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 3rd 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.
