This afternoon was my younger sister's graduation from Grade 5, which is the last level in elementary school here. What comes next is middle school (Grades 6-8), then the usual four-year high school (Grades 9-12).
As each kid was handed a brightly-colored diploma printe in whimsical fonts, the speaker would narrate a short description of the student, written by his/her teacher: so-and-so is "a great leader," "enthusiastic," "never fails to make us laugh/smile," "friendly," "helpful," "is eager to learn." It's nothing short of amazing how many permutations of the above phrases are actually possible, once you include synonyms and such. To give credit, though, every so often you would hear phrases that were unique: "our classroom's expert in Greek mythology," "a human encyclopedia," "the go-to person for all things Hannah Montana and High School Musical." The idea, I believe, was to have every kid graduate on a positive note, so that even if your kid didn't get an award, he/she is still a winner.
In a way, it's kind of reflective on how Canada treats children in general. They have all the rights in the world, and then some. For instance, Filipino parents and nannies sometimes have trouble adjusting their systems of enforcing discipline; while in our country - and some others East of the Atlantic - it is commonplace and perfectly acceptable to punish a child with, say, spanking, or grounding in the bathroom, here it is off-limits: kids can, and sometimes do, call the cops on their parents and claim 'child abuse.' Here, it is also illegal to leave a child home alone until he/she is 13 years of age. This is the reason my father could not accept anything but a night job, and until my sister turns 13 (in 2011), he will have to keep working night shifts. This is a far cry from the situation in the Philippines where, especially in the rural areas, kids as young as 7 and 8 look after their younger siblings, clean house, and cook food while the parents are out working.
I have mixed feelings about how kids are pampered here when compared to other countries. While children's safety is obviously a non-negotiable, I can't help but wonder if the 'kids are sacred cows' and 'everyone's special!' approaches are doing them any favors. With the former, the consequences are obvious: some kids become spoiled, hard-headed, and difficult to control when the parents realize their previous methods of discipline are no longer legal. At this point it's entirely up to the parents to either figure out an alternative way to get through to their kids, or watch hopelessly as their kids grow up to be foul-mouthed, rebellious, obnoxious teenagers.
As for the latter, consider this: a grand total of four valedictorians gave speeches this afternoon, and there was a whole host of multiple awards from music to drama to athletics to something about being good in the library. One could argue that this way, kids avoid feeling insecure and inadequate, but what about in the future? When would it be okay to foster healthy competition? Is it okay in middle school? Grade 12, everyone's finished puberty, settled into a niche and is beginning plans for college - is it okay now? Yes, we can go on and on and repeat 'everyone's a winner' like a mantra, but I really doubt kids will be inspired to excel as long as they are assured of an award for 'being a good sport' or 'reading to kindergarteners.'
Everybody wants kids to remain kids as long as humanly possible, but they have to grow up sometime. One day, they will have to learn that the world isn't all sugar and rainbows. One day, they will have to realize that some people are cruel, life isn't fair, politics makes no sense, and that Bambi's mother died because someone shot her.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
98
Over the past few weeks I have been constantly hearing this phrase: "98 days of summer." Canada's Wonderland, a gigantic amusement park thirty minutes by bus from where I live, is handing out season passes valid for all "98 days of summer." Ads for grills, barbecue sauce, inflatable pools and swimwear gratuitously use it as a tagline. Erin Davis, one of the morning DJ's on CHFI, never fails to use it at least once every morning; once, she even clarified that she had, in fact, checked her calendar: summer would last for 98 days.
I'm not entirely sure which 98 days everyone's talking about since 30 (June) + 31 (July) + 31 (August) = only 92. The difference probably means summer either started early, or it will be extending into mid-September. Or I have it all wrong and there really is a separate seasonal calendar, but I don't want to look it up. In any event, while some days are certainly starting to feel like summer, others - like this morning's windy, overcast offering with a temperature of 10C - definitely don't.
Back home, there were only two 'season's really: dry/hot and wet/not-as-hot. The climate was especially great in Davao - you would get sunshine at 5.30 in the morning, and it would stay like that all day. It usually rained at night, too, so by then you were probably home already anyway. Best of all, unlike Manila and the other provinces around and North of it, Davao never gets regularly trashed by hurricanes and flash-floods. And while hurricanes and storms often meant joy when classes were cancelled, they were not that much appreciated on the days I found myself stranded in Project 4 with little more than a wallet and a feeble umbrella to my name.
But I digress. For all of eight years we lived in Davao City, my family never checked the weather on TV. Never, not once. It would pop up for around five minutes everyday near the end of the 6:00 news, but by that time we were clearing up the table, or arguing loudly over who got the last scoop of Queso Real ice cream. It was just that much of a non-issue. But not so here: every morning the kitchen TV is set to channel 23 - the 24-hour Weather Channel. We tune in to the forecast at night so my dad knows if he needs to bring an extra jacket. My mom even looks it up online beforehand to plan weekend barbecues - our entire lives here are dictated by the whims of the weather.
And here the weather is very fickle. It can be freezing when you leave the house and suddenly bright and cheery after work. Sometimes it will rain in the middle of the day...for all of ten minutes, before it stops and clears up again. Hail hurts - a LOT - and to add insult to injury, stops the moment you're safely in your car.
So in retrospect, maybe it's not so much about making a big deal out of summer, to the point of counting down the days. We welcome it, of course (since Canada is cold by default), but I think maybe it's part of something bigger: a general, perpetual concern for the weather. While back home, people talk about the weather when they have run out of all other topics in the universe, here it is the first thing on everybody's mind. And it better be; when it changes from day to day, even hour to hour, we'd best be paying attention.
"So how's the weather there today?"
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
storytelling
One of the first things I noticed during my first few days in Canada was just how friendly everybody is here.
I would be walking to the convenience store near the main road, or waiting for my bus under a tree...and all of a sudden, a stranger would smile at me and say, "how're you?"
For the first two months we lived with the family of a woman my mother had known from work back in the Philippines. I asked her about this, and she said it was fairly common; people here did it out of habit. "It's like 'hi' and 'hello' here. They ask you 'how are you?' and you reply with 'good, and you?'" She gave me some advice: even if I wasn't particularly feeling all that 'good' - even if I had a terrible headache, or had just gotten fired, or was soon to be deported - I had to say "I'm good, and you?" I saw it as a silent, mutual sense of courtesy: if you go out of your way to ask me how I'm doing, it's only fair that I don't bore you with the messy details of the latest catastrophe in my life.
This was all new to me from the get-go because, back home, you never talk to strangers. Never ever. The most you can do is inquire about the time, or ask for a light - and even that is sometimes pushing it! But here, everyone is asking you how you are, even if you're going opposite ways on the pedestrian lane - there is no time to look back, but there is just barely enough time for an exchange: "How are you?" / "Good; yourself?" / "Good, thanks for asking."
And then there are those who don't just stop at polite one-liners. They engage you in conversation while waiting in line, or in the grocery aisles. They don't even ask for your name, and they rarely offer theirs - they start with a smile and the weather. From there, anything goes. And while this has happened to me countless times, it is extremely rare in the Philippines; it's not every day you have an old lady walk up to you on a snowy Thursday morning and ask you if this is your first winter, after which she then describes how she had felt when her family first migrated from Poland (it was December, sometime in the 1950s.)
I wasn't used to it at all, so at first I merely listened. But soon I grew to welcome these little one-time conversations. They still pop up every so often nowadays, and when they do I now try to drop everything else and really pay attention. These people never ask for my name, nor do they offer theirs; they are usually gone by the time the light changes, or my bus stop comes up, or when somebody's takeout is finally ready. And then I never see them again.
But in the back of my mind I know that the woman who would wait for the 19 North bus still has three young children in Jamaica. That the pizza delivery boy is struggling to make it as a musician; he plays the drums and is getting better, he swears. That the old Chinese man who transports live fish and other small pets in his truck - he can play a mean game of chess. And on and on...every time a stranger talks to me out of the blue, I feel as though the city itself is telling me a story.
I would be walking to the convenience store near the main road, or waiting for my bus under a tree...and all of a sudden, a stranger would smile at me and say, "how're you?"
For the first two months we lived with the family of a woman my mother had known from work back in the Philippines. I asked her about this, and she said it was fairly common; people here did it out of habit. "It's like 'hi' and 'hello' here. They ask you 'how are you?' and you reply with 'good, and you?'" She gave me some advice: even if I wasn't particularly feeling all that 'good' - even if I had a terrible headache, or had just gotten fired, or was soon to be deported - I had to say "I'm good, and you?" I saw it as a silent, mutual sense of courtesy: if you go out of your way to ask me how I'm doing, it's only fair that I don't bore you with the messy details of the latest catastrophe in my life.
This was all new to me from the get-go because, back home, you never talk to strangers. Never ever. The most you can do is inquire about the time, or ask for a light - and even that is sometimes pushing it! But here, everyone is asking you how you are, even if you're going opposite ways on the pedestrian lane - there is no time to look back, but there is just barely enough time for an exchange: "How are you?" / "Good; yourself?" / "Good, thanks for asking."
And then there are those who don't just stop at polite one-liners. They engage you in conversation while waiting in line, or in the grocery aisles. They don't even ask for your name, and they rarely offer theirs - they start with a smile and the weather. From there, anything goes. And while this has happened to me countless times, it is extremely rare in the Philippines; it's not every day you have an old lady walk up to you on a snowy Thursday morning and ask you if this is your first winter, after which she then describes how she had felt when her family first migrated from Poland (it was December, sometime in the 1950s.)
I wasn't used to it at all, so at first I merely listened. But soon I grew to welcome these little one-time conversations. They still pop up every so often nowadays, and when they do I now try to drop everything else and really pay attention. These people never ask for my name, nor do they offer theirs; they are usually gone by the time the light changes, or my bus stop comes up, or when somebody's takeout is finally ready. And then I never see them again.
But in the back of my mind I know that the woman who would wait for the 19 North bus still has three young children in Jamaica. That the pizza delivery boy is struggling to make it as a musician; he plays the drums and is getting better, he swears. That the old Chinese man who transports live fish and other small pets in his truck - he can play a mean game of chess. And on and on...every time a stranger talks to me out of the blue, I feel as though the city itself is telling me a story.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
introductions
I've been blogging for over five years now - first at Livejournal, then cross-posting to Multiply (for no good reason, really - everyone was on Multiply, so I suppose I jumped onto the bandwagon there.) Both blogs have been largely personal, containing rants and raves frivolous to all but myself, apprehensions, gloating over little victories, dreams. However this blog, I hope, will serve an entirely different purpose altogether.
I had known my family would be immigrating since 2004. Back then, I had just entered college, so I did what was expected - ignored it, kept it at the back of my mind. Three years later we received our approval, and yet even with the chaos of countless medical tests, miles of red tape and enough paperwork to get the environmentalists up in arms, the prospect of leaving for Canada was always just abstract at best. It sank in eventually, two weeks after graduation day, as a stewardess demonstrated the safety features of a plane that would whisk me away from Ninoy Aquino to Lester B. Pearson.
When I stepped out of the airport the first greeting Canada offered me was a blast of freezing cold air. At that moment, I had two things on my mind:
(1) At least my life would automatically become better now. Sadly, this is a typical Filipino mentality drilled into the minds of grade-schoolers: "the grass is always greener abroad." So I took solace in this, even though...
(2) ...there would surely be much loneliness and alienation. Nothing would ever seem like home.
As I type this entry it's been a year, a month, and 28 days. And I learned that statement (1) is hopelessly wrong. I've had colleagues with Masters' degrees in Molecular Biology, Anthropology, Chemistry - and we all worked in the warehouse of a WalMart, together. One of the taxi drivers I chatted with once was a Physics professor in his country. Licensed doctors are making your cappuccino. Former businessmen collect your coffee cups and discarded napkins as you leave your table. So when people say namimitas lang kami ng pera dito ("money just grows on trees here"), it isn't true, not by a long shot.
Luckily though, neither is the second statement. Ride any of the buses that ply the routes through the commercial areas during the 5pm rush hour, and you are bound to hear people chattering in Tagalog. Local supermarkets are stocked with bagoong, patis, and pouches of Mama Sita's instant offerings. You go to a friend's house for dinner and you come upon them watching Eat Bulaga! in the living room - it is 7pm on a Friday. And although I have yet to see carts with deep fryers full of fishballs, or boys on bikes peddling balut...just less than a week ago, I was able to spot a man sitting outside a (pirated) DVD stall, selling taho.
Life abroad is hard and it's these little things, little glimpses of home, that make it all easier. And maybe, in retrospect, that's part of the reason I started this blog - because moments like those don't last longer than a bus ride, a grocery trip, a pajama party, or a quick walk to the dentist. But here they are frozen, etched in ones and zeroes.
I had known my family would be immigrating since 2004. Back then, I had just entered college, so I did what was expected - ignored it, kept it at the back of my mind. Three years later we received our approval, and yet even with the chaos of countless medical tests, miles of red tape and enough paperwork to get the environmentalists up in arms, the prospect of leaving for Canada was always just abstract at best. It sank in eventually, two weeks after graduation day, as a stewardess demonstrated the safety features of a plane that would whisk me away from Ninoy Aquino to Lester B. Pearson.
When I stepped out of the airport the first greeting Canada offered me was a blast of freezing cold air. At that moment, I had two things on my mind:
(1) At least my life would automatically become better now. Sadly, this is a typical Filipino mentality drilled into the minds of grade-schoolers: "the grass is always greener abroad." So I took solace in this, even though...
(2) ...there would surely be much loneliness and alienation. Nothing would ever seem like home.
As I type this entry it's been a year, a month, and 28 days. And I learned that statement (1) is hopelessly wrong. I've had colleagues with Masters' degrees in Molecular Biology, Anthropology, Chemistry - and we all worked in the warehouse of a WalMart, together. One of the taxi drivers I chatted with once was a Physics professor in his country. Licensed doctors are making your cappuccino. Former businessmen collect your coffee cups and discarded napkins as you leave your table. So when people say namimitas lang kami ng pera dito ("money just grows on trees here"), it isn't true, not by a long shot.
Luckily though, neither is the second statement. Ride any of the buses that ply the routes through the commercial areas during the 5pm rush hour, and you are bound to hear people chattering in Tagalog. Local supermarkets are stocked with bagoong, patis, and pouches of Mama Sita's instant offerings. You go to a friend's house for dinner and you come upon them watching Eat Bulaga! in the living room - it is 7pm on a Friday. And although I have yet to see carts with deep fryers full of fishballs, or boys on bikes peddling balut...just less than a week ago, I was able to spot a man sitting outside a (pirated) DVD stall, selling taho.
Life abroad is hard and it's these little things, little glimpses of home, that make it all easier. And maybe, in retrospect, that's part of the reason I started this blog - because moments like those don't last longer than a bus ride, a grocery trip, a pajama party, or a quick walk to the dentist. But here they are frozen, etched in ones and zeroes.
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