Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

The Chinese New Year's decorations in the local mall in Makati becomes gaudier and gaudier every week the author goes for his weekly grocery shopping.  In the run-up to this year's official February 10th countdown when a new year begins on the lunar new year, the mall has introduced Qing-dynasty Manchu uniforms for its employees, 1960s Taiwanese romantic ballads for its repetitive theme music, and of course, bright red and golden signage for every floor and department to make sure any passers-by know exactly what this fuss is all about.

Among the intellectuals of the world, there has long been a consensus on the defining quality of individual success.  It is not measured by the amount of cash in one's bank account, the net worth of one's business, assets, and properties.  Instead, the key word is "power," the authority one has over other individuals and functioning of a community, and to a greater extent, society in general.  The ability to influence and to change the course of other's lives, in particular, can be seen an easy, albeit morally reprehensible, way to get one's hands on an almost unlimited flow of cash.

"Hiya" "amor-propio" "compadre"...and series of local sociological concepts rolls off the pages of a cultural learning book detailing the tendencies of Filipino behaviors.  All of these, foreign-sounding at the first sight, after even the most brief of explanations, become terribly familiar for someone who has seen perhaps a bit too much of the collectivist values so ingrained within Asian societies .  It is as the author said so well in the prologue, Filipino society, despite its Western-looking facade of English use, Christian beliefs, and American cultural affinity due 400 years of Western colonization, is not at all a Western society at heart.

The rusty old box on wheels "sped along" the Emilio Aguinaldo Highway south of Manila as fast as I could...which, unfortunately for the anxious traveler, was not that much.  Sitting on the long wooden chairs of the long-distance bus, the traveler kept staring out of the glass-less window to see just how long the traffic will continue to crawl forward.  The bus was moving so slowly on the two-lane "national highway" that the wind coming through the open windows cannot compensate for the heat of the early morning sun and the body fumes of the massive crowds squeezed into the already over-capacity bus.

At the foothills of the magnificent Taal Volcano, two hours drive south of Manila, there is a little two-story concrete building.  It is a building no different from any other local ones that stand densely across the highway from the luxuries resorts, restaurants, and private homes that crowd the Tagaytay Ridge offering perfect, unobstructed view of the Volcano's surrounding lake fromed from an ancient crater.  On the second floor of the building was a little sign: Hansung Vision Church (한성 비전 교회), pasted in strips of simple blue-colored plastic tape over a background picture of green field dotted with pink flowers.

The streets down below are steamy with fumes, all sorts of fumes.  One can almost smell all that as one gets off the crowded platform of the nearby train station.  It is, as many other places of humanity are, a chaotic symphony of sensory overload of any and every nature.  The smell is a combination of toxic exhaust fumes belched from inefficient jeepney engines, the heavily salted batter of fried chicken, fried fish, and fried God-knows-what-else.