99.5% of Filipinos will steal!
The place where I buy my bottled water is only 100 meters from my apartment. When I first moved here I’d call and have it delivered but then I’d often be forced to adjust my own schedule while waiting for the truck. So now I just walk down there with the empty, have them fill it, then carry it back. Mission completed in 15 minutes.
The owner is seldom there because she has several other locations but when she’s in we often have pleasant conversations. One time while her attendant was cleaning and filling my container I asked her how she can be certain her employees are not stealing from her when she’s not there, since, after all, her only raw product is tap water.
She said that when she first opened the business she was kind of green and didn’t know all the tricks to protect herself. She had employees selling off her water coolers when they are supposed to be leased, and no record found of who had them. And she had no inventory control over the amount of water filtered until she installed meters on the lines.
She told me she has to be continually alert because “99.5% of Filipinos will steal if there’s an opportunity!” Take note here that those were HER words, not mine. A Filipina said it, not this foreigner, eh!
Alright. So I found that amusing to hear from her, which confirmed what I’d already suspected but was too polite to say in her presence. While we were speaking I handed her a 50 peso note and she walked back to the desk, got a 20 peso note for change and wrote out my receipt. Then returned to the counter where our conversation continued uninterrupted. She handed me the receipt but I noticed that the 20 peso note stayed in her hand. I guess she assumed I was too animated in conversation to pay attention. As we talked the note, little by little, slipped further and further into her palm, until it was no longer visible. I found this very amusing since we in fact were discussing thievery and the innate dishonesty of Filipinos.
Had it been under other circumstances I’d have called her on it but this was too good, too ironic a situation to spoil. So I let her keep my 20 pesos and walked away with my water container, secure in the thought that I’d made a most fascinating discovery that day at the cost of only 20 pesos.
Puede Na!
Recently I took my girlfriend and her boy to Manila to see the zoo. We did it a couple of years ago but at three a kid doesn’t really get it all. Now he’s five and can understand and appreciate it more. We went early to be the first at the zoo and that was a good move, a very good move because by noon the place was packed and we were ready to leave.
We then went for a long lunch to regain our energy and since we still had plenty of time we moved on to the Children’s Museum. The place advertises on TV and newspapers like it’s the best damned thing ever. I’ve seen one or two kids’ museums in the US and they are really well-done. This one appears to have been well-built when it opened but it’s the Filipino idea of maintenance that is killing it. It almost appears it was built by a foreign contractor to foreign standards and then left in the hands of the locals. Just like Mexicans, the Filipinos have this “Oh well, this is good enough” attitude about repairs and replacements, with everything slipshod or undone.
It’s funny that both Mexicans and Filipinos actually have catch phrases in their languages for this attitude. It’s as if they recognize it in their cultures, enough to even laugh at themselves a bit, but not enough to actually stimulate change in attitude. Mexicans say “Ahí se va!” and for Filipinos it’s “Puede na!”. This museum even had sections roped off because some of the exhibits were not working. Like hey, guys!, isn’t that the job of maintenance to FIX those things? And they were not even complicated things, just simple kid stuff really.
Gawd! What a disappointment. The zoo, we’ll do again. The Children’s Museum, not likely.
Filipino names
Malay peoples used only one name and that’s still the case for Indonesians. But the Spanish colonial authorities long ago decided that Filipinos needed surnames to facilitate census and baptism and other record keeping tasks. In some cases the surnames were assigned alphabetically and so there are towns here where everybody has a surname that begins with the same letter.
But some of the Spaniards who assigned names were undoubtedly cruel. I’ve seen some very odd last names here like Enano, which means midget in Spanish. Another is Elefante.
But the worst name ever has to be Recto. Claro M. Recto was quite a famous and respected Filipino and there’s even a street in Manila named for him. His family members continue to be prominent and influential. So what does recto mean in Spanish? Well, it’s rectum! A lovely name for a family dynasty, eh?
