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.

Yesterday was a strange day. It all started when I went to pick up Jade from school. It is a normal part of my day to pick up the girls from school in the afternoons and for the most part, this routine is usually uneventful. Yesterday afternoon though was different and Jade even noticed it even before events unfolded.

I am working on a couple of projects simultaneously at work and I was so focused on what I was doing that I almost forgot to leave on time to do my pick up run. I was five minutes late leaving and by the time I got to Jade’s school, almost all the kids had been picked up already, except for a few. She asked if I can give her friend a ride home as she didn’t have one and she would have had to walk home. She doesn’t live far, so I said ok. After we dropped her off, I started driving towards Asi’s school to pick her up next. We were just driving into the high school when Jade suddenly remembered that Asi won’t be there because she is going to a club meeting after school. She had told me that the night before too, but I forgot. So we turned back around and started heading for home where I was hoping I’d get a few minutes to get a bite to eat before picking up the clone from elementary school.

On the drive back, a jerk started tailing me and making hand gestures. I guess I wasn’t going fast enough for him. So I slowed down even more so, to the posted speed limit. Jerk! Anyway, as we were turning into our street, we find out that the street has been closed for maintenance. We had to drive around to come in from the other end of the street. At this point, Jade said, “Mom, you should notice these signs because I think all these little obstacles are telling you not to go back to work.” We laugh if off, of course.

So after a few minutes to go for a bathroom break and drop off our stuff at home, it was already time to go and pick up the Clone from school. I figured we’d go pick her up and circle back to pick up Asi from the high school, drop them back off at the house then go back to work. I figured wrong.

By the time we arrive at the high school, there was a lone police car blocking the drive way and not letting any parent through. All the officer would say was that the school was on lockdown and they were not letting anybody in or out. So I drive about a block away and pull into a church parking lot to figure out what to do next. Before I could even put the car into park, about twenty police cars zoomed by with their sirens blaring heading for the school. This is when I started worrying. Before you knew it, the swat team pulled into the same parking lot I and other parents are in. They started suiting up in their assault gear. By this time, some of the parents were getting hysterical.

The worst thing about sitting and waiting and worrying, is not knowing what is really happening. The rumor mills start turning, and you don’t know what to believe. The initial news was that there is someone with a gun at school. Then the rumor escalated to that someone was shooting at the school. I knew Asi was supposed to be in front of the school waiting to be picked up. I just prayed that she is ok.

Luckily, the whole incident was a false alarm. Officials dub it a “misunderstanding”. The campus was opened back up a couple of hours later and we were able to pick up Asi. She was scared for a while, she said, but otherwise ok.

You can read more about this brouhaha here:
GUN SCARE AT RIVERSIDE HIGH

Oh wait, the day isn’t over yet. We got home just in time to see the incident on the local news (click on the link above for details). The school lockdown dominated the ‘breaking news’ reports until just before the eleven o’clock news. At 10 o’clock the school event was already old news as another breaking news, a toxic chemical fire a few miles away in Apex now had everyone’s attention. The fumes from the fire can be really hazardous so they have evacuated over 16,000 residents from the area. Local news has been covering this event all night and most of the morning today.

We are not affected by this incident as much as we are luckily upwind from the area. You can read more about this fire here:
THOUSANDS EVACUATED FROM APEX

So, do you believe in signs?

I’m not very superstitious, but on Friday the 13ths I can’t help but look for bad things to happen. Not that I’m wishing them to happen, mind you, just curious if things really seem worse. Today, the superstition has a good chance of proving true. Two hurricanes are heading our way, Bonnie and Charlie. We’ve already had a small taste of rain fall yesterday, and forecasters are predicting heavy rains by this evening, continuing to most of the day tomorrow. So, I guess tomorrow is a stay-at-home-and-do-nothing-day-cause-its-raining. I just love days like that, don’t you? I think I will make some soup.

The garden is loving all this rain! We have so many tomatoes, we have been on a tomato diet. I may try to freeze some of them this weekend. I’d say I would try and can them, but I don’t know that I have that much energy. Forget mason jars and sterilizing. I think I’ll just stick ‘em in bags and throw them in the freezer.