Of Being A Filipino For Me These Days

A few years ago, after getting married and prior to officially migrating to the US, I was on vacation at my then future home when the husband of a college classmate posted scathing remarks obviously against me on his Facebook wall. The root cause? Him ridiculing Fil-Aussie actress Anne Curtis's nip slip in Boracay and then him taking personal offense against my Facebook status that chastised all those (not just him - there was a ton of male chauvinist pigs on my news feed during the peak of the controversy) who ridiculed Anne.

Although he did not directly say that it was me he was angrily talking about, he spoke of (not the exact words  -  they were in Tagalog, actually) a woman who, just because now lives in another country and managed to perch like a fly on top of a carabao/buffalo (it's a classic Filipino insult), thinks she was already someone else. And when I posted an indirect comment on my wall? His next status confirmed that he was talking about me!

So anyway, short of making this blog about him, fast-forward to today, I now live permanently here in California, with a job and hoping to have and raise kids here with my husband.


Equal Employment Opportunity

There is a US government agency called the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that "enforces federal employment discrimination laws". Prior to me landing my first job here, the hope that an agency like this exists bolstered the however exhausting mission to secure a position in any company especially during the recession. When, before, in the Philippines, my educational background alone could secure me an initial phone interview in a matter of hours of applying online, here, I was met with the somehow rude realization that being an "on time" Cum Laude graduate of the Philippines' Premier State University does not really give me an equal chance against those who studied all their lives in the US even if they're still college undergrads and are competing with me for the same position level.

When I left my last job in Manila, my position as a trainer was categorized by the company as a supervisory post. It was not an entry-level position but a position that guaranteed better benefits and perks. Upon coming to the US? There were times when I would hopelessly look at non-English speaking people who have jobs, however small or big, that I actually considered applying as a cashier for Target or a housekeeper at a hotel ala-Jennifer Lopez in her movie "Maid in Manhattan". Of course, even there, I was turned down.


Who You Know

Fortunately, because of another college classmate, the winds shifted in my favor. She helped me land a job as a teller in a Bank of America (BofA) branch in Daly City. It was then that I realized the truth in what my dad had always told me when he was still alive: It's not only what you have that matters, it's finding, and knowing the right people that could help you get up there.

I'm no longer with Bank of America but through this classmate of mine, an example of a successful Filipina here who worked her way to the top, and through the many Filipinos who I have since met, I learned the value of helping foremost your own race especially if one is a newcomer in a foreign land. After all, who else could one rely on and learn from if not his own kind of whose culture he's familiar?


Not Necessarily Bad To Compare

I don't need sarcasm. I want this statement on this San Francisco
Cable Car to ring true and good.

A trainer colleague of mine at my last company in Manila prepared me for what I was about to see in the US. Her tourist visa was approved months before mine and when she returned from her vacation in the US, she told me, "Presh, you know, from the plane, one could immediately see the stark contrast between community and city layouts of the Philippines and the US. The latter has organized zoning and structure placement while the former  -  well, you know you could immediately see the shanties and residential areas mixed with office buildings."

She further told me that her trip to the US, however brief, made her see things clearly from the other side; that there's truth, however harsh, to what Fil-Ams say when they compare the Philippines to the US.

"It's hard not to compare when you see a huge difference between what is there and what is here especially when you realize that it's actually not difficult at all to enact and implement positive changes."

Once it was my time to be on vacation, my then-boyfriend, now-husband, had to pull me back when I was walking too fast towards a Disney World escalator and trying to overtake a family and an elderly couple. I sheepishly defended my action by saying that's how I was trained: To always be in a rush so that I could secure a good position in the place where I'm supposed to go especially in MRTs.

My husband, who is a Filipino by the way, responded that it's out of respect that one should not overtake or cut someone in an otherwise organized path unless the situation is very, very dire. Needless to say, the wisdom in what he said grew heavier in the years that came especially when I started to find myself on the road and with a driver license.


How Dare You

I currently work at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) as a check-in counter agent for a French airline. I find the situation so ironic considering that I dropped out of an extracurricular French class in college and that, even with my linguistics and phonetics training and background, I still have a hard time deciphering French sounds and connecting these with how words are spelled.

So anyway, I'm happy to have found a company that follows to the letter the EEOC's mandate that no US-based company, foreign or otherwise, should ignore anti-discrimination laws  -  majority of my colleagues are not French! In fact, I have a Filipino supervisor and five Filipino colleagues.

It's not even a requirement (because it would be against the EEOC's mandated rules) -  although it would be a plus  -  to know how to speak French. However, this comes as a weakness especially in issues of race and, well, yes, discrimination. There was a time that an irate passenger berated a Chinese colleague of mine for not being, well, French, and "stealing jobs from his countrymen". The root cause? He had an overweight luggage and he adamantly refused to pay.

Now I feel bad for thinking ill of the Vietnamese (or was she Japanese?) business class lounge agent of Philippine Airlines in SFO last year when my mileage status earned me the privilege to enter the Mabuhay Lounge.


Work Hard For Every Cent

Although a news feature on TV recently spoke of Americans not bothering to pick up pennies, nickles, even dimes (if you park in the city, you'd know the value of dimes where parking meters are; my fellow Pinoys, a dime is roughly the equivalent of half of a jeepney fare) left unattended, in plain sight, on roads, I still pick them up whenever I get the chance.

I got the shock of my life when I learned that one's work appraisal and pay increase here is based on a few cents. In the past, when I was still a trainer, a year's worth of toil guaranteed me several thousands' (in pesos, of course) worth of increase in my 15-30 salary. Once upon a time, I jumped from my starting pay of P22,500 ($523.26) to P29,500 ($686.05) in less than a year to P35,200 ($818.61) the following year. The pay increase of course moved me up on the tax bracket.

So how are things any different here? Let's use a former BofA supervisor of mine as an example. She said a certain year's appraisal gave her an increase of $0.11 (P4.73) per hour. Say she works for 40 hours a week with an initial pay of $15/hour (P645), this pay increase would have her jumping from $2600/month (P111,800) to only $2619.07/month (P112,620.01). And that's before taxes.


Tax Value

I'm no economist. I did not even take economy or business courses or managed to move further in my law studies in the University of the Philippines enough to gain at least a holistic understanding of Tax Laws in the country. As a Filipino though who worked in Manila from the time I turned 18 to right before I got married at 24, I am familiar with the sarcasm that envelops the joke of how, with every pothole a jeep goes through in the streets of the country, one feels the lack of direction of the taxes being deducted off one's salary every pay day.

This recent social networking-initiated One Million March in Luneta Park in Manila had me posting a Facebook status that, well, needless to say, earned the ire of friends and former colleagues who fully support the said gathering. To make the long story short, I said that even if I am not against the said march as I also want a good change in Philippine politics, I can't bring myself to fully support it as its too-general, too-wide goals were not the type that would make me attend if I were there.

So what's the connection? Well, let's just say, a private chat initiated by a friend to give me information that supports the march at least had the both of us agreeing on one thing: We're both after making our taxes work for us.

As I still am a Filipino citizen who pays real estate taxes, sends remittances and continues her Philhealth contribution (in spite of them constantly losing my filed receipts of my whole-year payments, thus refusing to release on-time deductions and/or reimbursements for our hospital bills), I told her, my husband and another person that my string (or "barrage" as what my better half calls it whenever I am emotionally and mentally piqued) of political commentaries is only due to the fact that I wish to see significant and positive progress in how the taxes paid by Filipinos work.

An example I spoke of during the abovementioned private chat talked about my recent traffic accident. It was only my second time at calling 911 for help and like the first time, the immediate and unbiased response from a respectable police officer never failed to surprise me. I told my friend that it's through simple things like that that those who live where I am feel that their taxes are working for them and not against them and that I wish to see and feel the same in the Philippines.


Inflation And All That Jazz

Like I said, I'm not an expert on economics. But I can tell my friends and relatives this much: Do not, and I mean, do not, convert to peso what I'm earning here.

Other foreign tourists, not just Filipinos, myself included, often fall prey to how attractive a dollar's worth of a McDonald's or Wendy's value meal is, sometimes casually forgetting that a dollar is actually equivalent to four or five one-way trips on a jeepney in the Philippines that sometimes, back in the day, I never even had enough even for just a single ride.

That $1 is not the same as P1 fails to enter the thoughts of those who are probably still stuck in the pre-WW2 period when the Philippines was still a US colony. Not once had I desperately tried to explain to some family members during a family crisis a year ago that sure, my dollars could go a long way in the Philippines but even so, the value of commodities in the US are priced high enough for my salary to not last that long; that I had (and still have) bills to pay and a family to support here, too.

Care for an example?

A 16-oz bottled water, if bought outside big box stores, retails between $0.75 to a dollar here. That's P32.25-43! Our recent trip to the Philippines just this year had us buying bottles of mineral water, of the same size, and worth P25 each.

How about public transportation?

Well, a single ride on a bus here, if without a value card, would automatically cost one $2.00. That's a whopping P86 in Manila! The cost is already enough for a five to 10 minute taxi ride there.


All About Image

I told one of those who wrote challenging comments on several Facebook posts of mine that it's hard to be a Filipino in a foreign land; that I take great care not to create a negative impression of my kind as it's the least I could do.

See I admit I do not have much to be proud of where material backgrounds are concerned. I did not finish my law studies in the Philippines. In spite of graduating with honors from the University of the Philippines-Diliman, my college degree is, sad to say, probably just enough to level the playing field between me and someone who, in spite of not finishing college, has spent all of his/her life studying in the US. I did not even manage to land the promotion I was gunning for prior to leaving my last job in Manila. But even so, despite the differences in opinions between me and my friends and family members on how the issue of corruption in the Philippines should be dealt, this I can promise and assure everyone: Everything that I say or do whether here or there or elsewhere is for me to not lose hope in the country with whom I still associate myself.

Should I pledge additional allegiance to another country (because I'm toying with the idea of dual citizenship), I will never be like those featured online who vehemently deny that there's an obvious Filipino blood running in them.

I will still loudly cheer for our Miss Universe, Miss World, Miss International, Miss Earth candidates, without a care that I'm in the middle of a fine dining restaurant somewhere in New Jersey (this really happened when Janine Tugonon competed in the Miss Universe pageant last year).

I will never fail to embrace just how awesome Filipino Catholic Churches are in the US especially the parish where we attend mass. The St. Augustine Catholic Church in South San Francisco, California has the largest Catholic Church membership in the Archdiocese of San Francisco (love your own!).

I will still watch Filipino teleseryes and follow these teleseryes' official fan page on Facebook (if you know me well, you know that I'm a member of two private fan pages on Facebook for Be Careful With My Heart).

Senor Sisig Food Truck in San Francisco

I will still eat Filipino food and continuously beam with pride whenever I see the famous Senor Sisig food truck with the longest line during OffTheGridSF's weekly schedules in San Francisco or at the Serramonte Parking Lot in Daly City.

I will make it my mission in life to introduce and share healthier versions of Filipino dishes like Chicken Adobo or Chopsuey sans cooking oil.

Even so, I will still inform my non-Filipino work colleagues of how awesome Filipino lumpiang shanghai and Jollibee are.

I will never fail to look back at how I started and reflect on the hardships my family and I had to go through just to make both ends meet while keeping ourselves educated on how we could maximize the benefits we receive from the government (TIP: Receive better hospitalization at specialized government hospitals. Rates are not as expensive as private hospitals and the facilities are clean and in line and at par with modern technology. The one that tops my list is the Philippine Heart Center).

PR 105's Boeing 747 aircraft in SFO

I will continuously be honest and hardworking at whatever I do, wherever I go.

Just like my college classmate (you know who you are) who helped me find a job in BofA, and just like the Filipinos I've met here in the US, I will continuously lend a helping hand to my fellow Filipinos who have just arrived here.

If my future kids are unable to secure a scholarship in a reputable US university, I will never lose my seriousness in sending them to good schools in the Philippines so humility in knowing their roots is not lost on them.

I will  make sure that my future kids can understand, if not, speak, Tagalog.

I will always beam with familial and familiar pride whenever I see Philippine Airlines' PR 105 (San Francisco to Manila) or PR 104 (Manila to San Francisco) at SFO (although I still wish they have a better mileage program that associates themselves to international airline alliances... expiring miles suck!).

More importantly, I will never fail to disclose my thoughts, however radical, if only to prevent myself from falling in apathy over how dire the situation is in the Philippines.

I could be worse and choose not to care. I just choose not to.