and a tombstone.

I have a lot to learn, yes, but I also have a lot to offer.

Eargasm!

I am excited for the upcoming third album of Evanescence, and very much so for the release of their new single off that self-titled album called, "What You Want." As I was browsing through EvThread though, some fans are talking about a song, "Halfway Down the Stairs," and I wondered whether that would be a song from the album. So I checked out youtube and found the original Halfway Down the Stairs performed by Robbin the Frog and Amy Lee's rendition.


As you can see here, the original version is very much kiddie. Amy Lee's version will not be found in the upcoming album but (as some people from youtube says) in The Green Album (some sort of a Muppets album). Amy Lee made the song very sexy, it's as if you want to have sex while listening to it. And speaking of sex, it doesn't help my weird imagination that I can already see some subtext from the lyrics and that's saying something. The song's otherworldly, authentic Amy Lee.

I never really understood people who would say their ears had an orgasm while listening to a song; I considered that ridiculous, but now that I heard this song, I think it's time to change perspective, really.

Class Vignettes

Lesson: Adverbs
Teacher: How do you lick an ice cream?

Student: I lick it up and down.
Class: *laughter*


Lesson: Sentence Errors
Before prayer.
T: You button your polo shirt up; you're not a pornstar.

S1: (buttons his shirt)
S2 at the back: I am a pornstar (sing and dance)

Now imagine this guy in a school uniform...And gyrating like a worm.

T: Oh, so you wan't to be a pornstar? Come here on the platform, strip off your clothes. You want a demonstration here in front?
Class: *laughter*

S2: *blushes* No, ma'am.

Lesson: Simple Past
T: What did you do last night?
S: I jerked off.

The legend of Boy Jerk Off...

Class: *deadly silence*

And the girls suddenly looked interested.

Seriously, these students are too sex-deprived.

Happiness Must Be Short-Lived In Order For It To Be Enjoyed

I went with my college friends yesterday and it was much refreshing. All of us are already in the profession and it felt so good to catch up with them that it seems unfair that we need to separate ways at the end of the day.

As I was talking with them though, there was something amiss, it was as if I didn't miss them at all and I do not feel any excitement while talking with them. Maybe because three of them wasn't really my closest friends, they're more like acquaintances. We just took the same subjects before, that's all. And we're only linked to each other because of a mutual friend. I felt guilty that I did not feel anything.

Luckily, my closest friend and I bid the three others goodbye as we took them to the bus stop. And with the three gone, I realized that all I really wanted to see that day was her. And I felt happy.

It didn't feel like a year has passed. It felt as if I just talked to her, flesh and blood, the other day. It was envigorating to know that, yes, I can live without them, but what was more empowering was that time and distance would never destroy us.

Our roots run so deep, man.

But I felt frustrated that we weren't able to spend much time alone together, since we are also bound home. I felt a sudden urge to make time slow down just so I could be with her longer. She is one of the people who was able to tear the wall I built between me and the world. So, it was just sad that we had to part ways. Suddenly, nostalgia for our carefree, idealistic college days hit me, and I was sad. I realized that we are adults now, with responsibilities and burdens, and no matter how much I want to make time stop, it will always, of course, fly away.

I went home still refreshed by that meet, but still, there could have been more. I think I would just set a date for the two of us.