questions

Questions:

I get asked a lot of questions here.  These are some of the of the typical ones…

1) Where are you from?  An easy one.  I’ve never tried to hide the fact that I’m an American.

2) Are you here for business or pleasure?  This leads me to telling them about my volunteering.

3) Are you Catholic?  The Philippines is a Catholic country and potentially the most religious country in the world.  A newspaper article recently detailed the results of a survey from 1998.  On questions having to do with religion (do you believe in God, is there a heaven, is your religion the only correct religion, etc), the Philippines scored 1st or 2nd on every question.  There were a few question in which Chile was slightly higher; on other questions, the Philippines had a large lead over other countries.  The one caveat to this is that the survey only included 30 countries.  So it’s certainly possible that there are countries that are more religious than the Philippines.

4) Are you a missionary? This one comes up in response to telling people about my volunteering.

5) Do you have a friend here? This is code word for girlfriend (i.e., a filipino girlfriend).  Lots of foreigners come here looking for brides.  I’m certainly open to dating someone while I’m here.  Most people, though, assume that I already have a “friend” and are surprised to here that I don’t.

6) Do you sing?  Filipinos love to sing and supposedly are quite good at it.  Karaoke is huge here as it is throughout Asia.

What time is it? Filipinos are notorious for being late.  This might be the result of the Spanish influence since people in Spain, Mexico, and South America are similarly notorious.  The way people deal with it here is by putting their watches ahead 15-30 minutes.  Even the clocks in shops and businesses are set ahead.  I have no idea how anyone knows what the real time is.  And if you set your watch ahead….don’t you know that? I don’t understand how that helps you be on time.

Divorce: Did you know that there are only two countries in the world that don’t allow divorce.  Malta is one.  And since I’m posting this while being in the philppines, I’m sure you can figure out the other one.  Kind of surprising isn’t it?  The Catholic church is very powerful here and has blocked any attempts to legalize divorce.  People can get legally separated or annul the marriage. Those are the only two options.  Even if you’re not Catholic, you’re not allowed to get divorced.

Corruption: Corruption is an accepted way of life in many poorer countries.  It’s unfortunately one of the reasons why these countries have a difficult time making progress.  Here in the philippines, there are apparently no political parties, there are only wealthy families who buy their way into power and then find ways to bring other family members into power.  Vote buying is quite rampant.  Some of it is “subtle”…bring a bunch of rice to a poor village and tell the people to remember you on election day.  Other is more overt…people actually get paid by bringing in their stub to prove that they voted for a particular candidate.  And politicians often expect to get kickbacks for performing their normal duties.  A Korean company was planning on making a massive investment in the philippines….but the local mayor wanted a cut of the investment in exchange for his approval….the Koreans got tired of being “shook down” by the mayor so they cancelled the project.  Kind of sad….