nuts and bolts

Soo, does anybody with more experience in grant-receiving have any advice on taxes?

Because I'm strictly bound to only use the money I get to pay for my trip, right?  Which I have done.  But I still have to pay taxes on that money, but because I can't use the grant money to pay for the taxes, I'm left kind of in a bind.

Of course, if those grants were my only income, then my deductible would cover it and everybody would be happy.  But I also have the scholarship funds that pay for my college education... and yes, Virginia, I pay taxes on those, too (everything that isn't tuition).  Add in the fact that I'm getting money to go to London in the fall, and I am fairly positive that my tax bill will be larger than my total non-grants-and-scholarships income for the year, and certainly larger than my savings account.  And not just a little bit larger.

I've been thinking, but I don't think I can possibly budget tightly enough to save that money out of what my scholarship will cover in London - there's not a lot of wiggle room there to being with.  My current plan is just to spend the grant and scholarship money as I was instructed to do, and then borrow money to pay for the taxes.

I'm not complaining - it's a great problem to have, and if I have to take out loans to cover the taxes on my grants and scholarships, well, it's still a great deal.  But I was wondering if anybody out there who has done this before can reassure me that this is standard practice for grant recipients?  or is it an unusual side effect of being personally broke, but in strictly-regulated-possession of large amounts of other people's money?

(Confidential to Jenny:  I love taxes!  Taxes are great!  My taxes cover lots of wonderful programs!  I don't mind paying taxes as it is my duty as a citizen benefiting from the services provided by this great country!  WHOO TAXES)

The journey is my heartbeat in this plane

I read this poem early in my trip, and thought of it again in a plane heading to Davao - a flight in some ways more daring and profound than my long haul across the Pacific, and yet an utterly prosaic trip.  I looked in my emotions and found not a trace of profundity, wondered at the absence, stared out the window, checked my watch.  Was I feeling what I ought to have been feeling?

A funny question, no?


The Journey is Everything

Montaigne believed the journey, in itself,
Was the idea.  Yet from this moving plane
I look down on the dazzle of the world,

Conscious of his words but wondering
When, when shall I be here, at journey's end?
The journey, said Montaigne, is everything.

Two hours ago the setting out began
With words of love.  It is too soon to be
In love with landscape, altering below --

The flight upriver and the dwindling hills --
As if I came for this, a traveler,
And every wisp of cloud were an obsession.

It is too soon  The journey is myself,
Concerned with where I was, where I must go,
Not with the clouds about me (what of them?),

Not with the morning skies -- nor would Montaigne
Have noticed them, his mind on other things.
The journey is my heartbeat in this plane.

Yet with more time?  Were the excursion longer
to the Cote d'Azur et d'Or, perhaps, La Mer,
the hyacinth fields of Haarlem, Tanganyika,

The river Lethe or the Serpentine,
The fortunate Isles or Nepal -- anywhere,
I might discover what his words still mean:

The journey, in itself, a thing apart.
But no.  These words are older than Montaigne's:
The sky is changed.  I have not changed my heart.

Helen Bevington

home again home again

I do have some more posts to write and put up, but I don't think I'll get around to them any time soon... alas, the to-do list awaiting my return is painfully long.  but i do have more thoughts to think my way through, no worries.

music

So when I first got here in Manila and was listening to the radio in the taxi, I actually thought that they were live-broadcasting videoke (that's karaoke for everybody in the world but Filipinos).  I knew that videoke was a huge thing here, and after hearing, over and over again, songs by Jason Mraz, The Black-Eyed Peas, Akon... but sung by lovely, lilting female voices over acoustic guitar... i was just super confused.

Turns out that cover songs are just a really big deal here in the Philippines.  How big of a deal?  You ever heard of a band named Journey?

Their current lead singer was from a Filipino band that did covers of Journey songs... did them so well that Journey HIRED HIM.  And while that might be unusual, every Filipino artist, it seems, releases at least one album consisting entirely of covers of Western bsongs.

Why?  I hear it's cheaper than hiring someone to write cheaper songs.  I hear it's safer to choose a song people already know and like, rather than risking something new.  Mostly, though, I hear that it's an expression of colonialism

Anyway, whether you're a filthy colonialist or not, I suggest you support the Filipino economy by buying Princess Velasco's "Addicted to Acoustic" albums.  They are awesome.  Based on my highly scientific acoustic survey (by which i mean, i listen to the radio sometimes), she is the currently undisputed qu- uh, Princess - of Filipino acoustic covers.

I hear it's really hot back home... put on this album, sit outside, and have someone blow cigarette smoke in your face, and you can totally pretend you're hanging out in Manila in the summertime.

It's... it's more fun than it sounds like.  I promise!

Anyway.  Have some Princess in your life.  You're welcome.














(haha i love the pictures selected for this video... "American woman" vs "Filipina woman."  Classic.



On another note, I feel like mentioning it places me firmly within the sex-negative and mean-spirited celeb gossip world, but Princess made her way to fame through a sex scandal... a doozy of a sex scandal.  And surprisingly enough all the women involved (oh there were many) seem to have moved on to fabulous careers, while the (male) asshole at the center of it all pretty much got kicked to the curb by pop culture.  And the medical board.  Yeah, he was a doctor, I don't know why he was a celebrity, it was weird.

Anyway, how does this relate to the maria clara model for filipina behavior?   are filipinas liberated from the old cultural rules valuing chastity above all, or equally confined by new rules that value sexuality instead?

Discuss!  With the acoustic cover of tik tok in the background!  Seems fitting, right?

Four thoughts on place and identity

So now I have been to Iloilo, on Panay, the island where my grandfather was born.

Does that mean anything?  Should it mean anything?

Part of me says it shouldn't mean much.  I only went to the city.  I didn't actually visit the town he was born in - I don't even know where that is.  I didn't meet anybody he knew, didn't do anything special, didn't make any grand discoveries or gain profound insights.

And yet, it feels important, somehow - I've been to the island where my Lolo was born.  Does - does that feel important to you?  Does it sound important?  Because it doesn't sound like much when I say it out loud, and yet I feel like I've accomplished something.

I am not sure if I've been to the town where my great-grandparents were born, but I've been to the state - big-sky Montana.  I've heard my Papa talk about the Great Depression, about raising my grandfather in a shack with holes in the walls.  I saw my grandmama's family home in Georgia, once - I remember a tire swing, and iced tea, and relatives who all said "idear" the same way my grandmama does, and miles of farmland.  I've driven on the highways of greater L.A. with my grandma while she described how everything was different when she was a little girl, when these were roads surrounded by orange groves and a trolley system bore passengers to the city.  The Domonoskes, the Regans, the Larkins - I have known the places that have known those names.

And now I've been to the island where my grandfather, Gerardo Flamiano, was born.  And I don't know if that completes some kind of circle, or fulfills some human curiosity, or is a symbolic step, or satisfies some kind of filial duty, or if it's nothing.

But it doesn't feel like nothing.

***

My mother: "I gave some of your photos to Lolo.  He wrote on back: "Camila's historic visit to Philippines to see my people."

4 a.m. I get this text, and I wake up, and cry a little.  And I smile.  And I am tired and I fall back to sleep.  I don't remember what I dream, but in the morning I set off through the rainforests of these islands to see new mountains, meet new faces, hear new stories.

I may not know my dreams, but I am learning my history.

***

I step off yet another plane, fall asleep on yet another bus, carry my backpack to a new front desk.  I give my mother's last name, instead of my father's, because it's easier to spell for strangers.  They have trouble with "Domonoske" - who wouldn't - but here, at least, no problems with "Flamiano."

I feel like a stranger, another woman's name spilling from my lips.  I feel like an imposter, pulling a Filipina mask over my own pale features.  Playing dress-up as Camila Flamiano, posing as a pinay.  But when they ask, "do you have Filipino blood?" and I say, "yes, one quarter; my grandfather is Ilonggo," they say, "Ah!" like they've made a discovery, and they smile, and announce to the other staff: "she's Filipino!"

***

The taxi drivers, all of them, ask where I'm from.  I say, "America."  Then I add, "But my grandfather's from Iloilo."

"So you're Fil-Am," they say with a smile.  Filipino-American.

The first few weeks, I laughed, awkwardly.  "I guess," I would say.  "A little bit."

Now I nod.

"Yup."

whoops

hello friends, and sorry... i was going to write a post about palawan last night or this morning, but then I decided to start reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road.  And then I was finishing it and crying like a baby, and to my surprise a post had not, meanwhile, written itself.  Shocking.

Anyway, I have two interviews this afternoon but maybe I'll get something up tonight?  i've run out of books for now, so that might help...

OH and I've got some free 5-minute calls to the states, apparently my phone company's reward for the massive amount of money i've thrown at them over the last month and a half.  If you want one, shoot me an email or facebook message and say when you're free.  if i call you it shouldn't cost you anything but your minutes.

palawan

is gorgeous.  i wish i was here for more than four days... but the group I'm interviewing is making sure that I'm getting to see most of puerto princesa, so that's something.

despite the loads of natural beauty, i'm in an awful mood.  i haven't calculated how long it's been since I've seen eight straight hours of sleep, but even without exact numbers i'm gonna go ahead and lay the blame for my grumpiness there.  and instead of writing a post, i'm going to do some laundry and then read david sedaris in bed.  my life is a party, friends.

p.s. crocodile meat is definitely not exciting.

in which i am no longer the whitest person in the room

I've experienced a new kind of culture now - backpacker culture!  I spent the last two nights at a guesthouse catering to the backpacker population, and it's been quite the experience. I've stayed at hostels and pension houses before, but not ones with really popular common areas, so I hadn't really hung out with other travelers, but at Friendly's a whole slew of nomads were hanging out in the rooftop lounge.

And I really would define it as a cultural experience, because the backpacker community does seem to have its own distinct culture.  Though hardly any backpackers here are American or British, English is the language of currency, so that Dutch and Spanish and German and French travelers can all communicate with each other.  Cheap hostels, cheap food and cheap beer are the staples of life.  Everybody is reading, and talking about what they're reading, and swapping books, and everybody drinks, and everybody smokes.  Hot damn, do they ever smoke.

Talking to strangers is completely acceptable - no, more than that, it's absolutely essential.  There's an almost desperate friendliness to some of the travelers, in fact, which makes sense if you consider just how lonely travel can be.  Especially if you're traveling by yourself.  Especially if you've been on the road for as long as many backpackers have - when I asked, "and how long have you been traveling?" the answer was almost always counted in months, and sometimes in years.  One guy hadn't been to his home country in a decade.

Nobody has firm plans - at least not that I've met.  Everybody is making it up as they go along, asking each other for tips and advice, stretching out their money and their time, changing countries so they don't have to get visas.  "Travel buddies" seem to be shifting alliances, as people who started together go separate ways, strangers who just met in the dorm rooms plan to visit the next city together, and everybody, after a while, just tries not to be alone

and gawd, can these people complain!  Manila isn't "Filipino" enough, it's all Americanized, the Germans complain while they sit in their hostel.  They even have Wendy's!  Where's all the Filipino food?  I (rather gently) suggest that they visit one of the turo-turo canteens, the carinderias locals run out of their home, where adventurous eaters can point at whatever looks tasty - and they say, "Oh, I haven't seen any of those yet," although they are on every single street.  And they say they can't wait to get to the provinces, where it will be beautiful and they can see the "real Philippines," whatever that means, and I suggest (humbly speaking from painful experience) that they bring their own mosquito nets, and they say, "oh, we'll be staying at beach resorts, I'm sure they'll have some."

and I remind myself that the only reason I've eaten at carinderias and met, you know, actual Filipinos is because I have family here and I'm doing research that forces me to, and who am I to judge how these people choose to travel?  but when we're talking about malls I mention the squatter communities in the same city as the massive Mall of Asia, and a German backpacker laughs and says "Just like an American city, huh?" and I say, "um, no, actually.  I have pictures.  Would you like to see them?" and show the scrap-metal shacks hanging precariously over trash-filled rivers, and the children swimming in the same water where the sewage goes, and talk about electricity-tapping and floods and typhoon damage.  And they say, "Great pictures."  And they probably think I'm a sanctimonious asshole but it was driving me crazy to hear them say that Manila is "just like America," especially when the derisively ask what happened to the culture here.  And I said, oh you know, five hundred years of colonization and a world war that completely destroyed the city, and they said, "yeah, BUT..."  Anyway, maybe I am a sanctimonious asshole.  I mean, who pulls out slum photos during a casual conversation about the sights in Manila?

And the backpackers certainly are a friendly community, and it would be a gross and offensive generalization to say that they all think Manila is like America, or that the "real Philippines" can be found at beach resorts - there are a lot of travelers pretty aggressively seeking the unfamiliar.  Looking for limit-experiences, I guess, or maybe just bored, or who knows!  Something keeps them traveling month after month, arriving at new ports full of strangers and another unfamiliar language.

Anyway, I had some really interesting conversations that unfortunately distracted me from the passage of time, so that I didn't make some phone calls that I really needed to make.  And in the evening, instead of updated my list of expenditures - kind of essential because right now I don't even know how much money I have left - I wound up watching Funny People with an awkward Israeli.  Poor life decision.  But hey, cultural experience, right?  :P

two thoughts on language

Thought number one:  I think I've mentioned this before, but I'll say it again - I feel completely inadequate here.  I only speak one-and-a-half languages!  That's pathetic!  All the locals speak at least three, it seems like - their local dialect, Filipino (which is mostly Tagalog, but is the national language for people who speak different dialects), and English.  Many speak four or more - they'll speak the neighboring dialects as well.  And the other travelers I've met are mostly European, so they speak at least two - English and their national language - and, again, often more.


Thought number two: I'm growing more used to not having any idea what the people around me are saying.  I just enjoy listening to the sounds - my mother described the languages here as "musical," and they often are.  They're also a fascinating blend of different influences - Spanish, English, Malay, even, according to my guidebook, Mayan - via the Spanish, who were influenced through their conquest of Mexico.  Of course, I can't actually pick up on all these influences, but I can hear the incredible variety of sounds and inflections in an ordinary conversation.  I actually get too used to just listening to the sounds, and then when my companions switch to English I don't notice, and I'm left looking like an idiot while they all wait for me to answer really simple questions.  Oh well.

and now, a brief interlude about food

okay, so my last post might not have quite followed Tom's request, but i'll start on Dolores'.  because if there's one thing I'm learning in the Philippines, it's the importance of obeying your parents.

Maybe not a lesson that will stick, but while it lasts!

So:  FOOD.  A few random notes on food:

- I still have to repress some repulsion and moral qualms every time I eat meat... because it's weird, you know?  It's gross!  I don't like it!  It came from an animal!  that died so I could eat it!  But I feel way worse if I order it and don't eat it, and as long as I'm eating it I might as well enjoy it, so I do my best to quash those objections.

There's really only one exception to this ew-gross-animal-flesh reaction, and that's with the fresh fish.  Oh my goodness, the fresh fish.  The first few times, when I faced an entire animal sitting on my plate, head on, eyes clouded, mouth open in what I personified as a death groan... I'll confess, I freaked out a bit.

But then I started to eat, and oh my gosh.  Fresh bangus or tilapia flaking off the bone, dressed with garlic, calamansi and soy sauce, grilled and served hot with plain rice - OH MY GOSH.  So good.  So good that it has overcome not only my repulsion (I now eat everything except the eyeballs.  And soon maybe I will eat that too.  Because as I grow braver and eat more and more of the fish - and get better at picking out bones - it is all AMAZING.) but pretty near overcome my moral objections. So I understand, factory-farmed-steak lovers.  I understand.  Because I am almost willing to declare it a-ok for a sentient being to be tortured as long as I get to eat delicious, delicious fish.

- jackfruit!

This is jackfruit.  It seems to be part of a strange class of fruits here where a really hard, spiky exterior surrounds fruit that consists of clumps, each being one big seed surrounded by a bunch of fruit.  That was a terrible description.  Anyway, they're kind of a challenge to eat at first.

And jackfruit is extra strange because it tastes like BUBBLEGUM.  seriously, like bubblegum!  google it, other people have made the same observation (i checked to make sure I wasn't crazy!)   it is a really bizarre experience.

- I previously mentioned buko halo-halo... were you wondering what it looks like?  wonder no more.

And in case you were doubting my hypothesis that halo halo was the invention of stoners, here is more evidence: the other day I ate halo-halo with queso ice cream.  CHEESE FLAVORED ICE CREAM.

QED

- and I still haven't tried balut... less than 2 weeks left!  I don't know if I can work up the nerve.

What's balut?  Oh, you know.  Just a duck egg.  A fertilized duck egg.  A fertilized duck egg allowed to mature.  So that there's a fetus inside.   Yup, just a duck fetus, that's all.

Yeah, I'm not quite ready for that yet.