I’m thinking very philosophically (blog-speak for I haven’t even started to think about packing for a flight in a few hours) today. This time I’ll carry a notebook (paper) and take it out on it instead of the blog, but for now you’re stuck with a few fragments from the last couple weeks. I’d checked my bag (all of it) three times in a row, thanks to the Filipino implementation of the “liquids or gels” rule (which is coming to Hong Kong in March, sadly).
I really got a kick, in an Ugly American kind of way, out of the mark left by the USA on the Philippines. That most Filipino of conveyances, the incomparable jeepney, was born from American jeeps; bus drivers and passengers in the north sing along to country music, from cover bands with perfect accents. Firearms are rampant—America! In the parts of the country we visited, the USA gets a better reception than in many places it’s been: compared to the Spanish and the Japanese, US occupation forces came out smelling like roses. Peso bills are the same size as dollar bills. We saw parking spaces at Benguet State reserved for operatives of “Future Farmers of the Philippines.” I could go on.
The Spanish mark, of course, is distinct too, and it’s maybe the combination of these that really got to me. What I think of as Latin American is, in part, really Iberian Colonial—it’s in the Philippines, too. (Literally) loud, public Catholicism (now with competition from charismatic and evangelical sects), some of the food… familiar in a comforting way to me.
Unfortunately, these thoughts aren’t very useful to me when I was planning to leave for the airport at 6 p.m., or maybe even go a little early and try to take care of some business at airline reservations counters. It’s 4:45 p.m. now; time to pack.
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