Impressions of a City

Strange sensations on this humid night: a typhoon has hit northern Manila. Many seaside homes demolished, squatters (probably) swept away and amongst those 12 dead. Death and destruction in the form of a wet and wild and horrendous ride. Can you drown without going into the ocean? Imagine: a splattering of rain, so thick, so strong, like the ether has switched into the water element, drenching you without warning and infusing your mouth and nostrils with violent thrusts, all while you are swept by the rising tides, the hellwater that done riseth forth like some Biblical description, carried, gone, drowned before you even get to the sea.

It fucking pains me to know the government (after last year’s devastating Manila typhoon and subsequent floodings...and the devastation of floods and rains years previously) does not put into place obstructions to Mother Nature’s madness. Supposedly they can’t: the squatters take up shitloads of land skirting around the water in some barangays, and the government would rather let these disenfranchised people squat than legitimize their existence with government health, educational, and work programs. What kind of shiesty lot has risen to power here? Here, in the Philippines?

I find a lot lacking in this city: infrastructure is at a bare minimum. The roads are as pockmarked with potholes as a teenage kid with acne; the traffic congestion is constant, what with the 10,000 jeepneys in Cebu it’s no fucking wonder; the pollution is so choked in natural riverways under the bridges that it looks like it was really the site of a 7/11 that was bombed to shit and all the plastic bottles and candy wrappers and other knickknacks are the only last artifacts that remain; not to mention the noise pollution (people don’t give a shit if they’re listening to music or letting their dog bark all hours of the night, or even as simple as your neighbors not realizing that a door can be shut and let their shitmachine toddler wail it’s poor lungs out, all while others try to sleep...me you ding bats!).

I get it – this is a 3^rd world country. But jesus fucking Christ people, your goddamned GDP is expanding! Clean up your fucking act so you can attract some foreign investment.

This place is oppressive (Cebu City). I am not painting the Philippines in a broad stroke here, I am describing what I see on a daily basis.

There is this constant fear when walking about the streets: you see it in the people’s faces as they make eye-contact with you. They are stripping you down of your humanity, they see you as a walking dollar sign. And the girls! I have never been more eyefucked before in my entire life. As an introvert and lover of women, I had always thought that if I were a woman, I would not want to be eyefucked. For reasons being, I could empathize with the imagined woman thinking just how detestable, no matter how attractive that person is that’s eyefucking you, and fearful it is to be stripped to the bone and made vulnerable just with a single look. It’s a mindfuck; and I’m happy to say my hypothesis has rung correct, for myself. Most guys love it – but the ones that do are the type that do the eyefucking in their home countries, if you catch my drift. What’s wonderful, is that I am a handsome white man, but a poor white man. When the girls eyefuck me, I can read their minds like an opened, annotated guide to their clitoris and other lust-hungry erogenous areas (lust for money included). They see white: they think ca-fucking-ching! But if they only knew, my company pays for one roundtrip ticket per year to my country of residence. It just so happens to be the Philippines because that’s where my wife’s in school.

I visit because she’s home to me. Not this rathole of a city. The problems are glaring, and I can imagine how the locals feel: beaten down by the government because of scandals and corruption and misappropriation of the good people’s taxes. This place is a shithole, it’s always going to be a shithole, because the place is overrun with corrupt rats, why even attempt a change for the better when you’ll just be robbed continuously.

It’s sad to see how infected this place (and country) has become by the really shitbaggage of Western countries. Hardwork is out the window. Education has taken a back seat by the chance for a quick buck or better, win the lottery (marrying a rich old white guy included). Everything longlasting has been replaced by everything only as good as the next moment. Yes this is an Asian country, and yes they do respect their elders quite a bit. But respect goes out the window, for me, when my parents-in-law sent my wife to Korea to earn money, and once they did so, quit their jobs and expected her to remit money every month. And they were fucking 40 and 41 (respectively) at the time! Just one incident, but it’s enough to render my argument coherent enough whenever anyone brings up the idea of respecting one’s elders. If you’re a dirtbag, you’re a dirtbag. End of story.

This rant is nothing more. This is an outpouring, and offended you may be, then all the more effective you’ve rendered me as a writer. That I have expressed an opinion. And not all opinions are good, they are merely a point-of-view. Though, I have to wonder how people can look at this city through rose tinted glasses. What do they see that I’m missing about this place?

And so maybe the government, and the respective people in charge, have their own underlying reasons for not providing adequate shelter to the Filipinos when Mother Nature pukes its rain and rises its tides through the city streets: maybe they’re hoping Mother Nature will clean this place, and other places like it, for them.