Cautious... but hopeful.

[Bob_S]

You nailed that tune--you ought to rework tunes for real! Great job and good chuckles there!!

Thanks.  So what do you think Weird Al pays his writers? 

BTW, Jedi, a couple of hints for modifying your profile at JapanCupid or any other Japan-focused sites:
1. A current popular comedy-romance movie, based on a comic of the same name, is "Da-ring wa Gaikokujin" or "Darling is a Foreigner" about a Japanese woman married to an American and all the culture clashes they encounter.  You might want to drop in something about how you are looking for your darling, or you want to be her darling, or however you want to word it to sound syrupy;
2. In Japanese tradition, a gentleman courting a woman, seeking permission to marry a man's daughter, will use an expression promising his future father-in-law to make his daughter happy.  So you might want to also drop in a line of your profile saying how you promise to make your future wife happy.
I'm not promising any of these will work, but they should at least ping a few women's romance radar.

[Jeff S]

Good stuff there Bob - definitely advanced techniques for Japan.

Another twist might be to use the gambatte concept, something I was coached on when I first went to meet my wife's parents. Gambatte means to try your hardest, or put out your best effort, so saying you'll try your best to make your future wife happy will translate very well into Japanese and is considered a very positive personality trait.

[Jedironin]

Thanks Bob & Jeff! I can honestly say that is true- I will do what I can to make my wife happy! I'll add that in somewheres. I am being careful in my messages, too- I tend to have a dry, sarcastic sense of humor and I KNOW that would be tough to translate! I will try to stick to more "direct" humor when needed.

I did find a nice lady from RP who is an ESL teacher! She is Fluent in English, of course, and has already given me a couple of tips to help get things across properly. She said she has one "advanced" student she may have me "practice" with sometime... ENGLISH! We're gonna practice her ENGLISH!!   

[thekfc]

Fil-English 

[robert angel]

The only thing my Father in law asked me when I asked for his eldest daughter's hand was "If she's not happy, promise me you'll send her back home to us".

Well, after five years, if she's not happy overall, she's going to leave on her own, but as much as she'd rather be in the Philippines than here, she'd stay here until she has saved enough money to buy herself a house and set up a successful business over there.

Guess I need to keep working and making her happy. It's not too hard and it definitely has has it's benefits, and I just don't mean you know what, horn dogs!

[Jedironin]

She makes you horn dogs? Is that a Filipino thing? I like coney's and chili-dogs, is it kinda like that? 

[michaelb]

The only thing my Father in law asked me when I asked for his eldest daughter's hand was "If she's not happy, promise me you'll send her back home to us".

Gee, you got of easily. Of course I wasn't around yet, but the family story goes that my mother's father told my father "If you ever hurt her, I'll kill you. If you hurt her after I'm dead, my ghost will haunt you."

He never did. They were together 44 years (until my father's death) and I can remember only one time when they even raised their voices at each other.

Either he took my grandfather's threat seriously, or more likely, they were both good spouses and parents. Think I'll go with the later option.

[robert angel]

Maybe I--or actually my father in law--overly down played his only expressed plea--that I make his daughter happy or send her back home. Sometimes things unsaid mean a lot too.

My wiife's father was Barangay Captain (their equivalent of 'Mayor") when I first met her family, until somebody with really deep pockets bought a lot of votes and won. That guy did a crummy job and a bunch of villagers came to my father in law's home last month and asked him to run again.

He said to them "I know the other candidate, just like the last guy who you voted for, will pay you to vote for him--why do you even ask me?"--"Why should I expect anything different?" That took a lot of balls, in a place where people in face to face encounters almost always try and 'act nice'.

But the kicker is, that even if you take money to 'vote'--the candidate has no idea how you actually voted, but that guy dropped a lot of money to win.

My father in law brought the only water tower that provided running water into peoples houses for the first time, deepend the well so far down that even I can drink the water safely, he had two full court basketball slabs for basketball and volley ball put in (like the water tower and big container for storing crops--on his own land that he donated with no strings) got the rickety old bridge across the river into the barangay replaced with a real, heavy duty concrete one, built the first school, town hall and brought recreation, vitamin and nutrition programs to them, to name but a few things.

And this is a guy, who several times during all this, had to take his gold college ring to the pawn shop to get some short term cash to pay his children's private school tuition. I sometimes thing he's the only Filipino politician who won't take bribes.

If a guy was found to be beating his wife--at least more than once, her Father and her four brothers, would see to it that the guy got quite a beating himself. If someone was a child molester, repeat thief or druggie, he was banished from their barangay. Very few things go to court--the Barangay Captain is usually the Judge and the Jury.

So now, the people want him to run again, because lawlessness has returned and kids are stealing, not going to school, gambling, smoking and drinking. People want law and order back. My wife's trying to help put together a drive to get enough books to create a library in the village school.

The election's October 25th and the family has mixed emotions, because the pay doesn't even cover transportation and other expenses. Most guys do it for bribes and other 'perks'.

Anyway--back to her Dad's one request of me--that if his eldest daughter's no longer happy with me, to 'please send her back home'. If I did her in a bad way, her Father and her four brothers are not only good with their hands  and feet in fighting---but I could end up on the wrong end of one of their bolo knives!

So Michael, when you say your Grandfather said "I'll kill you. If you hurt her after I'm dead, my ghost will haunt you."
I think if I hurt my wife, I could likely expect the same and they'd be able to find me anywhere in the Philippines and one of her brothers is a merchant mariner, who's ships come to my home city's port--so I don't know where I'd be safe, if I ever really did her dirty....

[throwawaydad]

LOL

Styx- "Too Much Time On My Hands", great song! 

Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto

[Dave H]

Fil-English 

Hey thekfc,

Please don't get me started on Philippine English!  Tonight I helped my daughter study for her English exam. After they taught them the "5 English vowel sounds" (for the Spanish language), they are now adding hundreds of exceptions to include the other 10 vowel sounds used in Amerian English. Talk about a friggin' nightmare! English is taught based on North American English. However, the schools in the Philippines are staffed by non native English speakers. The English school curriculum comes from mostly native Tagalog speakers at the Philippine DOE, which makes it even worse! They only use monophthongs as in Latin languages (Spanish) and don't use diphthongs or triphthongs that are also used in English.  They pronounce every vowel in a separate syllable. "Book" becomes "bo-ok," "good" is "go-od," "mouth" becomes "mo-uth", "Ba-taan" is Ba-ta-an." The textbooks are also written by non native English speakers. After a sentence or two, I usually find myself thinking, "Say what?" or "What the F!" I usually let my wife handle Philippine English and I stick to math, science, social studies, and history.

Don't get me wrong, it isn't bad in everyday conversation. But on occasion, I still have to ask a person ask repeat what they said and think about it for a moment to get it. A  neighbor asked me the other day where  I bought my "mate." It was a good thing it was a young female!  She meant "meat." I suppose a Tagalog would call it "ma-at."

[Jedironin]

Hey Dave- Are you near Cebu City? I'm chatting on DIA with a lady who is an ESL teacher there! I could give her some grief... errr- lessons, if you want me to!  LOL

[michaelb]

Dave, Spanish does use diphthongs, but there are very few and all of them involve the letters 'u' and 'i' .....can't think of an example right this minute, darn it.

Robert, doesn't your father in law know the first rule of Latin American (and I'm going to go out on a limb, but based on what you wrote, looks like things are the same over in PI) politics, which is "Never spend more getting elected than you can steal while in office"?.....actually, he sounds like a straight up guy that they (and for that matter all places) could use more of, instead of the politicians they/we currently have. Speaking of buying votes, I remember once when I was 5 or 6 years over hearing a conversation between my mother and another lady who remarked "Well, tomorrow is voting day, gonna go down and get my five dollars" My mother asked what in the world she was talking about, you don't get paid to vote. She replied, "Of course we do, Mr. Whoever comes down and gives all us black folks five dollars to go vote for him." My mother was astonished and said "You don't really vote for him, do you?". Reply was "Of course not! We all know he's a crook! But we take his five dollars."

Anyway, I realize that I mistyped my earlier message, my parents were only married forty-two years, not forty-four. Just in case somebody's keeping score, wouldn't want them to think I'm exaggerating.

[Ray]

Dave,

The Tagalog dipthongs are iw, ey, ay, aw, oy, uy.

You nailed it with the biggest problem for Filipinos learning English in school. The teachers are non-native English speakers and often have very marginal English skills themselves.

Ray

[Dave H]

Dave, Spanish does use diphthongs, but there are very few and all of them involve the letters 'u' and 'i' .....can't think of an example right this minute, darn it.

Hey michael,

Me either!  

Robert, doesn't your father in law know the first rule of Latin American (and I'm going to go out on a limb, but based on what you wrote, looks like things are the same over in PI) politics, which is "Never spend more getting elected than you can steal while in office"?

PI is the same. Not counting the cost of the campaigns, my father-in-law always gave away more money than he ever earned from his political post. He would even give away his kids' shoes and clothes if people needed them. The stress of the job (barangay kapitan) ended up killing him in the end.

Dave

[Dave H]

Hey Dave- Are you near Cebu City? I'm chatting on DIA with a lady who is an ESL teacher there! I could give her some grief... errr- lessons, if you want me to!  LOL

Hey Jedironin,

Thirty minutes by plane, 6 hours by ferry. 3.5 hours by Jet Ski.   Great city!

Good luck! You might want to start learning Cebuano.  

Dave

Maybe 2 hours with this baby!

[Jedironin]

I can't imagine taking a 3.5 hr. trip on a waverunner...    Can you carry any luggage on one of those, or just wear a backpack?  (And a life jacket!)

Hey, she's the language teacher- she can teach me a few things! ummm... wait .... She can teach me some of her native language!  Yea, that's it!   

[robert angel]

On the one hand, it irks us that the opposition is paying probably about $4 to people who meet with the barangay captain, (not to every voter) in an attempt to sway the vote. If he wins, at least he'll spend more time there though, because he's a local guy--the other guy who bought the votes enough to win last time, was never around and the place went down hill.

If my father in law wins, I think the pay was something like $60 or $70 a month and I'm sure it hasn't gone up, because there's only about 400 people in the barangay. My wife doesn't like politics and it's taken about 9 years for her to find out how many people live there to tell me--it doesn't matter to her how many people live there, just how well the people are. Very different mindset.

If her Dad wins, he's already pretty much a fixture there and he'll get more kids back in school and crack down on stealing, gambling, drinking and stop the drugs from creeping in pretty much. The library would go in the school, so at least he wouldn't (hopefully) be giving anymore land away. Next to family and education, the family land is what they hold most dear. I guess some day, my wife and I are going to be Copra (Coconut) farmers, as she has a nice piece of land waiting for her.

I never did know what I wanted to be when I grew up, so maybe this is my destiny....

We almost hope he loses, because if he wins, he'll spend more time and money traveling the 25 minutes each way into the town where they make political decisions. He's not too healthy now and it for sure wouldn't help. In that job, people are always coming to you with every problem imaginable, and although they've still been doing that when he was 'out of office' anyway, it'd just get worse.

We'll know October 25th.

It's pretty weird how thing work there and I'm sure I only know less than 20% of how it really works.

[robert angel]

Jedironin,
I like Cebu City a lot more than Manila. I was surprised though that some of the other guys feel there's enough to do in Manila to keep you busy for a couple weeks--I guessed I missed a lot, besides the huge Mall of Asia there.

Some say that Cebu City's becoming more like Manila with too many people and bad pollution, but I thought it was nice, with some things to do in the city and beaches and places in the mountains not too far off by taxi. Plus,  not too far by boat to Bohol, which lately seems to be the 'it' place to visit.

A lot of people talk up Boracay and it certainly looks like a lovely resort island, but I don't like traveling half way around the planet to hang out mostly with westerners and Filipinas far removed from 'normal' life and ways.

If you have time, Davao's nice, with some lovely beaches and inexpensive resorts closeby.

I'd like to see Palawan sometime--some say it has the world's prettiest beaches, but it's pretty far off the beaten path even by RP standards and it's not as stable politically as most other places.


I'd like to visit Dumaguette, especially if I was single and a bit younger, as it has a lot of colleges and coeds and they say the beaches and scuba diving are nice too.

Dumaguette:

Demographics
As of the census of 2007, there are 116,392 people and 21,582 households residing in the city. It has also an average daylight population of 400,000 people, mostly shoppers and employees of establishments in the city coming from nearby municipalities and provinces such as Southern Cebu, Siquijor, Northern and Southern Negros. Dumaguete City is the most populous city in Negros Oriental, comprising 9.05% of the province's total population.

Dumaguete has one of the lowest crime rates among Philippine cities its size.
Dumaguete is best known for Silliman University.[5]Dumaguete has earned the distinction of being known as "the center of learning in the south," or a "university town" due to the presence of universities that have made their mark nationally and abroad. The city is a melting pot of students, professionals, artists, scholars and the literati coming from different parts of the country and the world.