I know it’s not what you landed on this blog for – rather you wanted to read something encouraging and enlightening about the Philippines and its vibrant people. But the world is not a fair and perfect place. Here poverty exists with wealthiness, kindness with cruelty and compassion with selfishness. Thus Filipinos do not defy this rule of nature – they act up, misbehave, cheat, lie and act selfishly like people anywhere else in the world.
In this post I will quote two of many instances when I came across extremely unconventional Filipinos who certainly made me think differently about Filipinos.
1. Few years ago, I came across a 45 year old Filipina who was a nurse by profession and had immigrated to New Zealand with her family. She appeared me to like a mother – a smiling face whenever I spoke to her. After talking to her for two-three years through online chat, one day, quite confidently, I asked her if I could talk to her on the phone. She immediately snubbed me for my request and began to ignore me. Not knowing how exactly I offended her, I repeated my request after a while and this time she stopped responding to my messages at all. While I was disappointed the way she chose to ignore me, I was hellbent on finding out why talking me on the phone was a bad idea to her. She had been a mentor to me and I had shared many things about my life with her. I felt I had a little right to speak to her on the phone and feel her motherly nature more closely. After waiting for few months, I gathered the courage to repeat earlier request to her. Finally she answered me that she could not talk to me because “I have a husband”. Her reason for not talking me on the phone dropped like a bomb on me. I had never thought of her as anyone but a motherly figure who was there to hear my disappointments and problems. I could never ever imagine that she would see me as someone parallel to her husband. I wrote my last message to her and explained how deeply hurt I was over the reason she gave me for not talking me on the phone. I never received the answer of my last message either. After few days, I noticed she had detached from me on Facebook, sadly.
2. This was an educated young girl, working in KSA. This girl appeared very friendly and nice in the yearly days of my friendship with her. But later began to make excuses of being too busy on the job thus not having enough time to talk to me. I respected her situation and contacted her only when I would see her online for hours and hours on the Yahoo chat messenger. When she began to ignore me for months, I felt something was wrong. I wrote to her and showed my concern for her well being and safety in the KSA. She never responded to me. I wrote to her again in the following month; still no response came in. My inquisitiveness led me to her FB profile; I was shocked to find her multiple regular updates on the FB wall and how she had been actively posting songs and statuses there. I felt it was a great insult to the respect and care I have shown to her as a friend. I wrote the last message her explaining how I found that she was fully active on the FB and her excuse of being too busy on the job did not appear true. She also, instead of responding to my messages, conveniently unfriended me on Facebook and to date I don’t know what made her disown me in such a disrespectful and selfish manner.
These are just two of many incidents when I found Filipinos could be as cold-blooded as anyone out there. While I take great pride in being outstandingly respectful and sensitive towards friends from the Philippines, many of them stoop themselves too low and admit that they only talk to those who can BENEFIT them in monetary form, or promise to pave a path for them to move abroad.
Nonetheless, I LOVE THE PHILIPPINES, its culture and its people!