After I managed to calm down, I think I inadvertently put on “paper” a lot of my sentiments on the current political situation, and why I think that we should rather discuss on solutions that we as a citizenry can carry out. Here is the body of one of my saner, more sensible emails:

Hi Chimi,

I’m sorry if you feel misconstrued; and I know that it is very very important that we tackle the core problems to be able to find the solutions. I am also sorry if someone starts to think that I am against the concept of people going out of the country to become OFWs. I will explain:

On discussing problems

My beef with regards to discussing the problems is that that’s all we ever do — discuss problems. Open the newspaper — any newspaper, read the opinion section.

Day in day out for the past decade and a half of my 27 years alive (I’ve started reading newspapers daily as an adolescent… with my father ranting in the background) all I’ve ever read about are problems and problems and the problem with this and the problem with that. Most of them are critical, comprehensive, and well-researched. Well-analyzed.

However they all contain one flaw : all the solutions they present rely on the government, which, unfortunately, almost always means that the solutions are neither implemented nor heeded.

And of course the analyses continue. Day in and day out more and more analysis from pundits and columnists and all I ever see are problems. They have a name for this phenomenon: analysis paralysis.

Meanwhile, the entrepreneurs that I mentioned (in a previous email, I mentioned Henry Sy, John Gokongwei and Socorro Ramos, all of who didn’t finish college but managed to become multi-millionaires) just kept on working harder and harder, and thus getting richer and richer. It was almost as if they were immune to the problems of the nation, but they are not. It was as if they were apathetic to the problems of the country, but they aren’t. They’re just too busy earning money, improving their businesses, and creating more jobs.

So I am not saying that we ignore the problems. What I am saying is that we already know the problems. It’s time to ask what can we do about them? Or to be more specific, what can we do with our lives so that despite these problems we would be protected from their adverse effects?

On OFWs

I’m sure all of us know the importance of the OFW to our current economy. The Balance of Payments surplus we are enjoying is due largely to the dollars that are flowing in to the country. But just like the 60s, we should not rest on our laurels and treat it as a permanent solution. The long-term social and economic costs ( e.g., the separation of families, the brain drain) of sending workers overseas are too great and will damage us in the long run.

So how will we offset the necessity to earn abroad? By encouraging OFWs to become entrepreneurs as well. This is viable because they earn enough savings to put up their own businesses, and necessary out of the need to continue earning money during their retirement years.

On entrepreneurship

Now you might ask why the over-emphasis on entrepreneurship? That’s because entrepreneurship generates jobs — and if enough people become entrepreneurs then those who do not have the ability to be so or those who are still learning about it can be employed by them. And if there are enough jobs, the requirement for UP, Ateneo, or DLSU grads will start being considered absurd because these universities can only churn out so much graduates in a given year.

Fortunately even in the current situation there are industries that have stopped giving a premium on the Big 3 graduates because they have become both expensive and scarce. I will admit that I did not face this problem (I graduated from DLSU) but many of my best colleagues (I’m in the IT industry) come from a plethora of universities both belittled and unknown: AMA, STI, Bicol University, Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila to name a few. They are very good (most are admittedly better than myself) and the IT industry simply cannot afford to ignore them because of the ongoing brain drain, with many of these guys gone forever to Singapore.

It’s hard.. but I choose to stay here. I believe my fight is here. Praise the Lord, however, that I am provided with larger than usual earnings because of my profession. At the moment I’m still employed as an IT professional, but my wife is running a home-based travel agency business by which we hope to learn the ropes of entrepreneurship.

There have been opportunities to work in Singapore as well, and it’s hard to resist, but I believe that what we are doing is for the best. When the time comes hopefully I could put up my own IT-related/empowered business (or expand our travel agency business towards that direction) to be able to educate and later employ impoverished-but-deserving countrymen, out of my own earnings and effort.

This is the way that I believe I can help in pushing this country forward, and I hope some, if not many of you, will join me with my dream.

I apologize for the length of this response, and the tone of my previous mail. I hope I have not offended anyone.

God bless,
-Jonjon

Sure it’s supposed to be some sort of sacrifice and penance for all the wrongs that one has done in their lives. But if a person finds himself joining the flagellants each and every season of Lent, then it becomes a senseless, futile exercise tantamount to insulting God himself.

However, self-flagellation, carrying of crosses, and getting oneself nailed to the cross literally during Lent is not the only quintessential Filipino practice that involves hurting oneself or otherwise putting oneself to shame. A similar practice is prevalent day in or day out, amongst Filipinos in cyberspace, and it’s done in two easy steps:

1. Find something wrong in Filipino society, government, culture, business… just about anything — whether it’s absolutely true or completely made up. But as easy as that is it isn’t the hardest part. The next step is much easier…
2. Forward it to everyone you know and declare that it’s something that happens “Only in the Philippines” or just declare whatever humiliation you’re illustrating as “The Philippines:”

Madali lang, diba?

To date I’ve received tons of email applying the same strategy to humiliate one’s self. The most recent flavor is some guy not being able to get a TIN number from the inept BIR, and the sports cars being used by police forces in the richer parts of the globe along with the photograph of a delapidated Philippine National Police patrol car.

I don’t know if its just me who realizes that tax collection is such a drag anywhere in the world, and that using sports cars as police patrols are a luxury enjoyed only by car-producing countries. Of course, I admit that the BIR and PNP are corrupt by anybody’s standards. Denying that would be delusion, for lack of a better word.

But what irks me is when Filipinos put on the label on things that are humiliating but did not even happen in the Philippines.

For example, a few years ago when I first received the now infamous Itenas Sex Video featuring a young couple having sex in a hotel room, some people immediately labelled it as having happened in the Philipines — with DLSU students specifically. However in the video one of the guys (who were not part of the sex part but was there in the earlier non-porn parts of the video) was wearing an “Itenas University” t-shirt. Of course, it turned out that the couple in the video were Indonesian.

That’s the reason why I was initially sceptical of the Lasalle Scandal video, though that turned out to be authentic. But I digress.

Recently, somebody has been forwarding an email that the following photograph happened in the Phililppines:

The composer of the message, whoever the person was, proudly declared (in big, bold letters at that) that the above photograph was taken in the Philippines.

One only has to look closer to see that it was far from the truth. The first is the position of the driver. The vehicle is obviously a right-hand-drive truck; Isuzu trucks of this make are never right-hand-drive because it’s cheap enough to sell directly here, with the proper left-hand-drive configuration.

And then you only have to look at the license plate. It’s not even the size of ours. I have no idea which country this vehicle would come from, but I am quite sure that even if these guys falling off the truck look Filipino, they are definitely not so.

I sent a reply to the person who sent this too me cursing and swearing at him for not seeing the obvious. Though I subsequently apologized, I have no apologies for what I said I thought about people who send this kind of email: they are insecure about their being Filipino, and it’s so easy for them to shame themselves even if there is no factual basis to their claims.

I would understand why Filipinos would only have ill-feelings about their country; one only has to open their eyes everyday to see that something is seriously wrong in this nation. But what I do not understand is why while many other people proudly declare their ethnicity despite the misgivings of their governments, we go off and humiliate ourselves with such emails, practically flagellating our egoes in front of everyone else.

How do you expect our people to help fix our country if we’re too preoccupied flagellating ourselves intellectually every single day?

So to everyone who really want a progressive Philippines: drop the “Only in the Philippines” BS. It’s better preoccupying ourselves thinking of ways of how to solve the problem than wasting your time with derogatory emails. Not unless that’s how far your narrow-minded brain can handle.

It contains 12 pictures of a man with his skull apparently crushed flat. Several of the pictures show chunks of his grey matter splattered across the road, while the rest show the body being taken by police coroners.

I received two versions of the email, one of them bearing the story that the man tried to alight from a moving Jeepney in a No Unloading zone of Ayala Ave. The story goes on to say that the man lost his balance and ended up under the wheels of an oncoming bus.

While I have no qualms against telling (and retelling) of his story to educate the millions of mindless pedestrians in Metro Manila, I find it disturbing that these pictures are finding their way to thousands of email addresses across the nation. Not only are the circumstances humiliating for the person who died, but parodying his mangled skull on the internet constitutes gross disrespect for the dead. I wonder what you’ll feel if that is your brother or your father and you get those pictures on your email.

If people really have an appetite for such gross pictures, they’re better off surfing rotten.com.