You’re Filipino — shout it out
— c’mon
If you’re beautiful — shout it out
— c’mon
If your life is valuable — c’mon
Thank you for your support.

~borrowed from the L.A. Times article by David Pierson

I blogged about signs not too long ago, about paying attention to things going on around you that seem to be sending you a message. Today was one of those serendipitous moments. I am really swamped with work, blogging daily for NaBloPoMo, getting ready for an upcoming vacation, not to mention that tomorrow is Thanksgiving Holiday and I still have to write out my grocery list then stop at the grocery store on my way home from work this evening. So this really was not an ideal time for me to do a re-cap of this past month’s round of blogkadahan posts as much as I really wanted to. I was going to leave it up to our ever-cheerful-and-full-of-positive-vibes-Toni to do the wrap up.

That is, until this morning when I turned on my computer and was going through my emails.

You can call it coincidence if you want. When we first started this round with my musings about the ubiquitous balikbayan box, there were signs that showed us which way to go. Now as we end this round of My Pinoy Blues, I am again made aware of how much an impact the expat experience affects all of us whether we have chosen to leave our Philippines or not when I read this article on the L.A. Times, thanks to sister O, about the song Bebot by Allan Pineda of the group Black Eyed Peas. Read the article for the whole story.

You can take the Filipino out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the Pinoy, no matter how well we can assimilate to where ever we happen to wash ashore. Another funny but true quote about our ability to blend in, from the article:

“Part of the problem is we blend in so well,” said Winston Emano, an executive at an L.A.-based public relations firm and a community activist. “We have a rapid rate of assimilation. Put a Filipino in Antarctica, and in one month they’ll be one with the penguins.”

We may become penguins, but our blood will always run hot with adobo and sinigang. That is the bottom line of all the posts we’ve had this past month.

If you missed any of the posts, visit blogkadahan.com to read about My Pinoy Blues – Should I Stay or Should I go now.

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I am also thankful I am not Kramer.

While getting dressed this morning, I saw an interview of the two men that he was directing his comments to, and it was quite enlightening. They revealed some things that were not previously discussed with the news bites about the tirade. I’ve never been a fan of the guy, unlike Mel Gibson, but it is disappointing, nonetheless that this kind of thinking is still around.

He claimed he is not a racist. I beg to differ. I think, if we are all honest about ourselves, we would admit that we are all racists to some extent or another. We all have our biases, we all fall for stereotypes. It’s human nature to find differences in others to make ourselves feel better. It comes down to choices. Do you choose to be ruled by primal instincts or do you choose to follow a more learned path. The promoter of racism is ignorance.

Like I have said over and over again, learn about the person you hate the most, and you may find that there isn’t very much separating you. If you learn to love yourself then loving your enemies will come sooner.

So, I LOVE YOU Mike Richards and Mel Gibson! Peace.

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Back to signs…right before I hit Publish Post, I happened to switch to another screen by accident, to this email from AWAD (A Word A Day):

invidious (in-VID-ee-uhs) adjective

Unjust, offensive, or hateful, and likely to arouse resentment,
ill will, anger, etc.

[From Latin invidiosus (envious, envied, hostile), from invidia (envy, hostility), from videre (to see). Ultimately from the Indo-European root weid- (to see) that is also the source of words such as guide, wise, vision, advice, idea, story, and history.]

Me using it in a sentence:
The invidious acts of the two people described above will cost their careers greatly.

Subscribe to AWAD.

This is the final week to submit your entries for Lasang Pinoy 11. I invite you to join us in Our Kitchen and share your memories of summer and the foods you associate with it. You don’t have to have a food blog or a blog to participate. I can publish your entries for you if you like. Send me the permalink to your post so that I can include your blog in the roundup. Send me your information at jmomblogs-at-gmail.com by June 30 or this weekend. I’ll hold off on the round up for a few days to make sure everyone gets their entries in.