The C-Spot: A Photography, Travel and Culture Journal

(This is something I wrote sometime during my recent extended visit to my daughter's house in NZ). Being the youngest of three siblings, it was customary and almost mandatory for me to be the one to do the errands, to water the plants, and yes, to do the dishes. But my mother never assigned those chores without first doing them herself and showing me how to do them.  In the absence of what we now routinely use to wash away stubborn stain on frying pans and pots such as "scotchbrite" dishwashing sponge, she always uses fine grain sand which was always available nearby since our house was located near a river, or the better option was to use "ipa" or rice hull which she collects whenever we buy a piece or a block of ice from the corner store ice-dealer. Rice-hull as I later found out, not only cleans the dishes but leaves them glistening and shiny specially when sunlight strikes them. Used in tin pans, one gets a smooth shiny metallic appearance making...

"Ito lang ang kaligayahan namin dito."  That is a direct quote from one of my former office mates who has immigrated to a far away foreign land and who I recently had the chance to meet with and enjoy a small get together in their newly acquired house in a quiet and modest suburb just an hour away from their place of work in the smallest capital city in the world - Wellington, New Zealand. This is not the first time though that I have heard that remark (usually preceded by a deep sigh). In most of my trips abroad where Pinoys get together occasioned by a visit by a kababayan (in most cases me), I hear similar if not the same plaint and almost a lamentation from Filipinos who have braved the strangeness of life and culture in foreign lands, sometimes enduring loneliness and even condescending treatment if not outright contempt from the people they have little choice but to socialize, work and live with. ""Ito lang ang kaligayahan namin dito, Chito...