Filipino Noir

My Dear Princess and Dear Friends,

Why is it the Philippines, but the people who come from there are Filipinos?  Why not Philippinos?

That's going to bother me all day.

April and I finished up in the Timaru office today. It did not take long and then I said goodbye to Aaron and Rob who had been great, April began the two-hour drive back to Christchurch where she lives and from where I was to fly. 

It was not as relaxing a drive as I'd hoped for two reasons. Reason one is that there were a lot of stupid online meetings I had to attend as April barrelled down the road and reason two, April likes to sing LOUDLY as I attended the online meetings. 

So I sort of half-listened and if anyone asked me a question I typed, "bad connection" and then typed my answer in the meeting chat. Because it was sort of a bad connection and also my answer would have sounded like this:

SYMON: We won't be able to install before Christmas because WE ARE NEVER EVER EVER GETTING BAAAAACK TOGETHER and the floor mounts won't have arrived on time LIKE EVERRRRR.

And that's not a good look. 

Seriously. April LOVES that Taylor Swift song. She even joins in with all the spoken bits. 

In between meetings April educated me about the Philippines. It sounds like a harsh place to grow up for a woman. She told me that if a woman is showing too much leg, men will take their jackets and cover them up. 

"It's a gentlemanly thing," she insisted. 

She then went on to say if a woman is even sitting with her legs slightly apart, complete strangers will push her legs back together again. What a very judgy place, I thought, judgily. 

It sounds like April is enjoying the new freedoms she has as a Kiwi though. Her favourite lipstick colour is now red. "We call that shade 'whore red' in the Philippines," she told me with a laugh. And she has four piercings in each ear. You are only allowed TWO in the Philippines so those extra two she has are also shameful back home. 

Good lord. 

Although perhaps I shouldn't say that. It sounds like it is all His fault.

They have lots and lots of holy days for the saints in the Philippines, April told me. Although they sound like great fun, with lots of dancing. So there are benefits, so long as you don't wear whore red and keep your legs together. 

We then drove past a newly-manured field. April sniffed herself as she drove. "Just making sure that's not me," she laughed. "You're lucky. Women in the Philippines have to smell of flowers all the time," she explained. "Your hair must smell of flowers, your armpits must smell of flowers, your... down there... must smell of flowers."

For the record, my Down There does not smell of flowers. 

We then drove through a small town and she explained that if this were the Philippines, at least half the stores would be beauty parlours. "They are so vain back there," she told me. "So many beauty treatments, including ones that you would find really scary and painful."

Not "mani-pedis", she went on to explain, although there is plenty of that. "There's this uh... how would you say... intravenous thing...?"

What now?

"To make yourself whiter," she explained. "I don't do that over here. In New Zealand being brown is okay."

I should tell you that April told me all of this stuff with a laugh and a wave of her hand. She's not bitter at all. This is just how it is. Even the racism she has encountered over here, she just laughs off. It was just ME, the privileged white person, who was affronted on her behalf. 

Not April, she just seems to enjoy her life, and her music and her SINGING and went on driving. She is only 32 and she thinks I am quaint. 

When I told her how excited Caro was that I would be home a day early she smiled. "You've been together for TWENTY YEARS and your wife is still excited when you get home?" she said. "That is SOOOOO CUUUUUTE!!!"

I suppose we are. And anyway, it was true. I was supposed to come back tomorrow but things went so well I was able to change my flight. April dropped me off at the airport and gave me a hug and we promised to meet up in Wellington in a couple of weeks. 

And then the trip home was not only uneventful, but it was positively quick and easy. No traumas this time. I even had time to relax with a glass of wine. The flight left as scheduled, my bag was first off the belt. The taxi driver was waiting and traffic was okay. And soon I was being hugged by my wife.

That really IS sooooo cuuuuuute. 

I don't mind being quaint at all.

S.