When is a Filipino considered poor? What is the measure of personal wealth? Is wealth just in mind, in the bank, in landholdings, or elsewhere? Days, ago, they think tank Ibon Foundation said 88 percent of Filipinos are poor. We have not read about the administration's response to that, if any, but we expect it to dispute that figure.

Government technocrats say that a family of six (two parents and four children) that earns  only P600 a day is poor, or below what they call the poverty threshold. That means roughly, a household income of a month P18,000.00 a month.

Rosario Bella Guzman, Ibon executive director, said the minimum  wage in the National Capital Region has gone lower that the estimated decent income for a family of six.

The United Nations Report on the Human Development Index for 2003 has shown that the Philippines slid from 77th to 85th place among countries where people live under extreme poverty. The HDI measures quality of income, health, education and political participation.
 

QUALITATIVE TEST:

The characterization of the country as teeming with people who languish below the poverty threshold has elicited various responses at various times.

On time, there were suggestions to lower the poverty threshold do there would be fewer people below it. That was a dubious way of statistically reducing the number of Filipinos considered poor.

When she was Human Settlements Secretary, Mrs. Imelda R. Marcos observed that the Gross national Product , which is the sum of all goods and services produced during a period, is not a fair measurement of the wealth (or poverty) of a people.

Mrs. Marcos said that wealth is not to be measured solely in quantitative units (in peso values, for instance). She brought, in the idea of also measuring wealth in quantitative manner (in terms of, for instance, people being satisfied or happy, and saying so).

PINOYS A LOT HAPPY:
How relevant is that elusive element called happiness in appreciating a people's wealth or poverty?

An Asiawide (minus Japan) consumer survey has found that Filipinos and  Thais  are the happiest in the region while people of Hongkong worry about their jobs, the economy and their waistlines. The survey was conducted before the outbreak of SARS in China and elsewhere.

The survey report, made by the advertising group TBWA Hongkong, was based on focus groups and  five major surveys over three years in seven Asian locations. There were more that 15,000 respondents with a bias towards those aged 25 to 35 who were thought to lead the culture in Asia.

NOT TOO VAIN:

The report , titled "marketing Premium Brands in Asia", said Hong Kong people scored minus 27 on the researchers' happiness index, compared to minus six in Taiwan, minus two on the mainland, plus six in Singapore, 10 in Malaysia , 11 in Thailand and 12 in the Philippines.

The index compared the number of people who classified themselves as "very happy or "happy" against those who said they were "unhappy" or "very unhappy". Those who said they were "okay" were excluded.

Filipinos were not only the happiest among those surveyed, but were also the least body-conscious. Only 18 percent regarded themselves as overweight compared with 47 percent of Hongkongers saying they were "too fat"  or "a bit fat" -
Postscript/PhilStar/july 24,2003/Thurday By: Federico D. Pascual Jr.

Matter of Taste

by Matthew Sutherland

I have now been in this country for over six years, and consider myself in most respects well assimilated. However, there is one key step on the road to full assimilation, which I have yet to take, and that's to eat BALUT. The day any of you sees me eating balut, please call immigration and ask them to issue me a Filipino passport. Because at that point there will be no turning back. BALUT, for those still blissfully ignorant non-Pinoys out there, is a fertilized duck egg.

It is commonly sold with salt in a piece of newspaper, much like English fish and chips, by street vendors usually after dark, presumably so you can't see how gross it is. It's meant to be an aphrodisiac, although I can't imagine anything more likely to dispel sexual desire than crunching on a partially formed baby duck swimming in noxious fluid. The embryo in the egg comes in varying stages of development, but basically it is not considered macho to eat one without fully discernable feathers, beak, and claws. Some say these crunchy bits are the best. Others prefer just to drink the so-called 'soup', the vile, pungent liquid that surrounds the mentioned feathery fetus...excuse me; I have to go and throw up now. I'll be back in a minute.

Food dominates the life of the Filipino. People here just love to eat. They eat at least eight times a day. These eight official meals are called, in order: breakfast, snacks, lunch, merienda, pica-pica, polutan, dinner, andno-one-saw-me-take-that-cookie-from-the-fridge- so-it- doesn't-count. The short gaps in between these mealtimes are spent eating Sky Flakes from the open packet that sits on every desktop. You're never far from food in the Philippines. If you doubt this, next time you're driving home from work, try this game. See how long you can drive without seeing food and I don't mean a distant restaurant, or a picture of food. I mean a man on the sidewalk frying fish balls, or a man walking through the traffic selling nuts or candy. I bet it's less than one minute.

Here are some other things I've noticed about food in the Philippines . Firstly, a meal is not a meal without rice - even breakfast. In the UK I could go a whole year without eating rice. Second, it's impossible to drink without eating. A bottle of San Miguel just isn't the same without gambas or beef tapa. Third, no one ventures more than two paces from their house without baon and a container of something cold to drink. You might as well ask a Filipino to leave home without his pants on. And Lastly, where I come from, you eat with a knife and fork. Here, you eat with a spoon and fork. You try eating rice swimming in fish sauce with a knife.

One really nice thing about Filipino food culture is that people always ask you to SHARE their food. In my office, if you catch anyone attacking their baon, they will always go, "Sir! KAIN TAYO!" ("Let's eat!"). This confused me, until I realized that they didn't actually expect me to sit down and start munching on their boneless bangus. In fact, the polite response is something like, "No thanks, I just ate."

But the principle is sound - if you have food on your plate, you are expected to share it, however hungry you are, with those who may be even hungrier. I think that's great. In fact, this is frequently even taken one step further. Many Filipinos use "Have you eaten yet? ("KUMAIN KA NA?") as a general greeting, irrespective of time of day or location.

Some foreigners think Filipino food is fairly dull compared to other Asian cuisines. Actually lots of it is very good: Spicy dishes like Bicol Express (strange, a dish named after a train); anything cooked with coconut milk; anything KINILAW; and anything ADOBO. And it's hard to beat the sheer wanton, cholesterolic frenzy of a good old-fashioned LECHON de leche feast. Dig a pit, light a fire, add 50 pounds of animal fat on a stick, and cook until crisp. Mmm, mmm... you can actually feel your arteries constricting with each successive mouthful.

I also share one key Pinoy trait ---a sweet tooth. I am thus the only foreigner I know who does not complain about sweet bread, sweet burgers, sweet spaghetti, sweet banana ketchup, and so on. I am a man who likes to put jam on his pizza. Try it!

It's the weird food you want to avoid. In addition to duck fetus in the half-shell, items to avoid in the Philippines include pig's blood soup (DINUGUAN); bull's testicle soup, the strangely-named "SOUP NUMBER FIVE" (I dread to think what numbers one through four are); and the
ubiquitous, stinky shrimp paste, BAGOONG, and it's equally stinky sister, PATIS. Filipinos are so addicted to these latter items that they will even risk arrest or deportation trying to smuggle them into countries like Australia and the USA , which wisely ban the importation of items you can smell from more than 100 paces.

Then there's the small matter of the blue ice cream. I have never been able to get my brain around eating blue food; the ubiquitous UBE leaves me cold.

And lastly on the subject of weird food, beware: that KALDERETANG KAMBING (goat) could well be KALDERETANG ASO (dog)...

The Filipino, of course, has a well-developed sense of food. Here's a typical Pinoy food joke: "I'm on a seafood diet. "What's a seafood diet?" "When I see food, I eat it!"

Filipinos also eat strange bits of animals --- the feet, the head, the guts, etc., usually barbecued on a stick. These have been given witty names, like "ADIDAS" (chicken's feet); "KURBATA" (either just chicken's neck, or "neck and thigh" as in "neck-tie"); "WALKMAN" (pigs ears); "PAL" (chicken wings); "HELMET" (chicken head); "IUD" (chicken intestines), and BETAMAX" (video-cassette-like blocks of animal blood). Yum, yum. Bon appetite.

"A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches" -- (Proverbs
22:1)

WHEN I arrived in the Philippines from the UK six years ago, one of the first cultural differences to strike me were names. The subject has provided a continuing source of amazement and amusement ever since.

The first unusual thing, from an English perspective, is that everyone here has a nickname. In the staid and boring United Kingdom , we have nicknames in kindergarten, but when we move into adulthood we tend, I am glad to say, to lose them.

The second thing that struck me is that Philippine names for both girls and boys tend to be what we in the UK would regard as overbearingly cutesy for anyone over about five. Fifty-five-year-olds colleague put it. Where I come from, a boy with a nickname like Boy Blue or Honey Boy would be beaten to death at school by pre-adolescent bullies, and never make it to Adulthood. So, probably, would girls with names like Babes, Lovely, Precious, Peachy or Apples. Yuk, ech ech.

Here, however, no one bats an eyelid. Then I noticed how many people have what I have come to call "door-bell names". These are nicknames that sound like -well, doorbells. There are millions of them. Bing, Bong, Ding, and Dong are some of the more common. They can be, and frequently are,
used in even more door-bell-like combinations such as Bing-Bong, Ding-Dong, Ting-Ting, and so on. Even one of our senator has a doorbell named Ping. None of these doorbell names exist where I come from, and hence sound unusually amusing to my untutored foreign ear.

Someone once told me that one of the Bings, when asked why he was called Bing, replied, "because my brother is called Bong". Faultless logic. Dong, of course, is a particularly funny one for me, as where I come from "dong" is a slang word for well; perhaps "talong" is the best Tagalog equivalent.

Repeating names was another novelty to me, having never before encountered people with names like Len-Len, Let-Let, Mai-Mai, or Ning-Ning. The secretary I inherited on my arrival had an unusual
one: Leck-Leck. Such names are then frequently further refined by using the "squared" symbol, as in Len2 or Mai2. This had me very confused for a while.

Then there is the trend for parents to stick to a theme when naming their children. This can be as simple as making them all begin with the same letter, as in Jun, Jimmy, Janice, and Joy.

More imaginative parents shoot for more sophisticated forms of assonance or rhyme, as in Biboy, Boboy, Buboy, Baboy (notice the names get worse the more kids there are-best to be born early or you could end up being a Baboy).

Even better, parents can create whole families of, say, desserts (Apple Pie, Cherry Pie, Honey Pie) or flowers (Rose, Daffodil, Tulip)The main advantage of such combinations is that they look great. painted across your trunk if you're a cab driver. That's another thing I'd neverseen before coming to Manila -- taxis with the driver's kids' names on the trunk.

Another whole eye-opening field for the foreign visitor is the phenomenon of the "composite" name. This includes names like Jejomar (for Jesus, Joseph and Mary), and the remarkable Luzviminda (for Luzon , Visayas and Mindanao, believe it or not). That's a bit like me being called something like "Engscowani" (for England , Scotland , Wales and Northern Ireland ). Between you and me, I'm glad I'm not.

And how could I forget to mention the fabulous concept of the randomlyinserted letter 'h'. Quite what this device is supposed to achieve, I have not yet figured out, but I think it is designed to give a touch of class to an otherwise only averagely weird name. It results in creations like Jhun, Lhenn, Ghemma, and Jhimmy. Or how about Jhun-Jhun (Jhun2)?

How boring to come from a country like the UK full of people with names like John Smith. How wonderful to come from a country where imagination and exoticism rules the world of names.

Even the towns here have weird names; my favorite is the unbelievably named town of Sexmoan (ironically close to Olongapo and Angeles). Where else in the world could that really be true? Where else in the world could the head of the Church really be called Cardinal Sin?

Where else but the Philippines!

*Note: Philippines has a senator named Joker, and it is
his legal name. (Senator Joker Arroyo)*

************************

Comment: James Claire, 2005

I read Matthew's post and just laughed my behind right off. I too resemble some of those remarks. I can forgot to balut, rather it be duck, quail or chicken eggs. I will forgo all of them, as well as the blue, UBE, ice cream. I can identify with eating goat, and even dog. I have eaten more of both than my wife. Matthew forgot corn ice cream and some other real winners, that I shall not name. I love the dinaguan and kare-kare, both made from pigs blood and intestines. Sometimes they will be made with chicken blood and chicken intestine. Wow, I can hardly believe I said that. I have tried that soup number five. I then wondered what one through four were also. Then I set for lumpia and adobo, truly Filipino and truly delicious.

Now the real post is the part about the names. Two brothers-in-law named all their children with names beginning with the initials of their names. Pete's boys all have names with a starting of The second name is with mama's first letter. It is reversed with girl children, the mama's initial coming first and the papa second. Note Pete was not alone. Gerry did the same. Ditot, Little Librado, Librado Ditto, now Ditot, decided to stay clear of that rule and just named the
kids, Noel near Christmas and Gabriel near a death. I used to kid Gabriel, a great kid and very, very intelligent, that Gabriel was the kiss of death. I is a small wonder he did not grow up hating me. Like I said he is a great kid.

Others are juniors and thirds, called Jun and Jun, or Jun2, I am wondering if there will be a Jun3. We also have len-Len, Cen-Cen and Ron-Ron. And that Boy, that sticks with them all their life, Boy, Boi and GerryBoy. Even the poor gardner is in on the gig too, Jennifer, Jennylynn, Jeanyboy and Alan. Poor Alan.

From the parts of animals we would not see in the USA, much less even perhaps eat, to the names of kids and adults, this is quite a post. My sprits do need a lift, did you see the Astros loose all four. That is for another post. [JJ]