to all europeans who visit my country with a camera and a reporter in dreads.
i am not your biggest fan.
the whole continent of europe don’t know anything about my country except for “who is she again? the woman with lots of shoes?…oh yeah…imelda” and the ugly face of poverty that you manage to show whenever you run out of countries in africa to show. you see, i have moved here in europe two years ago, and have spent two vacations here as well before finally deciding to settle in. i love everything about europe, except for the disappointing amount of snow we get here in holland every year.
*neither Phuket nor Bali
i don’t have a lot of things to turn to for entertainment. i have my books, of course but for most of the time, i turn to the tv for things that move (watching cars run around from the 10th floor is wrong). as i am half of the world away from my peculiarly-shaped country, homesickness can be overwhelming and for a lot of times, it is debilitating. therefore, it should be no wonder why i get so excited whenever i hear the word philippines, fillipijns on tv. it’s not a lot that you mention my country on your tv’s. cnn europe does it whenever there’s a huge typhoon out to drown a chunk of luzon and/or whenever a new president is being installed. all of these are done in a span of seconds, their reporters too happy to move on to a kid born with three heads.
to the dutch, i am not sure if you have noticed, but i am suspecting that you have a fetish for garbage. sure, we have the smokey mountain in manila and no doubt that you enjoy bringing your cameras there and a few people every now and then. you like to show the kids whose faces are full of snot and dirt, eating their lunch against a backdrop of methane-spewing hills of garbage. you love it. in fact, it’s the only thing that you show on tv about my country. to the french (tv5 monde, i saw your reportage the other night), your report on people living under bridges was very good in showing the appalling lives of the inhabitants. i will be looking forward to your story of the same in tokyo. of course, i should not forget dutch mtv. thanks for showing the story about the young women abused by their fathers. while all your intentions have been good, you have just perfectly painted a country full of garbage hills and evil people. however, whenever you go to indonesia and thailand, you always show your pretty reporters half-clothed, frolicking in the sun, riding the elephants, enjoying. you also love showing their dances, their breathtaking mornings in the mountains and the seemingly baggage-free people smiling and laughing at the camera. you show your twinkly-eyed hunks running around bangkok, eating grubs and grasshoppers, smiling taking it all in, in the name of adventure. and what do you do with balut? you tell everybody it’s mental to eat those.
*yes, we have dances too.
it amazes me that for a country with 7,107 islands, you seem to have problems looking for that perfect beach in the philippines. you should have asked around. we are a musical country. you never mentioned that. just so you know, filipinos sing at the slightest provocation. give us a tune, we’ll be singing it the whole day. we call it “the last song syndrome”. there’s a topic for you. go to my country—ask people on the streets which song they have stuck on their heads. you’ll be surprised to know how many of them have through the fire and the celine dion discography on the loop. we have amazing dances. we have an even more amazing menu and no, we don’t subsist on balut. generally, we are a bunch of smiling people—always too eager to smile and laugh, probably because we’re so used to having shit, we see things the other way. i can go on and on and i know that my case here is not as strong to acquit oj again, but think about it.
if you want to know more, call me. i’ll build my abs so you can show me running around the beaches of palawan.
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*if these are your pics and want them removed, please contact me.
