Back in the olden days, on the very first Sunday of my first nannying job in Singapore, my lady employer wondered whether I wanted to go to church with them.
“Do you want to follow us to church?” she asked.
“Can’t I just ride with you guys? I asked back.
“That’s what I mean,” she told me.
My first lesson on Singaporean English: when you ‘follow’ someone in Singapore, you are actually going together to the same destination; you aren’t walking or travelling in another vehicle closely behind them. Singaporeans, like other English-speaking peoples, have created their own version of English, called Singlish, a language that also incorporated words from Malay, Tamil and various Chinese dialects. I soon learned to listen and speak the same way to get my point across.
When I first arrived in Canada, I wasn’t too surprised to find that the same linguistic challenges applied. Nothing ever grows and mutates faster than a language, a many-headed entity that changes form and shifts shape to accommodate the changing times. It brings to my mind the vision of an avalanche rushing down a mountainside, picking up and swallowing all sorts of debris along its way, landing at the bottom much bigger and less purer than when it started going down the slope. The only difference is that a language just keeps on going.
I can speak for English and Tagalog, the two languages I know best. Growth in technology and globalization has brought so many new words and expressions into the lexicon that they would probably drive language purists, if such people still exist, out of their minds. Heck, it could drive a Taglish-speaking Filipino crazy, when he still has to figure out about 7 other major languages already being spoken in the country, on top of the techno-speak being developed by call-centre workers and the gay-speak, the dialect of the Manila gay and show business communities. And when he goes out of the country, he then has to contend with how other English speakers so mangled the language that it makes him feel as if he’s talking to a Martian.
(Don’t even get me started on how words are pronounced. For instance, why would the word ‘swam’ be spoken like ‘swam’ but ‘swamp’ be ‘swomp’ and swan ‘swon’? Aaaaaargh!)
Nothing gives English-as-second-language (ESL) speakers more trouble than the slang being spawned and spoken by various specific groups. ESL people learn English from books, and generally speak that way, but you’ll find out right away when what you’re saying translates very differently to an ESL speaker.
For instance, a friend who’s a nurse by profession once asked an elderly Canadian male patient on which side would he like to be laid? She didn’t report what his response was, but I could imagine celebratory bells clanging inside the old man’s head: “Service with benefits, baby!”
Or the nurse’s German husband who once requested her to check a pimple on his ‘foreskin’, when he actually meant on his ‘forehead’. To him, those words were similar. I heard that the nurse corrected him immediately, although on further thought, maybe he did have another pimple somewhere else and really wanted his wife to have a look at that one.
Or take the case of my daughter who lives in the US, who overheard her colleagues talking about dogs being sold by the Pound. A curious person by nature, she had to know: “How much per pound?” Judging by the scandalized expression on their faces, my daughter realized she must have asked the wrong question. On the other hand, dogs do sell per pound in underground markets in the Philippines, or so I heard.
Keeping any language pure is a losing battle, because language is alive. Language evolves. It adapts to its surroundings to survive. I sincerely wish all purists who want to fight this trend the best of luck.
A friend of mine has stronger words for such people. He says there will always be some narrow-minded idiots who will want to keep their language ‘clean’ and not allow foreign words to infiltrate it.
“Wanting to keep a language clean”, he tells me, “is another form of decrimination.”
“Like Hitler said in his book, urban mice should only mate with urban mice, and rural mice should only mate with rural mice. Well, Adolf, ” my friend adds, “I've got news for you: Mice don't care whom they mate with, as long as it's another mice!”
(previously published at the Mill Woods Mosaic, January 15, 2012 issue)
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Tuesday, December 20, 2011
On the Demolition of the Family Class: an interview with Don Davies
(published at the Mill woods Mosaic, Nov 15th, 2011 issue)
As the Conservative government takes advantage of their majority in the Parliament by merrily passing one bill after another, they’re also radically changing the face of the Canadian immigration system.
The latest among these changes hit the press last November 4, when Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced that Canada would no longer be accepting family class applications effective November 5.
Don Davies, MP for Vancouver-Kingsway and the Official Opposition Critic for Citizenship and Immigration, was immediately up in arms. “The Minister is capping applications on family sponsorships but increasing the numbers on the economic class? He’s going at this the wrong way. Having family members around them keeps new immigrants happier and less isolated, which is ultimately good for the country and good for the economy. We are the second largest country in the world. Our population is only 34 million. We have enough space.”
A true New Democrat who has seen the living standards of the working class get lower and lower over the years, Don Davies got into politics because he wants to help improve the Canadian quality of life. His interests include housing, job creation, wealth-sharing, education and healthcare for everybody. But most of all, he believes in encouraging immigration, not only of the rich and the highly educated, but of everyone else who wants to come to Canada with their families.
“One day I googled the text of the poem inscribed on the Statue Of Liberty, and I was struck by the wisdom that it expressed. Both the American and the Canadian immigration policies were based on this,” says Don Davies. “But it doesn’t seem to be happening anymore.”
“…Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore...” He quotes. “ These are the best kind of immigrants. These people left their home country to escape poverty and oppression and they come here to change their lives. These are the ones who work the hardest and become the best citizens. ”
Instead, Mr. Davies sees a continuous reduction of the family and the refugee classes in the last 15 years, as the economic class increases in numbers. In fact, after changing the rules of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program into a non-recyclable four-year term per worker, closing the family class immigration is only the latest step that the Conservatives have taken towards this end.
The Link, the leading Indo-Canadian newspaper published in Vancouver BC, agrees with Mr. Davies, but also hints at veiled racism: “this is certainly a concerted, directed effort on the part of the Tories … as they realize that the mix from Asia is getting bigger and bigger every year. It is also based on data that in 2030 – visible minority immigrants will overtake the non-visible minority population in Canada. By reducing the family class immigration- which has the largest group of immigrants coming from Asia – specifically from China and India – it is affecting this group and reducing the demand.”
If the NDP were forming the next government, what would they change in the current immigration policies then? Immigration Critic Don Davies has very definite ideas.
First thing he’ll do is increase the number of immigrants. Mr. Davies wants to push for 1 percent immigration, raising the number to 340, 000 immigrants per year, from the current 254,000. He wants to restore the balance of immigration numbers under the family, economic, and refugee classes.
On the Temporary Foreign Worker Program: “The TFWP is nothing but problems,” Don Davies says. “The current system treats the TFWs like an economic piece of equipment. Temporary workers are isolated, they have no access to services, and they are vulnerable to exploitation.” He would reduce the number of temporary foreign workers but give every one of them the option to apply for landed status.
On the Live-in Caregiver Program: Davies confesses that he likes the LCP, but would make several major changes to its requirements.
“It takes a foreign live-in caregiver an average of seven years before she could bring her family to Canada. That length of separation has resulted in countless divorces and traumatized the children. Why keep these families apart if they would be brought in together in the future anyway? It’s a waste of time and it’s bad for the economy.”
Don Davies would like to see the live-in caregivers immediately given permanent residency upon entering the country, and living out with their families. Members of her family would come in under work visas.
On foreign diploma accreditation: “What the government is doing at the moment is talk to the provinces and to every professional group in each province, to come up with a standard for diploma accreditation. We have 10 provinces and about 50 professional groups in each of them. They’ve been at this for years. I don’t think it’s going to work.” Mr. Davies says. “In my 48 years, I have never seen all ten Canadian provinces agree on anything.”
In fact, Don Davies has tabled a motion for the federal government to take a leadership role in the diploma accreditation business. He suggests that the Canadian government talk to every country of origin and together establish standards for diploma accreditation by consulting with its universities, and to make the enforcement of these standards a federal motion. He says he’s carefully watching how the Conservatives will deal with this issue.
From my point of view, Davis and the NDP appear to be on the right track. Let’s help them make it happen.
As the Conservative government takes advantage of their majority in the Parliament by merrily passing one bill after another, they’re also radically changing the face of the Canadian immigration system.
The latest among these changes hit the press last November 4, when Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced that Canada would no longer be accepting family class applications effective November 5.
Don Davies, MP for Vancouver-Kingsway and the Official Opposition Critic for Citizenship and Immigration, was immediately up in arms. “The Minister is capping applications on family sponsorships but increasing the numbers on the economic class? He’s going at this the wrong way. Having family members around them keeps new immigrants happier and less isolated, which is ultimately good for the country and good for the economy. We are the second largest country in the world. Our population is only 34 million. We have enough space.”
A true New Democrat who has seen the living standards of the working class get lower and lower over the years, Don Davies got into politics because he wants to help improve the Canadian quality of life. His interests include housing, job creation, wealth-sharing, education and healthcare for everybody. But most of all, he believes in encouraging immigration, not only of the rich and the highly educated, but of everyone else who wants to come to Canada with their families.
“One day I googled the text of the poem inscribed on the Statue Of Liberty, and I was struck by the wisdom that it expressed. Both the American and the Canadian immigration policies were based on this,” says Don Davies. “But it doesn’t seem to be happening anymore.”
“…Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore...” He quotes. “ These are the best kind of immigrants. These people left their home country to escape poverty and oppression and they come here to change their lives. These are the ones who work the hardest and become the best citizens. ”
Instead, Mr. Davies sees a continuous reduction of the family and the refugee classes in the last 15 years, as the economic class increases in numbers. In fact, after changing the rules of the Temporary Foreign Worker Program into a non-recyclable four-year term per worker, closing the family class immigration is only the latest step that the Conservatives have taken towards this end.
The Link, the leading Indo-Canadian newspaper published in Vancouver BC, agrees with Mr. Davies, but also hints at veiled racism: “this is certainly a concerted, directed effort on the part of the Tories … as they realize that the mix from Asia is getting bigger and bigger every year. It is also based on data that in 2030 – visible minority immigrants will overtake the non-visible minority population in Canada. By reducing the family class immigration- which has the largest group of immigrants coming from Asia – specifically from China and India – it is affecting this group and reducing the demand.”
If the NDP were forming the next government, what would they change in the current immigration policies then? Immigration Critic Don Davies has very definite ideas.
First thing he’ll do is increase the number of immigrants. Mr. Davies wants to push for 1 percent immigration, raising the number to 340, 000 immigrants per year, from the current 254,000. He wants to restore the balance of immigration numbers under the family, economic, and refugee classes.
On the Temporary Foreign Worker Program: “The TFWP is nothing but problems,” Don Davies says. “The current system treats the TFWs like an economic piece of equipment. Temporary workers are isolated, they have no access to services, and they are vulnerable to exploitation.” He would reduce the number of temporary foreign workers but give every one of them the option to apply for landed status.
On the Live-in Caregiver Program: Davies confesses that he likes the LCP, but would make several major changes to its requirements.
“It takes a foreign live-in caregiver an average of seven years before she could bring her family to Canada. That length of separation has resulted in countless divorces and traumatized the children. Why keep these families apart if they would be brought in together in the future anyway? It’s a waste of time and it’s bad for the economy.”
Don Davies would like to see the live-in caregivers immediately given permanent residency upon entering the country, and living out with their families. Members of her family would come in under work visas.
On foreign diploma accreditation: “What the government is doing at the moment is talk to the provinces and to every professional group in each province, to come up with a standard for diploma accreditation. We have 10 provinces and about 50 professional groups in each of them. They’ve been at this for years. I don’t think it’s going to work.” Mr. Davies says. “In my 48 years, I have never seen all ten Canadian provinces agree on anything.”
In fact, Don Davies has tabled a motion for the federal government to take a leadership role in the diploma accreditation business. He suggests that the Canadian government talk to every country of origin and together establish standards for diploma accreditation by consulting with its universities, and to make the enforcement of these standards a federal motion. He says he’s carefully watching how the Conservatives will deal with this issue.
From my point of view, Davis and the NDP appear to be on the right track. Let’s help them make it happen.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Teaching ESL Online: new trend helps keep Filipinos at home
(previously published at the Mill Woods Mosaic, March 15, 2011 issue)
The Korean Engkey is egg-shaped like Eve, the trigger-happy robot in the animated film Wall-E, but it acts like the surrogate in a sci-fi movie starring Bruce Willis. The surrogate is a robot remotely controlled by the individual it represents. It’s created to look like its operator, and it performs whatever tasks he wants it to do.
However, the Engkey is not the product of some scriptwriter’s imagination. It’s a real robot designed by the Korean Institute of Science and Technology, and remotely operated by English teachers from the Philippines. Twenty-nine of these have been deployed in several South Korean elementary schools to teach the English language.
The Korean authorities say these teacher-bots make learning more interesting to their students, while hiring experienced teachers from the Philippines to operate them doesn’t cost them too much. Apparently, the salary rates of the Filipino online English teachers are the lowest anywhere.
Naysayers are already expressing doubts about the long-term psychological effects of learning from robots on Korean children, as well as the prospect of numerous Korean teachers losing their jobs to these bots. The government promises, however, that the Engkey will only be used as reinforcement and will not replace real teachers at all.
This piece of news about the South Korean teaching innovation caught my attention for two reasons: teaching English as a second language is a popular job among English speakers nowadays, and I know people who are doing it both in Canada and in the Philippines, in person and online.
Forget about the Engkey; teaching ESL to other Asians has become a big part of the Philippines’ underground economy. Countries like Japan, China, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam have decided that learning the language is an important part of their growth, and in conjunction with that, ESL teachers have become in demand.
The Philippines, whose school curriculum required teaching kids English from nursery level, is well placed to share around its fluency. There is, you’ll be interested to find out, a network of agencies all over the Philippines that internationally hire out the services of ESL teachers online through Skype.
Getting an ESL teaching position in the Philippines is not easy, however. An aspiring teacher is first meticulously tested for command of the language; after passing, she is then trained and vetted by the agency that recruited her, and then given a chance to hold demo lessons for her prospective students via Skype. If the students liked what they saw and heard, she got hired.
I know the drill, because my daughter Maricar is currently employed by one of those agencies. She now talks regularly to her Korean agent, discussing students, hiring and paying new teachers, and synchronizing hours. Maricar, who has always chosen not to work outside the home, times her online lessons to coincide with her kids’ school hours, or after they’re home and already in bed.
Maricar loves sharing her knowledge. She enjoys her interaction with her Korean students because they usually set the tone of the lessons, and in some cases they end up discussing current events, political ideas, or interpreting common English idioms and expressions. But most of all, the job allows her to earn money in the confines of her own home. Did I mention she also get paid in US dollars?
I’m impressed with this new job trend in the Philippines. Very pleased for Maricar indeed, but nevertheless envious and feeling hard-done by. Maricar is helping her husband support the family and feeling good about doing it. She gets her three children ready for school in the morning. She helps them out with their homework at night, has dinner with the family, and hangs out with them on weekends. Things I have never been able to enjoy when my own kids were growing up because I needed to leave the country to find work.
If this trend keeps growing --- and I have no doubt it will since there is much demand for ESL teachers among other Asian countries --- the English-speaking Filipinos have a lot to be happy about. They’re sitting in the midst of potential customers totalling over one-and-a-half billion people. With those numbers, there can be only increasing opportunities for teaching in the near future. Which, I daresay, will help many fluent, English-speaking Filipino mothers work from home and stay with their own kids, as opposed to what many of the older mothers like me had done in the past.
The Korean Engkey is egg-shaped like Eve, the trigger-happy robot in the animated film Wall-E, but it acts like the surrogate in a sci-fi movie starring Bruce Willis. The surrogate is a robot remotely controlled by the individual it represents. It’s created to look like its operator, and it performs whatever tasks he wants it to do.
However, the Engkey is not the product of some scriptwriter’s imagination. It’s a real robot designed by the Korean Institute of Science and Technology, and remotely operated by English teachers from the Philippines. Twenty-nine of these have been deployed in several South Korean elementary schools to teach the English language.
The Korean authorities say these teacher-bots make learning more interesting to their students, while hiring experienced teachers from the Philippines to operate them doesn’t cost them too much. Apparently, the salary rates of the Filipino online English teachers are the lowest anywhere.
Naysayers are already expressing doubts about the long-term psychological effects of learning from robots on Korean children, as well as the prospect of numerous Korean teachers losing their jobs to these bots. The government promises, however, that the Engkey will only be used as reinforcement and will not replace real teachers at all.
This piece of news about the South Korean teaching innovation caught my attention for two reasons: teaching English as a second language is a popular job among English speakers nowadays, and I know people who are doing it both in Canada and in the Philippines, in person and online.
Forget about the Engkey; teaching ESL to other Asians has become a big part of the Philippines’ underground economy. Countries like Japan, China, South Korea, Thailand and Vietnam have decided that learning the language is an important part of their growth, and in conjunction with that, ESL teachers have become in demand.
The Philippines, whose school curriculum required teaching kids English from nursery level, is well placed to share around its fluency. There is, you’ll be interested to find out, a network of agencies all over the Philippines that internationally hire out the services of ESL teachers online through Skype.
Getting an ESL teaching position in the Philippines is not easy, however. An aspiring teacher is first meticulously tested for command of the language; after passing, she is then trained and vetted by the agency that recruited her, and then given a chance to hold demo lessons for her prospective students via Skype. If the students liked what they saw and heard, she got hired.
I know the drill, because my daughter Maricar is currently employed by one of those agencies. She now talks regularly to her Korean agent, discussing students, hiring and paying new teachers, and synchronizing hours. Maricar, who has always chosen not to work outside the home, times her online lessons to coincide with her kids’ school hours, or after they’re home and already in bed.
Maricar loves sharing her knowledge. She enjoys her interaction with her Korean students because they usually set the tone of the lessons, and in some cases they end up discussing current events, political ideas, or interpreting common English idioms and expressions. But most of all, the job allows her to earn money in the confines of her own home. Did I mention she also get paid in US dollars?
I’m impressed with this new job trend in the Philippines. Very pleased for Maricar indeed, but nevertheless envious and feeling hard-done by. Maricar is helping her husband support the family and feeling good about doing it. She gets her three children ready for school in the morning. She helps them out with their homework at night, has dinner with the family, and hangs out with them on weekends. Things I have never been able to enjoy when my own kids were growing up because I needed to leave the country to find work.
If this trend keeps growing --- and I have no doubt it will since there is much demand for ESL teachers among other Asian countries --- the English-speaking Filipinos have a lot to be happy about. They’re sitting in the midst of potential customers totalling over one-and-a-half billion people. With those numbers, there can be only increasing opportunities for teaching in the near future. Which, I daresay, will help many fluent, English-speaking Filipino mothers work from home and stay with their own kids, as opposed to what many of the older mothers like me had done in the past.
Friday, September 9, 2011
The Secret Wish Of A Farmer’s Daughter
Idyllic. Bucolic. Romantic. Cliché adjectives come to mind whenever I drive along a road that bisects, say, a prairie farm in Alberta or a cornfield in BC’s Fraser Valley, in the summer. I look at the barns and grain silos that tower over endless fields, and I wonder about the farmers who work in them. Being a farmer’s daughter who came from a small community, I’ve always been curious about the farming culture in other places.
Now that I live where produce is available in any grocery store, pre-washed, wrapped and ready to go, sometimes I still feel out of place. Gone are the days when I could go into our yard and pick an orange off a tree for breakfast. Gone are the times when I knew who planted what, and which neighbour’s crop was ready to harvest on a certain week.
My old village was a one-street barangay where houses weren’t numbered, even up to this day. The town postman found people by asking the first resident he met. A response would be something like: ‘Juan Atienza? He lives by that little store. I’m going that way. I could drop his mail off for you.’
Back in my childhood, people helped each other out without expecting to be paid. When someone needed to build a house or weed a field, word was sent and helpers came, in exchange for free meals and the knowledge that when one of them needed similar assistance, people would turn up without question.
When a family hosted a wedding, usually a three-day affair, everyone came to chop wood, fetch water, build the canopy, and contribute live chickens and sacks of rice. Even assist in cooking huge vats of food. These would be the same people who would sing and dance on the eve of the ceremony, and bring their families to the reception next day. When you invited one person, you cooked for ten, because you had to assume their whole brood was coming.
There was trust among neighbours. I recall the days when only one family had a TV set, a gigantic black and white console sitting in their living room. During big basketball tournaments, the village menfolk turned up in this family’s living room to watch the games. All their slippers were left lined in pairs outside the front door. The noise and camaraderie would last until the wee hours, because the audience stayed back to discuss the results. Many times, according to my brother, if the family decided to go to bed early, they’d ask people to please close the door before going.
It was a real shock when I left the farm to live in the city. Neighbours locked their doors. You kept your stuff, like slippers, inside the house so no one could steal it. You tethered your dog because if you lost it, it could end up being someone’s dinner. You had to pay people if you wanted them to do things for you.
I found it even less personal when I lived in Singapore. Our front door was face-to-face with the door of the next condo unit. Its occupants and I sometimes took the elevators together. But never, in the three years I lived there, did we exchange any real conversation or introduced ourselves.
Canada is different from Singapore in many ways. It’s friendlier. Neighbours are inclined to chat over the fence, even look out for each other. I love it here.
Yet I feel the constant call of rural life. I suppose it’s because I left the place when I was so young, before I really needed to leave the village. I suppose there’s much truth to a North American saying that you can take the boy, or girl, out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of them.
My mind is filled with possibly unattainable, possibly foolish thoughts, of one day re-living the past. My secret wish is to buy back the old family farm, --- long since sold to a sugar cane farmer --- repopulate it with fruit-bearing trees, and retire there. Not that I did much farming as a child. I mainly swung on a little hammock under the house and sang loudly while the rest of the family were either weeding the rice field or harvesting it. I left the farm to go to school in the city at age 9. Perhaps the farm and I have unfinished business.
My three daughters who were all born and bred in the big city will certainly find my desire to grow old on a farm strange, or even scary. They’re used to a relatively mud-free environment, where they didn’t have to walk a mile to procure something. They hop into a vehicle and ride everywhere. They have their malls, their Internet, and their cell phones.
They may not know what to do on a rural setting today, but given the chance I’m sure they would love living on a farm as much as I did. After all, they do play Farmville. Rural culture flows in their blood.
(Previously published at the Mill Woods Mosaic, Feb 15, 2011 issue)
Now that I live where produce is available in any grocery store, pre-washed, wrapped and ready to go, sometimes I still feel out of place. Gone are the days when I could go into our yard and pick an orange off a tree for breakfast. Gone are the times when I knew who planted what, and which neighbour’s crop was ready to harvest on a certain week.
My old village was a one-street barangay where houses weren’t numbered, even up to this day. The town postman found people by asking the first resident he met. A response would be something like: ‘Juan Atienza? He lives by that little store. I’m going that way. I could drop his mail off for you.’
Back in my childhood, people helped each other out without expecting to be paid. When someone needed to build a house or weed a field, word was sent and helpers came, in exchange for free meals and the knowledge that when one of them needed similar assistance, people would turn up without question.
When a family hosted a wedding, usually a three-day affair, everyone came to chop wood, fetch water, build the canopy, and contribute live chickens and sacks of rice. Even assist in cooking huge vats of food. These would be the same people who would sing and dance on the eve of the ceremony, and bring their families to the reception next day. When you invited one person, you cooked for ten, because you had to assume their whole brood was coming.
There was trust among neighbours. I recall the days when only one family had a TV set, a gigantic black and white console sitting in their living room. During big basketball tournaments, the village menfolk turned up in this family’s living room to watch the games. All their slippers were left lined in pairs outside the front door. The noise and camaraderie would last until the wee hours, because the audience stayed back to discuss the results. Many times, according to my brother, if the family decided to go to bed early, they’d ask people to please close the door before going.
It was a real shock when I left the farm to live in the city. Neighbours locked their doors. You kept your stuff, like slippers, inside the house so no one could steal it. You tethered your dog because if you lost it, it could end up being someone’s dinner. You had to pay people if you wanted them to do things for you.
I found it even less personal when I lived in Singapore. Our front door was face-to-face with the door of the next condo unit. Its occupants and I sometimes took the elevators together. But never, in the three years I lived there, did we exchange any real conversation or introduced ourselves.
Canada is different from Singapore in many ways. It’s friendlier. Neighbours are inclined to chat over the fence, even look out for each other. I love it here.
Yet I feel the constant call of rural life. I suppose it’s because I left the place when I was so young, before I really needed to leave the village. I suppose there’s much truth to a North American saying that you can take the boy, or girl, out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of them.
My mind is filled with possibly unattainable, possibly foolish thoughts, of one day re-living the past. My secret wish is to buy back the old family farm, --- long since sold to a sugar cane farmer --- repopulate it with fruit-bearing trees, and retire there. Not that I did much farming as a child. I mainly swung on a little hammock under the house and sang loudly while the rest of the family were either weeding the rice field or harvesting it. I left the farm to go to school in the city at age 9. Perhaps the farm and I have unfinished business.
My three daughters who were all born and bred in the big city will certainly find my desire to grow old on a farm strange, or even scary. They’re used to a relatively mud-free environment, where they didn’t have to walk a mile to procure something. They hop into a vehicle and ride everywhere. They have their malls, their Internet, and their cell phones.
They may not know what to do on a rural setting today, but given the chance I’m sure they would love living on a farm as much as I did. After all, they do play Farmville. Rural culture flows in their blood.
(Previously published at the Mill Woods Mosaic, Feb 15, 2011 issue)
Thursday, February 10, 2011
Think You’re Getting ‘Faked’? Snoop Around Before Paying
When Elenor Diaz sent $4000 dollars to the Philippines for her family’s airfare last December, she expected her husband and three children to join her in Montreal long before Christmas arrived. Instead, her husband Nilo called her to say they weren’t coming. The air tickets he bought were worthless, because the Manila agent sold him duds and took off with the money. The family went straight back to the village from the airport, disappointed and feeling humiliated.
Elenor’s employer Lissa Matyas called the Montreal Gazette with the story. Readers responded with donations. The owner of an international remittance company paid $5,800 for new air tickets for Nilo Diaz and the three Diaz children. They finally landed in Montreal on December 29th.
Elenor Diaz’s story is both heart warming and cautionary, because it exemplifies both the best and the worst in others.
Scams and fraudulent acts are perpetrated on the trusting all over the world everyday, and one can only wish these things don’t have to happen too often. In the Philippines, most of the scams being committed are related to immigration and foreign job placements. Scammers know that a lot of people are desperate to leave the country, and would pay whatever it takes to get to where they wanted to go.
Countless dreamers have been burned by empty promises, and getting scammed is so common that Filipinos have come up with a term for it, ‘getting faked’. When someone pays for placement in a non-existent job in another country, then learns about it after his agent has disappeared, he’s been ‘faked’. Through the years, as applicants become savvier, the fraudsters get more sophisticated in response. I’ll cite you a concrete example.
Last year, I’ve had the chance to prevent one of these fake job offers from being foisted on a close friend in Manila. I was alerted by the fact that her Canadian agent required US$700 to get her visa approved. The agency was based in Calgary and didn’t have any offices in Manila. From my experience, legitimate placement agencies don’t ask for big amounts of cash but usually get paid by salary deduction.
Fortunately for my friend, she didn’t have the money. She emailed me to ask for a loan. I requested her to send me the agency details. Since I’m already in Canada, it would be easy for me to find out if the opening was genuine. The letters she had received looked legit at first glance. They contained the name of the agency, its address and phone numbers, and the name of my friend’s contact agent. It also gave the name of the Toronto department store where she was supposedly going to work a sales clerk.
Added to all these information was the name of a lawyer purportedly representing the department store, his address and phone numbers. Another letter said that my friend’s work visa would be released a week from the date of the letter. For the hiring to be finalized, they need the money immediately. You can imagine the pressure on my friend to come up with the amount.
I didn’t trust the job offer and asked her permission to let me do more research. I said if it were genuine, I would help her raise the money. First I called the lawyer, but his phone numbers weren’t in service. Then I called the agency in Calgary. I was told that the agent cited in my friend’s files indeed worked in their office, but denied having anything to do with the job offer. They didn’t have any placement contract with said department store in Toronto, and hadn’t heard of said lawyer. I was assured they didn’t place sales people in department stores.
I did an Internet search and found very similar moneymaking schemes in a scam-reporting website. Different agencies, different lawyers. Same amount of money being required. The same modus operandi being played on hapless job seekers, not only in the Philippines but also in Hong Kong and other Asian countries. As long as there are people who are too trusting, or too desperate, there will be others waiting to prey on them and volunteer to give them what they wanted.
My only suggestion is, if an agency asked you for a big amount of cash, don’t pay. Do some research first. Ask questions. Consult friends and relatives. Use the Internet. Chances are if it were an existing scam, others would have reported it. This may not always prevent you from getting faked, but it could help you avoid other instances.
In Nilo Diaz’ case, it’s harder to tell if you’re dealing with a shady air ticket seller. The best thing to do is go straight to an airline ticketing office and buy it from there. It might cost you a bit more, but you’ll get to your destination without any doubts.
(Previously published at the Mill Woods Mosaic, January 15th 2011 issue)
Elenor’s employer Lissa Matyas called the Montreal Gazette with the story. Readers responded with donations. The owner of an international remittance company paid $5,800 for new air tickets for Nilo Diaz and the three Diaz children. They finally landed in Montreal on December 29th.
Elenor Diaz’s story is both heart warming and cautionary, because it exemplifies both the best and the worst in others.
Scams and fraudulent acts are perpetrated on the trusting all over the world everyday, and one can only wish these things don’t have to happen too often. In the Philippines, most of the scams being committed are related to immigration and foreign job placements. Scammers know that a lot of people are desperate to leave the country, and would pay whatever it takes to get to where they wanted to go.
Countless dreamers have been burned by empty promises, and getting scammed is so common that Filipinos have come up with a term for it, ‘getting faked’. When someone pays for placement in a non-existent job in another country, then learns about it after his agent has disappeared, he’s been ‘faked’. Through the years, as applicants become savvier, the fraudsters get more sophisticated in response. I’ll cite you a concrete example.
Last year, I’ve had the chance to prevent one of these fake job offers from being foisted on a close friend in Manila. I was alerted by the fact that her Canadian agent required US$700 to get her visa approved. The agency was based in Calgary and didn’t have any offices in Manila. From my experience, legitimate placement agencies don’t ask for big amounts of cash but usually get paid by salary deduction.
Fortunately for my friend, she didn’t have the money. She emailed me to ask for a loan. I requested her to send me the agency details. Since I’m already in Canada, it would be easy for me to find out if the opening was genuine. The letters she had received looked legit at first glance. They contained the name of the agency, its address and phone numbers, and the name of my friend’s contact agent. It also gave the name of the Toronto department store where she was supposedly going to work a sales clerk.
Added to all these information was the name of a lawyer purportedly representing the department store, his address and phone numbers. Another letter said that my friend’s work visa would be released a week from the date of the letter. For the hiring to be finalized, they need the money immediately. You can imagine the pressure on my friend to come up with the amount.
I didn’t trust the job offer and asked her permission to let me do more research. I said if it were genuine, I would help her raise the money. First I called the lawyer, but his phone numbers weren’t in service. Then I called the agency in Calgary. I was told that the agent cited in my friend’s files indeed worked in their office, but denied having anything to do with the job offer. They didn’t have any placement contract with said department store in Toronto, and hadn’t heard of said lawyer. I was assured they didn’t place sales people in department stores.
I did an Internet search and found very similar moneymaking schemes in a scam-reporting website. Different agencies, different lawyers. Same amount of money being required. The same modus operandi being played on hapless job seekers, not only in the Philippines but also in Hong Kong and other Asian countries. As long as there are people who are too trusting, or too desperate, there will be others waiting to prey on them and volunteer to give them what they wanted.
My only suggestion is, if an agency asked you for a big amount of cash, don’t pay. Do some research first. Ask questions. Consult friends and relatives. Use the Internet. Chances are if it were an existing scam, others would have reported it. This may not always prevent you from getting faked, but it could help you avoid other instances.
In Nilo Diaz’ case, it’s harder to tell if you’re dealing with a shady air ticket seller. The best thing to do is go straight to an airline ticketing office and buy it from there. It might cost you a bit more, but you’ll get to your destination without any doubts.
(Previously published at the Mill Woods Mosaic, January 15th 2011 issue)
Saturday, December 11, 2010
What exactly, are the roots of racism?
“Are all the Filipinos poor?” The man sitting beside me in the bus turned to me and asked.
I looked at his face to check if he was joking. The man, also an Asian, was serious. He actually wanted to know. Although I found his question ignorant and offensive, I didn’t say so. Instead, I asked him back: “Are all citizens from your country poor?”
He didn’t think so. I held my tongue after that. I got off on the next stop still upset about the man’s question. That interaction happened twenty years ago. I’ve thought about the incident every now and then; thought about various snide ways of answering him. I always come back to the conclusion that perhaps I should have told him that not all Filipinos are poor, instead of feeling insulted and defensive.
I could have told him that the very rich and the very poor Filipinos usually stay back home. That the rich ones didn’t need to leave the country to find a better life, while the very poor aren’t educated enough and didn’t have the wherewithal to pay their way out. That the Filipinos he meets in Canada are what I would call the adventurous, the middle, the educated class. These include the nannies.
I’ve experienced other expressions of racism since then, some of which were ironically well-meaning. A long time ago, a friend told me that her car broke down in the middle of the Lions Gate Bridge. Said bridge only has three lanes, the middle of which changes direction every twenty minutes or so. It’s one of the two bridges that connect our town to the mainland. Traffic on this bridge notoriously reaches bottle-neck proportions during rush hours. My friend’s car was caught in one of these bottlenecks. Fortunately she was able to steer her car out of the bridge into a safe shoulder.
“Otherwise, I could have been lynched!” relieved, she recounted her experience to me. Then to make sure I understood her, she inquired, “By the way, do you know what ‘lynched’ means?”
Bad question. I was young and rather proud of my fluency in English. I remember giving her three synonyms for ‘lynched’ in one breath. After that, she never assumed I would misunderstand her ever again. We remain close friends.
I’d been in conversations where a Caucasian would speak to me very, very, slowly, word by word, so that I’d get his point. Whenever this happened, I rudely interrupt the speaker by finishing their sentence for them. That usually shuts them up.
I’ve actually lost my temper and shouted at people for being racist to me, at least twice. I’ve now regretted having done so. Forgive me. At the time, though, I found it very satisfying to watch the objects of my anger being rendered speechless with shock. I’m sure they’ve never seen a little brown person explode in their presence before .
Through the years, I’ve grown more tolerant of people’s false assumptions regarding Filipinos, or of other races, for that matter. I myself have been guilty of subscribing to ethnic stereotypes and although I don’t say them aloud, I definitely think them. I have a collection of racist jokes culled from my travels, which I enjoy reading and sharing with others. After all, as my friend says, there’s a little racist in everyone of us.
Which leads me to wonder --- what exactly, is the root of racism?
Firstly, I think it’s borne of ignorance. Not knowing much about a particular ethnic group, aside from what we’ve read in the papers and heard from our friends, we often draw our own skewed conclusions from such limited stores of information. We listen to stereotypes. We believe in blanket classifications of different races. Those guys are bad drivers; this group treat their women like furniture; those people are mostly involved in drug-dealing and other criminal activities. In reality, bad drivers, sexist men, drug dealers, and criminals can be found in every racial grouping.
Secondly, it’s the economy. Take the Philippines, for instance. Due to lack of economic opportunities at home, Filipinos leave the country in droves to seek their fortune elsewhere. Women work as nurses, hotel staff and domestics abroad. In Canada, the Live-in Caregiver Program has brought in thousands of our women to work as domestics and caregivers. A Canadian man admitted once that whenever he saw a gaggle of Filipino women in the bus on weekends, he used to assume they were nannies on a day-off.
And finally, it’s a by-product of colonization. The bitter irony in this type of racism is that a sense of superiority stays with certain members of the colonized long after the colonizers have left. I’ve felt it. I’ve fought against it in my own country. There’s another name for it: colonial mentality. It comes from being born in a place where one is expected to take pride in having some conqueror’s blood running in one’s veins, of being considered prettier than the indigenous because one has a fairer skin or a more western nose. Sad but true.
These days, I’ve stopped reacting violently to whiffs of racism. I try to live by example. Pessimists say there’s no cure for racism, but I’m thinking if I could help open one person’s mind every now and then, that’s good enough for me.
(Previously published at the Mill Woods Mosaic, Oct 15, 2010 issue)
I looked at his face to check if he was joking. The man, also an Asian, was serious. He actually wanted to know. Although I found his question ignorant and offensive, I didn’t say so. Instead, I asked him back: “Are all citizens from your country poor?”
He didn’t think so. I held my tongue after that. I got off on the next stop still upset about the man’s question. That interaction happened twenty years ago. I’ve thought about the incident every now and then; thought about various snide ways of answering him. I always come back to the conclusion that perhaps I should have told him that not all Filipinos are poor, instead of feeling insulted and defensive.
I could have told him that the very rich and the very poor Filipinos usually stay back home. That the rich ones didn’t need to leave the country to find a better life, while the very poor aren’t educated enough and didn’t have the wherewithal to pay their way out. That the Filipinos he meets in Canada are what I would call the adventurous, the middle, the educated class. These include the nannies.
I’ve experienced other expressions of racism since then, some of which were ironically well-meaning. A long time ago, a friend told me that her car broke down in the middle of the Lions Gate Bridge. Said bridge only has three lanes, the middle of which changes direction every twenty minutes or so. It’s one of the two bridges that connect our town to the mainland. Traffic on this bridge notoriously reaches bottle-neck proportions during rush hours. My friend’s car was caught in one of these bottlenecks. Fortunately she was able to steer her car out of the bridge into a safe shoulder.
“Otherwise, I could have been lynched!” relieved, she recounted her experience to me. Then to make sure I understood her, she inquired, “By the way, do you know what ‘lynched’ means?”
Bad question. I was young and rather proud of my fluency in English. I remember giving her three synonyms for ‘lynched’ in one breath. After that, she never assumed I would misunderstand her ever again. We remain close friends.
I’d been in conversations where a Caucasian would speak to me very, very, slowly, word by word, so that I’d get his point. Whenever this happened, I rudely interrupt the speaker by finishing their sentence for them. That usually shuts them up.
I’ve actually lost my temper and shouted at people for being racist to me, at least twice. I’ve now regretted having done so. Forgive me. At the time, though, I found it very satisfying to watch the objects of my anger being rendered speechless with shock. I’m sure they’ve never seen a little brown person explode in their presence before .
Through the years, I’ve grown more tolerant of people’s false assumptions regarding Filipinos, or of other races, for that matter. I myself have been guilty of subscribing to ethnic stereotypes and although I don’t say them aloud, I definitely think them. I have a collection of racist jokes culled from my travels, which I enjoy reading and sharing with others. After all, as my friend says, there’s a little racist in everyone of us.
Which leads me to wonder --- what exactly, is the root of racism?
Firstly, I think it’s borne of ignorance. Not knowing much about a particular ethnic group, aside from what we’ve read in the papers and heard from our friends, we often draw our own skewed conclusions from such limited stores of information. We listen to stereotypes. We believe in blanket classifications of different races. Those guys are bad drivers; this group treat their women like furniture; those people are mostly involved in drug-dealing and other criminal activities. In reality, bad drivers, sexist men, drug dealers, and criminals can be found in every racial grouping.
Secondly, it’s the economy. Take the Philippines, for instance. Due to lack of economic opportunities at home, Filipinos leave the country in droves to seek their fortune elsewhere. Women work as nurses, hotel staff and domestics abroad. In Canada, the Live-in Caregiver Program has brought in thousands of our women to work as domestics and caregivers. A Canadian man admitted once that whenever he saw a gaggle of Filipino women in the bus on weekends, he used to assume they were nannies on a day-off.
And finally, it’s a by-product of colonization. The bitter irony in this type of racism is that a sense of superiority stays with certain members of the colonized long after the colonizers have left. I’ve felt it. I’ve fought against it in my own country. There’s another name for it: colonial mentality. It comes from being born in a place where one is expected to take pride in having some conqueror’s blood running in one’s veins, of being considered prettier than the indigenous because one has a fairer skin or a more western nose. Sad but true.
These days, I’ve stopped reacting violently to whiffs of racism. I try to live by example. Pessimists say there’s no cure for racism, but I’m thinking if I could help open one person’s mind every now and then, that’s good enough for me.
(Previously published at the Mill Woods Mosaic, Oct 15, 2010 issue)
Friday, November 12, 2010
A Salt Spring Holiday
(previously published at the Mill Woods Mosaic, Oct 15th, 2010 issue)
For many immigrants, working usually takes precedence over taking a vacation. I speak from experience. I myself often feel guilty about going on holiday when there’s so much to do. You know, deadlines to meet, mortgage to pay, and children to support. Yet, everytime I came home from a vacation, I couldn’t help feeling inspired.
Take last week, for instance. I went to Salt Spring Island to attend the Apple Festival, only because it was a working holiday and two high-end hotels --- the Hastings House and the Harbour House Hotel --- kindly offered to host us for a week, courtesy of BC Tourism. Even so, I packed my bags with books, scripts and research notes. I didn’t want to find myself idling on such a trip.
Guess what, my work bag came back untouched but my head was buzzing with new ideas.
Salt Spring Island is located about halfway between Nanaimo and Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia. It’s part of an island group called the Gulf Islands. Salt Spring is mainly a farming community with over ten thousand residents, several thousand sheep and cattle, and a thriving deer population. Those in the know consider Salt Spring Island a special place, it being the residence of choice of numerous writers, artists, photographers, cheese makers, sculptors, ex-hippies and gentlemen farmers from all over Canada, many of whom came to visit the Island in the olden days and never left. Artist Robert Bateman and multi-awarded writer Brian Brett, among others, call it home.
There’s a palpable atmosphere of enlightenment and do-gooding around the place. Every other person seems to be involved in some worthwhile cause or another: to change the world, fight poverty or look after the environment. For example, there’s The Pie Ladies who bake and sell hundreds of pies during the apple festival, with proceeds going to the various charities they’re sponsoring. Then there’s the Coffee Ladies who raise money to buy coffee from the Nicaraguan coffee farmers at free trade rates to sell it on Salt Spring. Profits are sent back to Nicaragua to build schools and other facilities. Or those who raise money to send impoverished local kids to school.
But my friend and I are going after other quarries, one of whom is the Apple Man of Salt Spring himself, the organizer of the Apple Festival and dedicated organic apple farmer Harry Burton. Burton’s apple farm is overrun with weeds and vegetables growing among his 125 varieties of apple trees, which in turn share the 4-acre space with innumerable wasps, at least three garter snakes, two dogs, one cat and dozens of chickens. One chicken seemed to have lost its feathers around the neck, looking as if it narrowly escaped being plucked. He told me it was a rare breed called the Naked-Neck. I had to ask.
Harry Burton was proud to say that no insecticides or chemical fertilizers ever touched his farm. He relied on compost, seaweed and oyster shells to feed his plants. Burton, a former professor of Environmental Protection at Canadore College, North Bay, Ontario, developed a strong affinity with the outdoors during childhood. Farming is his “attempt to come back in line with Mother Nature”.
On his website appleluscious.com, Burton cited several advantages to growing organic food: it protects the quality of water, keeps chemicals off your plate, prevents soil erosion, restores biodiversity, and helps reduce global warming by saving energy. Besides, you don’t have to waste money on pesticides and herbicides.
Eating organic food is one of the most important contributions any of us can make to save the planet, according to Burton. Tons of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides are used in commercial farms every year. More than half of these are known to cause cancer, birth defects, genetic changes or serious irritation if ingested directly, but somehow people have allowed themselves to be convinced that food can be exposed to such poisons without absorbing them. When we invest in organic farming, he added, we get a huge dividend: good, healthy food.
Another organic farmer/writer we sought out was Michael Ableman, owner of Fox Glove Farms and the guru of sustainable agriculture, described by a local newspaper as the man “who can grow carrots on rocks.”
An organic farmer for over twenty years, Ableman has been running Foxglove Farms in Salt Spring Island for almost ten. He also established on this farm The Centre for Art, Ecology and Agriculture, to raise awareness and demonstrate the vital connections between farming, land stewardship, food and community well-being. He organizes workshops on how one can help conserve the environment through organic farming. Wow. Listening to Michael Ableman reminded me of a similar center I’ve been planning to build in my own village in the Philippines one day. Now I don’t have to re-invent the wheel. All I need to do is pick the brains of this man before getting started with my own project.
After I shared these thoughts with him, Ableman gave me a copy of From The Good Earth, one of his books. It’s all about growing organic food around the world. I just knew I have to talk to him again.
As you can see, going on holidays can be very beneficial, especially vacationing on a place like Salt Spring Island.
For many immigrants, working usually takes precedence over taking a vacation. I speak from experience. I myself often feel guilty about going on holiday when there’s so much to do. You know, deadlines to meet, mortgage to pay, and children to support. Yet, everytime I came home from a vacation, I couldn’t help feeling inspired.
Take last week, for instance. I went to Salt Spring Island to attend the Apple Festival, only because it was a working holiday and two high-end hotels --- the Hastings House and the Harbour House Hotel --- kindly offered to host us for a week, courtesy of BC Tourism. Even so, I packed my bags with books, scripts and research notes. I didn’t want to find myself idling on such a trip.
Guess what, my work bag came back untouched but my head was buzzing with new ideas.
Salt Spring Island is located about halfway between Nanaimo and Victoria, the capital city of British Columbia. It’s part of an island group called the Gulf Islands. Salt Spring is mainly a farming community with over ten thousand residents, several thousand sheep and cattle, and a thriving deer population. Those in the know consider Salt Spring Island a special place, it being the residence of choice of numerous writers, artists, photographers, cheese makers, sculptors, ex-hippies and gentlemen farmers from all over Canada, many of whom came to visit the Island in the olden days and never left. Artist Robert Bateman and multi-awarded writer Brian Brett, among others, call it home.
There’s a palpable atmosphere of enlightenment and do-gooding around the place. Every other person seems to be involved in some worthwhile cause or another: to change the world, fight poverty or look after the environment. For example, there’s The Pie Ladies who bake and sell hundreds of pies during the apple festival, with proceeds going to the various charities they’re sponsoring. Then there’s the Coffee Ladies who raise money to buy coffee from the Nicaraguan coffee farmers at free trade rates to sell it on Salt Spring. Profits are sent back to Nicaragua to build schools and other facilities. Or those who raise money to send impoverished local kids to school.
But my friend and I are going after other quarries, one of whom is the Apple Man of Salt Spring himself, the organizer of the Apple Festival and dedicated organic apple farmer Harry Burton. Burton’s apple farm is overrun with weeds and vegetables growing among his 125 varieties of apple trees, which in turn share the 4-acre space with innumerable wasps, at least three garter snakes, two dogs, one cat and dozens of chickens. One chicken seemed to have lost its feathers around the neck, looking as if it narrowly escaped being plucked. He told me it was a rare breed called the Naked-Neck. I had to ask.
Harry Burton was proud to say that no insecticides or chemical fertilizers ever touched his farm. He relied on compost, seaweed and oyster shells to feed his plants. Burton, a former professor of Environmental Protection at Canadore College, North Bay, Ontario, developed a strong affinity with the outdoors during childhood. Farming is his “attempt to come back in line with Mother Nature”.
On his website appleluscious.com, Burton cited several advantages to growing organic food: it protects the quality of water, keeps chemicals off your plate, prevents soil erosion, restores biodiversity, and helps reduce global warming by saving energy. Besides, you don’t have to waste money on pesticides and herbicides.
Eating organic food is one of the most important contributions any of us can make to save the planet, according to Burton. Tons of pesticides, herbicides and fungicides are used in commercial farms every year. More than half of these are known to cause cancer, birth defects, genetic changes or serious irritation if ingested directly, but somehow people have allowed themselves to be convinced that food can be exposed to such poisons without absorbing them. When we invest in organic farming, he added, we get a huge dividend: good, healthy food.
Another organic farmer/writer we sought out was Michael Ableman, owner of Fox Glove Farms and the guru of sustainable agriculture, described by a local newspaper as the man “who can grow carrots on rocks.”
An organic farmer for over twenty years, Ableman has been running Foxglove Farms in Salt Spring Island for almost ten. He also established on this farm The Centre for Art, Ecology and Agriculture, to raise awareness and demonstrate the vital connections between farming, land stewardship, food and community well-being. He organizes workshops on how one can help conserve the environment through organic farming. Wow. Listening to Michael Ableman reminded me of a similar center I’ve been planning to build in my own village in the Philippines one day. Now I don’t have to re-invent the wheel. All I need to do is pick the brains of this man before getting started with my own project.
After I shared these thoughts with him, Ableman gave me a copy of From The Good Earth, one of his books. It’s all about growing organic food around the world. I just knew I have to talk to him again.
As you can see, going on holidays can be very beneficial, especially vacationing on a place like Salt Spring Island.
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