SABBATICAL NOTES. 2 APRIL 2014. N6. WEDNESDAY. Shut up, you naturalized non-Filipino. WE FALL IN LINE and the line for the come-backing Filipinos, like the culling of the sheep from the goat, came in an instant. The first of the phalanx, like a battalion of soldiers in a war zone, was for the real Filipinos. The second phalanx, far off and past the first one, is for Filipinos who are no longer Filipinos (yes, those pretenders of Americanism and Canadianism, and other ism one can attach to after ones name), white tourists, black tourist, Asian tourists, Chinese tourists who cannot speak a word of English, and other races based on their Benetton skin tone. I was on the second row, those rows with two immigration officers in each cubicle, their faces grim, their smile plain absent as part of their training. I look at their eyes, and their eyes are glued to the screen of those high tech computers before them, and they do not say a word but read those data that pop out, data that are accessible only to them. One on the next row, a brown-skinned man, possibly of a Southeast Asian descent, or anyone of those people in Asia genetically burned by the rays of the tropical sun, has stayed for long at one of the counters, with the immigration officer popping in and out of her cubicle presumably to check on some data pertaining to the man. That probably took forever, which made the line on my right a bit bored and troubled. There is this man on my right, his face that of a siopao, his hands clumsily holding a Canadian passport. This slow processing of papers has got to change, he said, first to himself, and then repeats the same, the repetition louder each time. I look at him, and I figured he must have gotten all the perks and pelf of being a naturalized Canadian, forgetting that in Canada, government processing is as slow as that of the Philippines, plus or minus the many holidays government offices have to go through as well. I thought: this man has got to go to Spain and see for himself how Spanish government offices open at 0800 AM and practically shut off all public services at 0200 PM. Sometimes, just sometimes, there is something wrong with naturalized non-Filipinos too. They bring all their imagined parameters to their former homeland and use this against these public servants of immigration officers who are just doing their job. I should have told him, Shut up, you naturalized Canadian, but the immigration officer told me, I have given you one year to stay in the Philippines because you are a returning balikbayan! And she smiled at me. Her name is Sta Ana, yes, a young woman, and if you see her, please give her my regards. MIA/NAIA 2 April 2014
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 22:04:49 +0000
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