The OFW Diaries

Posted by Gino Bjorn on Jul 18, '08 10:56 AM for everyone

"In your laugh, there's a clever medicine" - Brandon Boyd, Dig

I have always believed that the most beautiful of things often reside in the shittiest of places. Like for example, the cheapest and most reliable of DSLR's (which is a sort of posh thing to have) in the Philippines is easily accessible to where you would most likely get robbed... Quiapo. Heck, same logic applies to why most people shop at Divisoria orBangkok. The most beautiful, and the best steal-deals come with a price... could be your comfort, your pride and sometimes your life.

I have turned 25 this past week. A thing of beauty for someone with a lifestyle like mine, really. Honestly, I have doubted I would live past 21 with all the vices and constant depressions I have with my life as to where I am headed, long term. Trust me... I don't think anyone who would read this would relate to the stories of my constant melancholies. (Seven P150 beers alone in a pub? Even I think it's mental)

And what better way to spend my "Silver Anniversary" of bad decisions and regrets than in an island where depression is as common as salt in it's winds. I spent my birthday; Visa expired, in Kish Island. It is an island, In Wonderful Persia, which exposes a microcosm of desperation in our homeland; a sneak-peek as to why many of us (of course, including me) are forced to decide between comfort and poverty, or a great deal of sadness but with a few dollars (in my case dirham) in hand. I have seen and heard what our kababayans have to go through to provide food on a table a thousand miles away. I have seen and heard the sacrifices our fellow Filipinos have to make to bring hope and the future to their families... Families they have never seen in months, years, decades... To families they have never shared birthdays, Christmas's, fiestas... firsts... with. To families and they have long endured looking at photos over Multiply, Friendster etc. to while sitting in a lonely booth over a hotel internet cafe in an island a very big fraction of the world population never heard of.

It takes a real man/woman to take all this shit... and I am not glorifying myself because I am not one of them. I am just a bratty little man-child with a big salary with nothing in mind other than my comfort, good food and the latest electronics. I am 25, the average marrying age 25 years ago, but still I act 18. Seven years haven't done much except, maybe, a degree and a license. But other than that? Nada... I haven't proven anything. I am still myself... every disappointing morsel of it. And if ever I would marry today, I would pity my wife...

I have always pestered my thoughts for years with what others, my High School and College batch mates, have achieved and why I can't match them. With all the skills and potential I have... ah Bas! "Potential" is the loneliest word... As "what could've been..." is the loneliest phrase. I never came out of my "shell". Whatever that is...

Coming to this island, I've realized how lucky I am.... how lucky I am to have parents who support me in every (good) decision I make. To have my sisters who always say they love me, and in turn never failing to pull sunshines in my arse. How lucky I am to have friends who willingly know they have wasted half their lives (or more) carousing with me but still remembers my birthday every year! (Shot para igat ta bai!). And to have my ever blissful awe, Karen, who have sticked with me through thick and thin, beyond mists of manic-depressions.

But not all are lucky...

Some have to hear disasters: how the recent storm dilapidated the dream houses they have realized but never seen; how their kid got dengue fever and why the hospital won't admit unless a steep down payment is settled (fuck the medical system)... parents died, teenage kid pregnant, suspended from school.... that sort of stuff. And the only course of action they can afford is to cry helplessly amongst strangers who, cares, but obviously can't help either. Or worse, expect a little bit of sympathy from a very unsympathetic Iranian who nods at your whims but really is only concerned about the bill you would have to pay for taking so much time in the hotel business phone. Its heart breaking, yet they are aware that this is the price for the morsel of luxury they can't give when they settle for a job at home. It's so disgustingly ironic that those family-people who have given so much are the ones dealt with this kind of unfair justice. They have given so much to make lives better at home at the risk of their own a million miles away...

But they are fighters... As David Diaz would put it after a very one-sided loss to Pacman, "we are fighters, and we would just have to get back to the horse when we fall down." They still manage to pull smiles from their faces... Laughs, giggles... This is the most Filipino way of handling predicaments. Tap each others backs and signal each other to carry on... Carry on... In each other laughs, we found a clever medicine. It is something the rest of the world envies us about. We are among the Top 10 happiest people on earth, right? A pure sense of camaraderie forms in the cruelest of adversities. I have found myself inspired with people I never bothered about 4 months ago... The less fortunate, but strong...

I've realized that I need not envy what others have become... It's not what you got for yourself that matters, but it's what you have given to those who you love. Not the material things, please... That pretty much comprises the word "happiness"... It's giving unconditionally without expecting a reimbursement for your services...

This trip, unexpectedly, has done for me more than what was expected... Sure... No work on my birthday, one week paid vacation, new friends, the beach, seesaw. In my 25th birthday, I received the best birthday gift I ever had. It is something I have longed for more than two decades... A slice of what people fondly call... "Maturity"...

This shit is brought to you by 500mL of Stolichnaya Vodka (95 Proof) +Mountain Dew of Dubai Duty Free