26 Shades of Grey

“Tall hair, don’t care.” That’s pretty much been my mane (hah) mantra for the past few years. My hair has been my identifier and probably what I get the most comments on, from strangers on the subway, coworkers, and even GQ style gurus.

“What’s in there?” I get asked all the time. Well, I always say it’s where I keep all of my secrets. It’s really nothing more than some fiber gum and really strong hairspray… but I’ve recently discovered that there’s something else in there. Ready for it?

A bunch of grey hair.

It’s an old lola’s tale that using gel would eventually make your hair turn grey. That’s what I was told growing up, but I actually don’t remember a time when I didn’t use hair product. Actually, scratch that – I went through a phase in freshman year of high school when this unfortunate thing happened. I guess I saved some money on hair product, but I now see it was at the expense of my dignity.

In any case, I was looking at my hair in the mirror one day and noticed all the grey strands of hair jutting out. I had a quick "OMG" moment, but then stopped myself from plucking them because another old lola’s tale I grew up with was:

“When you pluck one out, three more will grow.” Was it three? I don’t remember. But it was along the same vein of:

“Don’t shave your mustache or it’ll grow coarse.” What? Damn, lola, enough with the hair advice and just let me live.

Seeing myself in the mirror, 26 years old and growing grey hair made me think back on the days when I was eight or nine years old and we were still living in the Philippines. My dad liked to play this game with my older sister and I, where he would have us sift through his hair and pluck out the grey hairs. We’d get money for each one we’d find. In those moments, my dad was literally a giving tree, with pesos growing out of him.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not at like, silver fox status or anything. I have eight grey strands, and if I had kids of my own to bribe with money to pluck them out, they’d probably decline and say that their reward would not even be worth their effort. But I guess it was just a sobering thought to realize that growing old is a very real thing, and it’s no longer some imaginary rite of passage that seems light years away. It’s here.

I’ll be my dad pretty soon, but I’m also realizing that that’s not a bad thing at all. I’m keeping the grey though. My new mane mantra: "Grey hair. Don’t care."

Photo credit: Webmd.com

The Circle of Trust: Sticking to Your Own Kind

“You are the company you keep,” as the popular saying goes. The people in your circle of friends are a reflection of you, and you of them -- not just personality-wise, but often times physically... and in turn, culturally. I might be generalizing too much here, but I feel that most people tend to “stick to their own kind” when it comes to their best friends.

For the record, I don’t think any Pilipino makes a conscious manifesto to only be best friends with other Pilipinos, nor do I think that white people or black people do the same. I think that certain elements cause that to happen -- things like your geographic location, whether or not you were close with your family, etc. Now don’t get me wrong. There are a handful of people I know (myself included) who definitely stick out like a sore thumb in their group of best friends. For example, one of my good friends, Andrea, is Colombian-American and it has been a running joke that she collects Pilipinos for friends, as many of us who are her closest friends are of Pilipino descent.

Maybe this will help explain what I mean a little bit better:

I’ve reached the point in my life where everyone around me is getting engaged and married, and I’m just over here thinking, “I can’t wait to binge watch Veep in front of my laptop because I can ugly-laugh and eat in front of it all I want!” I go to the weddings; I see the photos. White bride, white groom, white entourage. Pilipino bride, Pilipino groom, Pilipino entourage. Black bride, black groom, black entourage.

Again, I’m not saying that all these couples are racist, but it definitely sparks a dialogue on the topic of race -- a dialogue not meant to accuse or attack, but one that tries to question and understand. The question I was prompted to ask myself was, “If I were to get married, what would my entourage look like?”

Well, other than the fact that my wedding would probably be unconventional right off the bat, I think my entourage side would look a little like it were a United Nations General Assembly group photo. No lie. And note, I didn’t say an ASEAN group photo. In fact, for the sake of this blog post, I imagined that I was getting married today (...because that’s not awkward at all) and made a list of who would be standing next to me. I came up with nine people. Only two of them are Pilipino. Insert gasp here.

So if it’s the norm in society, why don’t I have all these Pilipinos around me as my best friends? Well, for starters let me reiterate that in no way am I saying that I’ve failed in not having only Pilipinos as my best friends, nor do I feel that others should and always do stick to their own kind. A few concrete reasons come to mind: geographical location and where I studied.

Had my family stayed in the Philippines and not moved to the States when I was younger, then yes -- my best friends today would probably be all Pilipino for obvious reasons. My family (thankfully) settled in New Jersey a stone’s throw away from New York City in a town that did not have a large Pilipino community. As a result, I grew up in a public school system that gave me the opportunity to be in class with every color in the box. I was in a youth group that was predominantly comprised of Pilipinos, but I didn’t quite find my best friends there. When it came time for college, I decided to attend a university in Long Island that was 63% white, 7% Asian (and out of that Asian percentage, probably about .5% Pilipino). My college had no Asian Club, let alone a Pilipino Club.

My two best friends from home - German and Angela - are not Pilipino. German is Ukrainian-Israeli American and Angela is Peruvian-American. We are the children of immigrant parents. We speak the language of our forefathers. They may not be my Pilipino best friends, but in a way - they are. They understand what it’s like to grow up as the different one; they honor the sacrifices their parents made in facing the unknown and moving their families to a new country; they appreciate traditions and respect culture. They take their shoes off when they come to my parents' house. Here we are purchasing cupcakes for my pretend wedding.

My closest friends may not be my own kind culture-wise, but they are my own kind personality-wise. Friendships are based on experiences and emotions. And for most people, it just so happens that they are cut from the same cultural cloth. I don’t have any glamour shots of my best friends and I taken in swanky studios circa 1998, but I do have vodka shots ready for them when they do finally take their place next to me on my wedding day. Oh wait, I forgot that was just a pretend wedding. Nevermind.

Photo credit: rebelliousbrides.com

Family Talk: Unearthing the Past

I used to think my parents were straight up crazy. Case in point: I was eating lunch with them one day in a humble sandwich shop, begrudgingly listening to my mom give me financial advice about something or another. Suddenly, her face turned stone serious. She looked me dead in the eye and started whispering in Tagalog as if it she were embedding her message in some secret code. The only problem was that I’ve never been able to understand Tagalog, a fact that she of all people knew very well. “What...?” I replied bewildered and frustrated, “I can’t understand you.”

She then drew her words out slowly.

“Hindi...wag…”

I looked around the nearly empty store to see what diabolical agents she might be trying to hide this classified information from. There was nobody but the cashier and two other customers well out of earshot.

“I… don’t… know… what… you’re… saying…”

At last she switched back to English, lowered her voice even softer and divulged:

“Do not ever enter your credit card information into a cell phone app.”

I was not amused.

“What? Why didn’t you just say that? Nobody here or anywhere cares that you’re warning me about entering credit card information!”

“Shhh!”

I pocketed that scene into my head as another one of my mom’s ridiculous antics, and it was only later that I understood why she was behaving so abnormally. I was reading The Gun Dealer’s Daughter by Pilipina author Gina Apostol and casually mentioned to my parents that it was set in the Philippines during the Marcos regime.

“Yes, they called those of us born during his rule Marcos babies,” explained my mom. “And you weren’t allowed to saying against the government. People were really disappearing.”

A blunt blow of realization hit me. I never fully imagined what it was like for my parents growing up through a tyrannical dictatorship, whispering in codes for over twenty years. For a land-of-the-free baby like me, the reality of their past was unfathomable.

Throughout my childhood I’ve heard very little about my parents’ younger years in the Philippines, as if starting a new chapter in their lives necessitated silence from the previous ones, and my assimilated American self didn’t need to know about any of it. Now that I’m older and have shown them I am interested in my roots, the stories are finally starting to slowly trickle out.

For me, the differences between their lives then and now are almost inconceivable. I’m talking traveling salesman to comfortable couch potato, grass mats to memory foam mattresses, farm living to strip mall-studded suburbia. Equally shocking are the tales of their struggles as undocumented immigrants, such as how they were manipulated by their employers and faced the threat of deportation.

The stories I’ve heard, however, are merely snapshots of the big picture. I realized that I know very little about my parents, barely anything about my grandparents and practically nothing beyond them. It’s almost shameful to think that I'm in the dark when it comes to understanding my own family’s history.

That’s why my latest personal quest is to unearth the stories on my family’s past and find ways to keep them alive in the future. It’s exciting really. What lost adventures are waiting to be uncovered? What patterns might I find, what quirks, what tragedies, what might I see reflected back in myself?

I bet there are lifetimes of lessons to learn. I would be gaining a better understanding of who my parents are as people, and preserving a unique narrative that can’t be found in any textbook. What it really comes down to though is that I’m looking for a good story. And the stories that touch us the most, whether in books or Facebook news feeds are those that we can relate to. What’s more relatable than the epic saga of the people who made you?

Photo Credit: Big Fish Games

SPAM: A Story of Love and Hate

For many Pilipinos, there’s nothing like the sound of sizzling SPAM on a hot frying pan just before brunch. When I was in college, a taste of home was never far away as I always made sure that a little rectangular can of SPAM was gleefully sitting in my kitchen cabinet. On lazy Sunday mornings I would throw it over a bed of white rice and enjoy the savory smell of spiced ham wafting in the air.

My (non-Pilipino) roommates, however, did not share the same sentiments as I did. Any mention of eating SPAM was met with a grimace and a resounding: “Ew! Why?”

One of them was so disgusted at the mere presence of SPAM that she wanted to forbid me from cooking it in the apartment while she was home. Sure, I understood that SPAM had a bad rep for being artificial mystery meat, but I was still offended. To me, SPAM was more than just processed meat in a can. It was part of my family and my culture. It was a part of who I was.

My grossed out friends did make one valid point, however: Why? Why did the Pilipino side of me identify so strongly with an American brand of canned pork shoulder and ham? And why was it so despised in its own country of origin?

During World War II, SPAM became the ideal candidate for food rations because it was a cheap and nonperishable good source of protein, and masses of it were sent overseas to American troops. After the Japanese invaded the Philippines, the American soldiers stationed there were able to give their surplus food rations to fleeing Filipinos who were forced to abandon their homes, and thus the SPAM sensation began.

Back in the United States, getting one’s hands on fresh meat during wartime was not easy. For the same economical reasons SPAM spammed its way onto everybody’s plates and eventually became so ubiquitous that everybody grew sick of it. According to Ty Matejowsky, “it was and will always remain an unappetizing reminder of the widespread deprivation brought on by the Great Depression and World War II."

But while SPAM became associated with poverty and unrefinement in the U.S., the very fact that it was an American product ironically elevated SPAM to a foreign delicacy in the Philippines, gratifying happy consumers spanning the working class to the wealthy. Today, SPAM has become so riotously popular among Pilipinos around the world that it is now considered a staple in Pilipino cuisine and inseparable from Pilipino identity. Pilipino obsession with SPAM has reached such a level a fanaticism that there is a restaurant in Manila entirely dedicated to it called the SPAMJAM Café (featuring SPAM Burgers, SPAM Spaghetti, SPAM nuggets, and oh so much more). Maharlika, the hot modern Pilipino restaurant in New York City, flaunts preparing SPAM with a sophisticated flare, including menu choices like beer-battered SPAM fries wittily described as “fresh from the can.”

Its history has evolved SPAM into a complex cultural symbol for both Pilipinos and Americans. SPAM is a symbol of love and hate, rich and poor. It’s a symbol of America’s colonial expansion into Asia and the Pacific and also a reflection of the Pilipino colonial mentality. For many Fil-Ams like myself, eating American SPAM is strangely an expression of my Pilipino identity that clashes against my American one. And although it can sometimes represent shame, SPAM has also become a symbol of pride, rallying Pilipino communities together with gelatinous cohesion.

In all essence, SPAM is the past and the future all globbed together in one little rectangular can. And gosh darn it, it tastes great too. I love SPAM. There, I said it.

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Photo credits: 2.bp.blogspot.com, vintageadbrowser.com, thinrecipes.com, realcheapeats.com

The "Know Thyself" Challenge

"Those who do not know how to look back at where they came from will never get to their destination."

The past can reveal a lot, and those who do not know their own are doomed to either repeat the mistakes of those before them or go against the momentum given to them.

I believe another important element absent from Rizal’s quote is “be aware of where you are now.” Awareness of one’s past and present puts more control and direction toward the future. The uncertainties of the future are mitigated, the immediate path becomes clearer and from that we become more decisive as an individual.

What about as a community? As Fil-Ams, what sort of look-back in history do we need to get to where we are headed? Where are we headed to begin with? Then there is the more present oriented question of “Where are we now?”

These are questions I want answered so we may understand our past, present, and future as individuals of the Fil-Am community. Though the sum of the parts don’t necessarily equate to the whole, we might at least see trends in our individual pasts and presents, as well as motivation for the future. All three will give us an idea of how we are moving as a community.

When we think about these three parts -- past, present, and future -- we can immediately see how intricately tied we are to the Philippines and its natives. Our culture, our family and our friends all branch out from the same tree as the Pilipino people. The branches have spread across the globe with overseas foreign workers (OFWs), nth generation immigrants, and those who have always remained native to the mother islands. Their story is ours as much as ours is theirs.

I’d like us to attack this endeavor strategically as a series over the next year. Each post will deal with a set of questions about the past, the present, or the future from the perspective of individuals; and will be presented as a challenge. I want us to discover our stories together and share them with each other in the comments, or simply bring it up in conversation with friends and family.

I’ll also concurrently interview Pilipino natives, OFWs, and various Pilipino-Americans and feature their stories side-by-side. How interesting would it be, for example, to see three nurses -- a second-generation Fil-Am, an OFW in the Middle East, and one in a rural hospital in the Philippines -- and compare and contrast their stories?

I would love to know why they are where they are, what they do similar and different from each other, and why they do what they do. How different are their motivations and dreams for their future? How similar are their pasts?

If you or any Pilipino/Fil-Am you know has a story you would like featured, here is the pre-interview questionnaire!

For the first challenge, let's take a look at the immediate past: 

Engage your parents and hear their story. Specifically how did they, as Pilipinos or Fil-Ams, believe they got to where they are from where they started? Where are they from exactly? Then share their story with the rest of the community!

I look forward to your answers. When we understand how we got here and where we really are right now, we will help each other get to our destination. Know thyself.

Photo credit: www.stephenlabit.com/travel