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harry

It is surprisingly difficult to find little black Harry Potter spectacles in Manila. Don’t worry, though, because I have found a fitting compromise for tonight’s premier fête. Myself, my in-laws and one poor coworker who doesn’t know what is happening will all receive fake Ray Ban sunglasses with the lenses popped out to wear to the movie theatre.

 

Life is simply too short to not enjoy something with this much potential for humor.

 

-a

insult to injury

Today has been a long day. A very long day. It started at 7 a.m. when I awoke to my completely trashed apartment, the result of two days of halfhearted packing. I held it together pretty well until lunch, at which time I realized I had three times more things set aside to bring home than would possibly fit into my luggage. At that point I curled into a little ball on the floor and immersed myself in a teeny-bopper vampire romance (you know the one) until the arrival of my Super Superhero In-Laws.

Truly, today would not have happened without Cathy and J.J.'s faithful help. J.J.'s spiritual gift is packing uncanny amounts of things into small spaces, while Cathy immediately set off to find a notary public to process my move-out form. They even went head-to-head with building security when the guards tried to prevent us from removing my bags from the premises--not pretty. 

Did I mention that in the middle of the day my landlord's crony showed up at the door demanding payment for the $5 of water I had used last month, the same period in which my water was turned off twice for his boss's failure to pay his morgtage? I declined.

But the real blow came this evening when I went to a nearby cleaner's to retrieve a handbag and wallet I had left there a week ago. These two accessory items have been my faithful and classy companions for two years, and I was taking them to be cleaned as homage to their loyalty. I had carefully scouted cleaners for an establishment that seemed professional, and took for granted that the words, "It is no problem to clean leather goods," meant just that.

Stupid girl. 

The ruby red wallet bled its color all over the pretty paisley lining, and the leather, once polished and supple from use, is now cracked and covered with blotches the color of dried blood. The worst, though, is the totebag. It was a honeymoon present to myself, and hovers in value to me somewhere between my engagement ring and my laptop. The shiny saddle-colored leather that once made me look so very European now just makes me look like I had a confrontation with a bottle of motor oil. The finished product reminds me of nothing so much as a badly cleaned coyote hide cured in fabric softener, and I don't know how to make it better.

I want to cry little angry tears, mutter culturally-insensitive things that I would immediately regret, and leave this country on Sunday at the latest. At least I get to do one of those things.

-a 

thank you?

The other day I was told, "Abby has shown us that you can be chubby while still being cute and sexy."

Coming from a Filipina I know that this was a simple statement of fact meant to be encouraging, not a backhanded compliment. Still, it is hard to totally remove my negavite cultural associations with the word "chubby". I am just trying to focus on the second half of the statement.

-a

lovely manila

Something I enjoy about the Philippines is how frequently people sing. Yesterday I rode in the elevator twice with the same teenage girl who was doing her best a capella rendition of "Big Girls Don't Cry" by Fergie. Our taxi to church this morning had a minstrel driver who was singing along with the radio in what seemed to be Italian. Almost every morning as I wait outside of my apartment for the elevator, the woman at the end of the hall serenades the commuter crowd with Big Band tunes.

These impromptu musical interludes are unlike anything I have experienced elsewhere in the world. The singers' lack of self-consciousness is usually humorous, and sometimes lovely.

The fact that grown men and women unabashedly croon along to the latest hip-hop ballads in public points to another nice part of Filipino culture--a lack of cynicism. Filipinos are generally willing to enthusiastically take part in group activities that would get your tires slashed if you suggested them to an American audience. For example, I have witnessed my workmates contributing after-hours to practice for our group dance in anticipation of the office Christmas party, a group of judges and social workers competing heatedly in a contest to build towers out of straws and masking tape at professional conference banquet, and the director of a prominent anti human-trafficking organization holding nothing back on her karaoke rendition of Britney Spears' "Oops! I Did it Again".

No one is "too cool for school". It is so different from my experience as a young American; I am often dismayed when the sarcastic quips that earn me nods of approval among my college friends fall completely flat with my coworkers.

In Manila there is corruption, pollution and poor urban planning. But there are also 15 million people who are always ready with a bright smile and a song on their lips.

-a          

half empty

Manila is a teeming shoppers paradise with everything available from locally grown coffee beans, to Krispy Kreme donuts, to imported French butter, to the latest Marc Jacobs collection. Truly, the only thing as plentiful as people here are the enormous shopping complexes.

In the middle of this largess it seems a little whiny to think of what is not available, but there are a few specialties and consumer conveniences available in America that I can't shake.

-A corned beef sandwich on crusty rye bread with sauerkraut, fontina cheese and spicy brown mustard.
-The freedom to order items off Amazon.com with impunity, especially used books.
-Affordable magazine subscriptions.
-Fresh cream, the rich kind that you don't have to chant incantations over while whipping to get it to actually take form.
-The availability of women's shoes in a size 10. I am tired of trying to decide if maybe, just maybe, I could make men's athletic sandals look cute.

Otherwise, I am doing fine!

-a

taxis

There are taxis, and then there are taxis. This is the lesson I have learned in my first month of life in Manila.

 

A taxi ride, of which I partake a handful of times every week, seems like it should be soothingly monotonous experience. A white air-conditioned cubicle on wheels picks you up at point A, transports you silently to point B, and drops you off with little fuss and fair rates at point B.

 

Instead, I have found taxi rides to be a cornucopia of Manila life—representing many of the best, the worst and the weirdest moments in my time here.

 

The variables at play in a taxi ride are virtually endless. Take, for example, the seat covers. Sometimes they are squeaky new leather, reassuring in their slickness because it stands to reason that dandruff and loose hair will have a harder time sticking. More often they are loosely draped cloth. If you sit in the front seat of the car next to the driver, you get an entirely different experience. I have sat on Christmas placemats and little wooden massage balls. Today my driver had a seat frame made from black vinyl piping that kept him elevated from the driver’s seat, Darth Vader in a cab.

 

Then there is the issue of interior decorating. Taxi drivers in Manila work in 24-hour shifts, and often share a car with someone in their community so that the vehicles are on the road every hour of every day. Perhaps the long stretches of time spent in these small spaces influences the bold design choices. Taxi decorations can be as tasteful as a rosary and a placard of Mother Mary. However, during one memorable trip a suspended plush fish, a plastic prawn and three bobble-head cats taped to the dash starred Ben down in the front seat. In the back I was kept company by fringed pillows, a blacklight attached to the car roof and a toy cow.

 

cultural lessons from a roll of toilet paper

One week from today Ben and I will board Atlantic Airways flight RC362 to London, leaving a place that has been a good home to us for the past year.

From some vantage points a year is not a long time. As my dad often quips, "A year is nothing." Ben and I have been married for over a year, and that seems to have gone very quickly. In fact, a year is a short enough time to encompass getting hitched, a month of travel around the Balkans, moving to the Faroe Islands, setting a trajectory to do mission work in the Philippines and gaining 15 pounds.

In other ways, 365 days seems like it should be a long enough time to get used to a certain amount of change. In my case, there are daily differences between Faroese and American life that still give me pause every time I confront them.

For example, Faroese position their toilet paper rolls so that the to-be-grasped length of paper falls on the underside of the roll, against the wall. As a child I always made certain that the toilet paper tail fell over top of the roll, because not doing so would invoke the wrath of my older sister.

When I first arrived here I thought that the houses I visited were abnormalities--toilet paper mistakes that had fallen through the cracks because my sister was not here to set them right. I even "fixed" a couple of rolls so that the paper fell over the top, only to find them invariably repositioned as before. I can now attest that with amazing consistency, the Faroe Islands is an "underside" nation.

jesus is my homeboy. really.

At tonight's youth meeting Ben and I made our Faroese stage premier. In an unexpectedly dark turn, I was cast as the black-clad Death, forcing a confused young woman to mutilate herself and contemplate suicide.

Ben, in contrast, got the role of Jesus. Sporting a halo of curly hair and girded in a flowing satin choir robe, he breathed life into the girl. He also showed her the wonders of the universe, mimed the creation of birds, flowers, a waterfall and an apple tree, and defeated cruel Death and her minions.

As if this action was not enough, the drama was choreographed to the song "Everything" by Lifehouse.

Although you won't be able to see our stage production until the Tonys, you can see another version in this video.

We are also available for Bar Mitzvahs and birthday parties.

-a

the rule

This afternoon as I shellacked my eyelashes with a new brand of mascara, I kicked myself for breaking the most fundamental Law of Transitory Faroese Living: Don't buy anything.

The well-designed, high quality Scandinavian products that fill Faroese store shelves often tempt me away from this mantra, but my after-purchase rush is always followed by a guilty crash when I remember that the same product bought almost anywhere else in the world would cost anywhere from 30% to 70% less.

Case in point: Yesterday I purchased mascara and concealer from The Body Shop. These cosmetic basics are listed for $12 and $15.50 respectively on the Web site, while I paid almost $60 for the exact same items.

For that price I could have bought products from virtually any high-end line in the United States. Better yet, I could have just saved $30. This reality makes it hard for Ben and I to fully engage in life here. Even as we work to be present spiritually, intellectually and emotionally, we continually draw away because we know that whatever "it" is can wait to be bought "when we leave," giving our time in the Faroes a temporary feel.

Even easier is to order everything but our food through the Internet. With taxes (at least 25%) and shipping included, Amazon.com still offers significant savings. This temptation directly pits our values of supporting the local economy and saving the carbon cost of shipping against our economic reality.

-a

ships in the night

After a long day of travel and a short night of sleep, I found myself back at the money counting desk Wednesday morning. In a few dizzying hours the wonders of modern travel transported me from a world of fresh cheese and dusky-colored villas back to the windswept, and snow covered, Faroese mountains. And to the reality that I still do not speak Faroese.

I am making progress, but the latest phase of my learning process is stuck in the maddening rut of mostly understanding things. In a given sentence I seem to understand either the noun, or the verbs, or the adjectives, but never the twain shall meet. This situation gets especially sticky when people ask me a question.

What I hear: "[blank] you [blank] Faroese?" This leaves an enormous margin for error as I try to construct a response. Do I respond to, "Do you like Faroese?", "Do you not like Faroese?", "Do you speak Faroese?", "Why don't you speak Faroese more often?", "Why do you butcher Farose?" The possibilities are endless, and inevitably about 70% of the time I respond incorrectly, usually going with "Yes", or "Good!"

Example:
Them: "Do you like Faroese?"
Me: "Good!"

But it did feel a little like coming home to see my friends and family here, and the sun even came out for the first time in months to greet me.

-a