City Mouse, Country Mouse

I've been in Manila for a few weeks now, and in a few days I'm heading back to the province, so before I do I thought I'd lay down some general sketches of the city.

The difference between Manila and Borongan is stark, and in many ways it's the dynamic of urban vs. rural. Borongan is where you go when you want to relax; Manila is where you go when you want to party. Borongan (and rural Philippines in general) has a vast wealth of natural beauty, and Manila has a nightlife that's off the hook. What I'm finding is that while in Borongan I have little to do at night, and in Manila it's the opposite. I have to admit, part of this is my own fault. There certainly are things to do in and around Manila, I mean, touristy things, but I've settled with sitting around, playing guitar or reading, even--deep breath--watching TV. It's not only that I'm a lousy excuse for a human being. I mean, that's the main reason, but it's also that I'm trying to avoid spending money.

If I were to live in the Philippines (I'll get to why I'm not in a moment), it would be in Manila. There's plenty to do here, more opportunities to make a living, and the music scene is ripe. That being said, there are definitely drawbacks. The pollution is pretty ridiculous, and riding in the back of a jeepney it's sometimes hard to stay conscious as you inhale copious amounts of carbon monoxide from vehicle exhaust. Metro Manila is huge and traffic is terrible, and it can sometimes take several hours to reach your destination. Perhaps owing to its geographic location or topography, or perhaps the thick blanket of CO2 that it wears, but some days the sun feels extra hot here. Thus, if I were to live in the Philippines and I was 50, I'd choose Borongan.

The live music is definitely the best part about nightlife in Manila. One night, my uncle and I went out to a place nearby called Cowboy Grill. The theme was a bit hokey (with plasticky Western decor and waitresses with bare midriffs in cowboy hats) but the music was excellent. The first band that played was playing mostly top 40 type radio hits and everyone was dancing. My uncle, a rock aficionado, was clearly not enjoying himself, but I was loving it. I wanted to dance too, but didn't want to leave my uncle all alone listening to a band he didn't like, and plus I didn't know who to dance with, so I just chilled. The next band was rock, and very good rock at that. In fact, this marked the first time in my life I'd seen a cover band successfully pull off Bohemian Rhapsody. No, I'm not shitting you, 5-part harmony and everything. It sounded like the record; I was blown away. The third band was doing dancy stuff again.

Throughout the night, one of the two lovely ladies at the table in front of us had been checking me out. I'd done nothing about it though, just shooting her the occasional smile to keep her interested as I watched guy after guy approach her and try to spit game, all to no avail. For one thing, as I've mentioned before, my family is fairly conservative, and I didn't want them to think that I'm the sort of amoral individual who carouses about with beautiful strangers (plus I would never do that anyway, right?). The other reason is that if a pretty girl is checking me out here in the Philippines, she almost invariably falls into one of the following categories: a) she's not a girl, b) she's underage, c) she's a gold digger, or d) all of the above.

Finally, late in the night, I enlisted the opinion of my uncle (I've found that those who've lived here all their lives have a much better eye for trannies than I do). "Uncle Erwin, this girl right here, do you think that's a man or a woman?" It's a woman, for sure, he tells me. Sweet, I think, green light. Just then, the band started playing a Lady Gaga song, which admittedly puts me in a dancing mood, and I looked over at the now gender-confirmed girl in front of us, and she beckoned me to the dance floor. I obliged. It was fun to get my dance on; I'd been lacking that element thus far. And rather than her being a gold-digger, she and her friend ended up buying us a pitcher of beer. She ended up being e) married to a white guy in the U.S. military stationed back in the States. Unlike the other categories, this one doesn't cause me the slightest bit of apprehension. So I danced with a pretty lady and didn't have to buy a thing. That's what I'm talking about.

I know my way around the city now. I thought, because Metro Manila is a huge, confusing morass like Los Angeles, that it would take me much longer to get my bearings, but I started by figuring out how to get around and then out of Las Piñas, then how to get to EDSA, and from there you can get anywhere. One of my favorite places in Manila is Divisoria. Manila is absolutely littered with huge, air-conditioned, perfectly manicured shopping malls, but Divisoria, set in the heart of the oldest Chinatown on the planet, is a world away from Mall of Asia and its army of clones. Here, the wares are not sterilized and wrapped in cellophane. Merchants display their goods out in the open--everything from fresh fruit, to fish, to pirated dvds and knockoff handbags imported from China. The aromas (some pungent, some delicious) in a real, living, breathing open air market are a welcome cure to the American-style artificial suburbia of Mall-nila. I'm not a big fan of buying things, so the dramatically cheaper prices in Chinatown don't excite me as much as they might, but for a genuine experience of what life is like outside of a mall, there's no substitute. Of course, this also means that you're not segregated from the poverty that afflicts the majority here, and pitiful, hungry-looking beggar children are the norm, as well as amputees and those with all sorts of deformities, seemingly left to rot on the city streets, but if you're not ready to see the full extent of society here, or anywhere, then you might as well stay home and visit the air-conditioned malls there.

About a week ago, I received my invitation to serve in the Peace Corps. I knew it was coming; I'd spoken with my placement officer a few days before, I just had no idea it was coming so soon. One of my goals with this Philippines trip was to sort of find myself and figure out what I really wanted to do with my life. I had hoped to have most of the summer to form a band and get a sense of the music industry here and see if there were reasonable prospects of me making a living with my music. Instead, my invitation arrived almost as soon as I got to Manila.

For the few days before, since I'd spoken with my placement officer, I'd been agonizing over the decision of whether or not to go. Don't I want to focus on my music? Couldn't I get a job teaching English here in Manila? When the packet arrived, however, I knew right away that I was going. I think, perhaps to my detriment, that one of the main reasons is that everything is already set in motion. It's not that I'm averse to doing the additional legwork that living here would require (applications and interviews for jobs, practice and networking for music), but Peace Corps gives me a direction for the next two years of my life, and I'm not sure I'd give myself that direction otherwise. Plus, I've been working towards this for nearly a year now, and reading through the material they sent me, I started to remember why.

So once again my rock star dreams will be put on hold, and come September, when they send me to the Federated States of Micronesia as an ESL Teacher/Community Development Worker, this blog will shift from my experiences in the Philippines to my experiences in Micronesia. It's all for the good though. I recognize that while music itself is an integral part of my being, my rock star dreams stem largely from a place of vanity, and I think two years in a sleepy village in the Pacific will do much to humble me.