a relative world

Since summer of this year, I have been relishing the thought of going home to Manila on February, starting with alimasag, kare kare, lechon, taho & cocktails by the beach. After 7 years, I can now finally go a month ahead of my husband & because in those 7 years, I have only stayed a total of 3 weeks back home. The excitement intensified when I bought our plane tickets two weeks ago & that my summer mcjob was extended just until 2 weeks before I leave. Then a phonecall to home to announce the news kind of shattered a bit my cocktails by the beach panaroma: two months expenses. So I wondered, am I really stingy?

Let's start with our old tradition the pasalubongs. It is the custom of bringing gifts to family & close friends when one has been away. May it be a day to work, a weekend trip, or years of living in another country. Paslubong comes from the word "salubong" meaning "to meet" & "pa" meaning "for," making it a "meeting gift". We bring home pasalubongs to say that we thought about them while we were away. The younger me thought it was a bribe when my parents wouldn't bring me along when they go away for the day. Then it has become a souvenir from places. Now the tradition has become to share the bounty of what seems to be a better life.

The idea of pasalubong has evolved as more & more Filipinos reach more places around the world, and as life back in the Philippines become harder. For being away now is a necessity for many but whatever the reason may be, the tradition of giving gifts has turned into a stressful part of going home. But we still find time to get the perfect gift for everyone & we even have back up gifts for people we might meet. Afterall, we seem to have a better life, away from our families, than they do back home. But the pasalubongs has reached a new level. It's not anymore about souvenirs & tokens. But do they really understand how it us for us to go home? For us, plane tickets has to be planned & budgeted months ahead (note that we still don't have kids). Pasalubongs are better bought a little at a time during months before departure. Then there's the expenses during your stay.

Hearing stories from friends around on being a balikbayan, I'm glad that my family understands. They do forget sometimes but I also forget that life back home is not the same anymore. I asked my nieces & nephews what they wanted, one said she preferred a shopping spree in Makati & when I said that the budget for each was 1500php, they all laughed at me. Although 1500php is now nothing there, 25€ is not really nothing here. And I'm not being stingy nor selfish. It's just that it's easy to get carried away with the euros & I wouldn't want to go back to France with a bank statement on alert.

But to see them all again & the smile on their faces is priceless. The glorified pasalubongs are worth all those years of being away. To share the bounty of your life in another land is part of the reward of your hardwork to earn it. I was never so much of a pasalubong person nor did I expect it before but being away for so long made me understand the pleasure, and the stress, of this Pinoy tradition. Although I will be getting laughs due to their thinking that I'm kuripot, I can't wait to be home.

How do you go about this Pinoy tradition when you go home? Do pray tell.

A bit exhausted & fed up after months of tending to tourists, and adding to that a beastly mood swing, I assure is caused by the full moon, my husband wryly tells me one night that I have "become French," and continued saying, "I knew we shouldn't have lived in France!" Maybe it's because I was freaking out for more than an hour trying to find parking at 21H00 in this touristy town or because my colleague at work drives me nuts. But with the way he says it, he might actually mean it, with a smirk. And yes, I suddenly had to wonder what is being French & what is being Filipino, and what does it really mean? I didn't want to know.

Although I know it is important to understand French women & its relation to being a Filipina, I won't go into too much details & just focus on how these seemingly innocent words can make you once more wonder about change & life as we grow older. We all go through it. How many times have you wondered about how much your life have changed? The alterations & growth, the casual truths & distortion, the movements & displacements: change and change is a double edged sword - it can cut you or it can cut for you. Every decision we make incurs change & in every change, how much a part of you is really you?

While some are more subtle than others, we somehow get lost with the many changes we experience. Sometimes we even unconciously become a whole new different person we almost cannot recognize. Good change or bad change - how relative are our changes? As relative as our reaction to our current environment & when you've been transplanted, changes are a bit opaque. There are the cultural differences, the adjustments & our ability to adapt. Then you learn & there's the rest of you. How much a part of us have become our host country? How much Filipino can we be in a different environment?

Being in a different world is full of hard learnings for me but the rewards are great and somehow, no matter how you would like to conserve your own convictions, some will still slip away to your new world making you see things differently, but without compromising your beliefs. And with all the learnings, your old world will see that change in you - nag bago or others ka na (you've changed & you're not like us anymore). I didn't become French for trying to live in my host country & I'm not different just because I experienced something else than my old world. In learning comes growth & then comes change. I used to be so many things that now I am not & I am some of the things I never thought I'd be. These are the versions of myself that were all developed through experience from two different environments. A little less & a bit more of me.

This year has been so much of a lot of things. I never stop in amazement on how my life has changed. Looking forward to my new world brings me lots of hope. Looking back at the world I was & am comforts me. But growing up is a spiked accomplishment. But I know I want to be where I am now.

Mon mari, je serai toujours Philippine du coeur car tu me rappelles d'etre une.

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