More Realistic Ratios: It came to me in one of those early morning sleep states, you know, when we are in the delta sleep stage and connected with the universe and thoughts in ways that reflect no limitations in our reasoning or understanding. I love that time of morning; it's when I get my most creative and empowering thoughts about my life and the world around me.
I'm a math guy. I'm over here teaching English, yet at heart, I'm a math guy and feel very misplaced in an English classroom and curriculum. I see most of how the world works through numbers. I know Janet believes the world revolves around science yet I believe we see things through the lenses we are most comfortable with and excited about . . . so I'm a math guy.
The delta sleep stage thoughts were about how cheap we think everything is here in the Philippines. Last night Alana and I went out to eat at a Filipino fast-food place and spent 137 pesos for a fairly good size and tasty meal. That's approximately $3.18 in American terms and we would consider that a deal. Yet, in my mid-morning sleep I started thinking about the ratios of spending to earning power.
I will inflate some of the numbers to favor the Philippine people to support my point. I've heard that a regular Filipino school teacher starts out making about PhP 10,000 a month. Many instructors I'm working along side of at the university level have been in the system for many years and are now making somewhere around PhP 16,000 a month. I'd like to look at two examples; internet service and rent.
Internet service. Alana and I pay PhP 1000 a month for internet service. With the peso bringing 43 cents in the international exchange market, that means we are paying $23.25 a month to be able to access the internet in our home. At first glance that seems cheap. . . to Americans. Who wouldn't want their internet service at home to cost $23.25 a month? Yet Filipions aren't earning the kind of money Americans are earning.
Let's inflate Alana and I's earning income to PhP 16,000 a month each. As a household we would be making PhP 32,000 a month. Internet service; 1000 divided by 32,000 (household income) = .03125, which means we would be spending 3.125% of our household income to have internet service in our home.
Now, in America we were also a two-income household. Just for this little experiment, let's deflate and say we were just a one-income household making . . . I don't know . . . say $42,000 (low for many of you), which is $3,500 a month. If we were spending 3.125% of our $3,500 for internet service we would be paying $109.37 a month to be able to access the internet!
For two income families making say, $80,000 to $100,000 a year, you would be spending $208 to $260 a month for internet service! Holy hookup Batman!! That makes an argument for stealing service from the neighbors!!!
Let's look at rent. We pay PhP 8000 a month on rent. 8000 / 32000 = .25, which translates to us spending 25% of our monthly earnings (inflated in this case) on rent.
If we were an American, one-income family, making $42,000 a year ($3,500 a month); 3500 x .25 = 875. $875 a month for rent, that seems reasonable, maybe a challenge for a one-income household? I know a lot of Americans that pay $1000 a month for rent yet they are usually two income families.
Using the ratio equation, if a two-income family were again earning $80,000 to $100,000 a year ($6,666 to $8,333 a month), and spending 25% on rent, those numbers would be $1,666 to $2,083. I guess that may seem reasonable for some of you too, you may be paying mortgages that high. I'll let you decide for yourself.
I don't know, sometimes those brilliant ideas I'm having in my mid-morning delta sleep stage extravaganzas are not so brilliant when I become fully awake and actually put them on paper. All I know is when I do that math on our PhP 137 Filipino fast food meal for and it ends up looking more like $179, I'm again feeling like a rich American living in the Philippines.
Hitting The 'Big Time': Last week Alana and I headed out with our site counterparts (Mercy is Alana's counterpart; Ralph is Jacques' counterpart) to another island (the city of Tacloban on Northern Leyte island if you want to google earth us) for a 3-day Peace Corps Project Design Management conference. We had fun exploring a new place, a new island, didn't enjoy the city of Tacloban as much as our home town of Dumaguete, and appreciated having time to build relationships with and work one-on-one with our counterparts away from our sites.
The two main points of interest in Tacloban are;
1. the site where MacArthur landed to end the World War II for the Philippines after a 3-year brutal Japanese regime starting with the 127km Bataan Death March that killed more than 45,000 Filipino and American soldiers. When MacArthur had been driven out of the Philippines by a surprise Japanese attack at the start of World War II he spoke those promising, empowering words that nearly every Filipino over the age of 30 can articulate back to us, "I will return!" 2. the multi-billion peso home that Imelda Marcos built (because she grew up in Tacloban) to keep all her furniture in, which she acquired from all around the world. This home is around 27,000 square feet, built in the 1970s by Imelda, and has only been used as a museum (60 peso tours) and to host some of her dinner parties and ballroom dances. It encompasses 20 furnished rooms, is made of extravagant wood, leather, and tile walls and floors, has two dining rooms capable of seating and feeding 20 each (didn't see the kitchens), 12 fully functioning bathrooms, chandeliers, art from all over the world, photos of all the famous people she's met in her lifetime, a 13,000 square foot ballroom, and disappointingly not one shoe.
After our 3-day stay in Tacloban, we headed out across Leyte to the other side of the island with our Peace Corps peer Tyler to stay for a few days with Trish and Ryan in Hilongos. We had all trained together for 3 months in Dumaguete when we first arrived so it is fun to visit again, see each other's sites, and get to hear stories of how everyone is doing at work. Hilongos home to approximately 8,000 people (50,000 if you include the surrounding barangays) and is set up on the western coastline of Leyte island.
Unlike our bustling Dumaguete, Hilongos has a very big 'small town' feel; most of the public transportation is bicycles, very little traffic, pollution, litter, or noise, the public market takes up only one block, and everyone knew Trish and Ryan as they showed us around.
We were a 'big hit' at Trish's school site as she gave us the tour. All the students wanted to talk with us and all the educators wanted to share what they were teaching and working on with their students. The school is undergoing an intense eco-friendly environment facelift, has won their divisional level as the most eco-friendly school, and will be competing in the regional competition soon. We were even invited to their canteen and treated to cokes by her site supervisor.
We were a 'bigger hit' at the public market. Their public market is about 1/4th the size of the Dumaguete public market and although they all are familiar with Ryan and Trish, I think Alana & I's size was a particular point of interest to them. Everyone was staring at us in a friendly and curious way, especially the children. Hilongos doesn't seem to have as many foreigners visiting as Dumaguete and other places in the Philippines.
We had heard that this region of Leyte was popular for Tuba, wine made from coconut juice. I thought we could buy it in a store and didn't realize it was Filipino moonshine. When we inquired about it at the public market to two young Filipinos who were drinking it, and wailing away on the karaoke machine, were so excited that we were interested in Tuba we ended up with about 15 Filipinos watching us trying to acquire some. One young lady pulled us aside to warn us not to drink it straight and to cut it with coke. There were lots of smiles, laughing, and telling friends walking by what we were doing. The owner of the 5-gallon container poured it into a 2-liter bottle with the top cut off and then into an empty 2-liter coke bottle that they emptied and rinsed for us. He didn't want money for the exchange and we ended up making him take 50 pesos for his kindness. I think we actually got a round of applause when we left the market with our Tuba. Hey, Peace Corps told us to engage in the culture!
I think we were the 'biggest hit' at Ryan's work. Ryan works at the municipal hall of Hilongos. Very new, very modern, very air-conditioned. We got there and he introduced us to the 10+ people in his office and his counterpart Edmund. Before we knew it, someone said we had to pay a visit to the mayor (remember that courtesy calls are important here; its not what cha know its who ya know). I later found out from Ryan that his counterpart Edmund was worried that if the mayor found out we had visited and no one brought us up to meet him he would get in trouble.
They marched us up to the mayor's office. He had about 10-12 workers in his outer office working away at their desks on their computers. They all greeted us with smiles and friendly hellos. Then they brought us further along to another waiting room outside of his office (big sign on the top of his door; Local Chief Executive), probably used as a meeting room, where other people were waiting to speak to the mayor. We waited for quite a long time and a 'helper' brought us coffee (even though Alana and I told him we didn't care for coffee . . . we didn't drink it). The mayor asked Ryan to come in before us and used him to chew out a uniformed police officer, asking Ryan about the gun laws in America.
We finally made it into the office of Honorable Jose F "Joy" Roble, got situated, introductions were made, and the mayor turned to Ryan and asked, "Why did you want to see me today?" The look on Ryan's face was priceless and he stumbled through a vague, fishy explanation of why we were there, mostly just to introduce his friends, which is a perfectly legit reason to drop by to see the mayor in Filipino Town. The mayor, in his mid-40s, nice man, preceded to tell us about things he was doing in Humongous for the people, what still needed to be addressed, and how his people think and act. Seemed like a nice, intelligent, caring mayor to me and most likely much like our politicians had many sharp people around to fill in the gaps and take over the conversation when his phone rang.
After about 40 minutes of small talk and us smiling a lot, it was almost 1pm and he claimed that he was hungry and invited us to lunch. In the infamous words of my counterpart Ralph, "What were we to do?" We slowly wandered out of the office building, where out front was waiting his spankin' new Honda truck for himself and about 10 other workers (mostly his high school friends and family), and a van for us. They piled in the truck, 7 of piled into the van, and we went to a quaint Filipino deck restaurant over the water next to the Hilongos pier and ate a traditional Filipino lunch. They were excited to see the mayor and his entourage show up, we ate tons of rice, the floor was made of bamboo strips, and we would see the waves crashing on shore beneath our feet. Of course the mayor picked up the whole tab for the 17+ of us (seems like there were 5 or 6 city officials waiting for us) and we had some great conversations about their culture, our culture, travel, family, and history.
We really didn't plan to spend 4 hours of our day with the mayor, going through all the courtesies, making small talk in English & Cebuano, and minding our Ps and Qs (because it's not a good idea to get too deep into any political or philosophical conversation with a Filipino . . . especially the mayor). In the end, it wasn't too bad, except for the fact that I was nursing a stomachache.
While saying our final goodbyes the mayor told us to have the van bring us wherever we wanted to go and that he was going to pay for our 4 hour ship ride back to Cebu City on our way home to Dumaguete when we left Hilongos. Come to find out, the mayor owns the shipping line of cargo and passenger boats coming and going from Hilongos, the only gas station in town, half of the Hilongos airport, which he is developing, and the nicest house in town. The guy is quite a businessman, busy, loaded, and very generous. Just like in South Louisiana, I guess its good to know someone who knows the mayor.
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