Seeing pink (updated)

Dreaming the Breasts
By Anne Sexton

Mother,
strange goddess face
above my milk home,
that delicate asylum,
I ate you up.
All my need took
you down like a meal.

What you gave
I remember in a dream:
the freckled arms binding me,
the laugh somewhere over my woolly hat,
the blood fingers tying my shoe,
the breasts hanging like two bats
and then darting at me,
bending me down.

The breasts I knew at midnight
beat like the sea in me now.
Mother, I put bees in my mouth
to keep from eating
yet it did no good.

In the end they cut off your breasts
and milk poured from them
into the surgeon’s hand
and he embraced them.
I took them from him
and planted them.

I have put a padlock
on you, Mother, dear dead human,
so that your great bells,
those dear white ponies,
can go galloping, galloping,
wherever you are.

THE female breast is one of God’s most fervent expressions of His artistic vision when He created human beings.

Its shape is its own—not round, not oblong—it doesn’t fit any known geometric shape, so its clearly unique among all of His artwork. (They are bells, according to Anne Sexton.)

(Self-breast exam. This is also what OB-GYNs do on a woman's breasts when the latter is under 30.)

And its uses are so encompassing. Aside from adding allure to the female figure to help attract her mate, it nurses babies. From its nipple drops the first and most important nutrients for these tiny helpless infants, which hopefully affords them a healthy constitution when they are all grown-up.

But as Sexton’s poetry intimates, beautiful and nourishing as breasts can be, they can be touched by something sinister—in this case, breast cancer. (Sexton’s own mother Mary Gray Harvey died from it. When she was diagnosed with the condition, Harvey blamed it on Sexton who had just suffered a nervous breakdown. This was of course the 1950s where there was very little knowledge about the cause and effect of deadly diseases such as this. Finally undergoing a radical mastectomy, Harvey was disgusted by what she viewed was her mutilation. Sexton poignantly expresses her mother’s difficulties—and her uneasy relationship with Harvey—through this poem.)

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and I finally had my very first mammogram.

We have no known case of breast cancer in the family, which is why I never actually went to get such an exam. But upon visiting an OB-GYN last week (and thanks to a generous health-card coverage), she pressed that I should get one. After all, I was, ahem, above 40. And whether there are cases of breast cancer in one’s family, all women are potentially at risk of the disease. Yes, just because we are women.

So in the mammogram room I stood, in my hospital gown partially open at the front. I was told to grip the handle of the machine, as the technician “arranged” my right boob first on one plate.

I will not lie...the examination hurt. The breast is squeezed by a plastic cover above and a metal plate underneath until that dreaded machine beeps, signalling that it can read your breast clearly. Then the radiologist hits a button to take its picture.

(The mammogram machine.)

But faster than one can say, “breast is best!”, it’s over. Well for one breast anyway. Then the radiologist does the other one. Ooof!

I winced the two times the mammogram machine read my breasts. But I guess it’s a good thing that we are women, because we are allowed to do just that. We are allowed to express our pain quietly or loudly, unlike the men who are forever doomed to keep it all in lest they be tagged as a wuss.

I must stress that the pain is tolerable though. Yes, it will make you yelp, but hardly will it make you scream. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the pain of giving birth, a mammogram will probably just rate a 2 or 3. For those who’ve never had children such as myself, I just think that the benefits of getting a mammogram far outweigh the slight inconvenience of getting one’s boob squeezed tightly.

Another exam my OB-GYN recommended was the breast ultrasound. While a mammogram is usually just the only exam required for breast cancer screening, an ultrasound does supplement the former in that it helps detect smaller breast cancers.

At least the ultrasound was relaxing. A woman just needs to lie on the bed, while the technician uses a hand-held device as small as a computer mouse which is connected to a machine with a screen. She then runs this device—cool to touch because of the gel used—over each breast to check for any tiny abnormalities.

Both these exams will take less than an hour of one’s time. I suggest though that it’s better to get all exams for our female parts done, in one sitting. So get your Pap Smear done as well. The latter helps detects any issues with our vagina and thereabouts. (As soon as a woman is sexually active, she needs to visit an OB-GYN annually. You need not be pregnant to visit one, but it does help if you’d be able to tell the physician or her assistant, the first day of your last menses just for their records. So check your calendar before going to your OB-GYN.)

(To take a reading of your breast, it is gently squeezed between a film plate underneath and a plastic cover above.)

According to the ICanServe Foundation, a local group that has devoted itself to increasing breast cancer awareness, and functions as a support group to those afflicted with the disease, “the Philippines has the highest incidence of breast cancer in Southeast Asia. Breast cancer is also one of the leading causes of death among Filipino women. Most women with breast cancer have no known risk factors except that they are women.” So the group stresses that we women have to be vigilant in protecting ourselves against it.

Early detection is the key in helping us battle or survive the disease.

For women to be able to take care of others, we need to take care of ourselves first.

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ICanServeFoundation is currently selling gift items at The Power Plant Mall on all weekends of October. Proceeds from the sale support its advocacy projects.

To know more about breast cancer, go to the foundation’s portal at www.icanservefoundation.org/?page_id=299 or visit the National Cancer Institute.

(My column, Something Like Life, is published every Friday, in the Life section of the BusinessMirror. This piece was originally published on Oct. 14, 2011. Illustration and images from the web.)

A man for mothers

The Hapinoy Store Program trains Southern Luzon’s women micro-entrepreneurs in personal and business development, management systems, and better priced goods, and introduces additional revenue channels.

GROWING up in a political family like the Aquinos of Tarlac, it was inevitable for Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV to become involved in social development issues, he said. Aside from having the late Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., and President Corazon Aquino as his uncle and aunt, Bam’s cousin, Noynoy, is now president as well.

And his father, Paul (the youngest of the late senator’s brothers), has been a key player in most political campaigns involving the Aquinos. His mother, Melanie, on the other hand, is a keen volunteer in religious social services groups.

Gasgas na to say this, I know, but Bam does bear a striking resemblance to his late uncle, it’s almost unnerving. Of course I’ve seen him on TV before hosting a morning show, but now just seated six feet across me, I marvel at the uncanniness of it all.

Bam is just as articulate and confident in public speaking as his Tito Ninoy, though I have yet to hear him sound bombastic as the late senator was in his speeches. The younger Aquino attributes this skill to having been honed in political rallies since he was six years old, campaigning for his Tito Ninoy while the latter was in jail. (It’s ironic though that Bam has actually never known his Tito Ninoy, and has no memory of meeting him, although his parents did bring Bam to the jail where the late senator languished.)

This was no political meeting I was attending, however. In a lunch tendered by MasterCard Philippines, a select group of journalists including myself met with Bam to talk about his Hapinoy Store Program. It is the micro-entrepreneur program of Microventures Inc., an organization he set up with friends Michelle Pabalan and Mark Ruiz, targeting the poor and disaffected members of our society, specifically the women and mothers in the rural communities.

The program won for Microventures a $25,000 Women’s Empowerment Grant from the Singapore National Committee for UN Women and MasterCard—the grand prize in the “Project Inspire: 5 Minutes to Change the World” grand finals which was held at the INSEAD Asia Campus in Singapore.

There were 10 finalists all over the world, selected out of 450 teams who submitted their “life-changing ideas” to empower women and girls across Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, in the form of a five-minute pitch videos or written proposals. Two finalists, including Microventures, were from the Philippines.

“Part of the reason we set up Microventures was that we realized that were was a gap in the microfinance sector in terms of business development. There are a lot of NGOs [nongovernmental organization] and social development organizing but when it comes to business development for the really small entrepreneur, there’s a gaping hole. That’s one gap we see in terms of getting the poor out of poverty. Finally, there’s financing, there’s capital, but there is no assistance to get their businesses to a higher level,” Bam explains. The target beneficaries not only get loans but are trained in all aspects of running a business, making it a more sustainable framework for social development.

He adds there are about 800,000 sari-sari stores nationwide accounting for 40 percent of the total retail sales in the country. Clearly, sari-sari stores provide a vital lifeline to many communities, especially those in remote areas, as these are the only establishments that provide basic commodities and daily needs of residents.

So in 2007, Microventures launched the Hapinoy Store Program, with microfinance borrowers in mind. “Upon realizing that 15 percent to 20 percent of microfinance borrowers use the capital to put up sari-sari stores, the Hapinoy Store Program first focused on aggregating these stores for bulk product discounts.”

Through the program, the storeowners are given access to capital through Microventures’ partner institutions such as the Center for Agriculture and Rural Development (CARD-MRI), the largest microfinance institution in the Philippines.

“Usually it’s P3,000 to P5,000 for sari-sari store owners, and tens of thousands [of pesos] for community store owners,” says Bam. A community store acts like the main commissary in an area of Hapinoy sari-sari stores.

Women micro-entrepreneurs, dubbed Hapinoy Nanays, are tapped for the program which aims to help them establish “a profitable and sustainable business, reap practical and tangible benefits from partners and microfinance institutions, become knowledgeable with the help of training programs and support services, and be confident and empowered. Why women and not men? Bam’s group of course follows the basic microfinance model set up by the Grameen Bank of Bangladesh, where women have been found to be the most dependable in terms of repaying loans. “They have a loan repayment rate of 99 percent!” he enthuses.

Bam Aquino, president of Microventures Inc., receives the Project Inspire winner's certificate from Vicky Bindra, president of MasterCard Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa.

Although he does note that in the past four years of the program, a number of men—the husbands of their Hapinoy Nanays—have started attending the women’s meetings. Mostly they do this out of curiosity, as the men try to find out what’s keeping their wives so busy. Eventually, Bam says, the men become involved in the program indirectly, as most sari-sari stores or community stores are family enterprises anyway.

Microventures doesn’t close the door to eventually assisting the men as well in these communities, but for now, Bam says, the focus is more on the women entrepreneurs who are still the most disadvantaged members in society. (In the Philippines most women are still unable to tap loans directly from banks and still need their husbands or fathers as co-guarantors. The alternative, especially in rural communities, is to turn to informal lenders, commonly called “5-6”, who unfortunately charge exorbitant interest rates on loans.)

Today, Bam says, the program has evolved into a full-service microentrepreneur enhancement program: a network of micro, small, medium and large enterprises where Hapinoy community stores and sari-sari stores “serve as the hubs of a network for goods and services that are coursed through the program.”

The products and services sold by these stores range from basic commodities and common grocery items to “more specialized projects with community impact like solar lanterns, medicine and affordable technologies,” he stresses.

What I find appealing about the program is that there is an effort to tap local suppliers which helps even more people other than the targeted beneficiaries. The program boosts the community producers and downstream micro-industries in project areas, as well.

“For example, in Laguna, we can have peanuts and sweets from their area. But you won’t find the same type of sweets in Bicol. Like the rice in the Laguna stores will come from farms in the area, but the rice in Bicol will come from there,” explains Bam. Among the community producers, he says, are the agrarian reform farmers who are Hapinoy’s source for the rice and sugar the nanays sell in their stores.

The Hapinoy Store Program currently covers 150 communities mostly in Southern Luzon and Bicol, and has targeted to expand to 400 communities by the end of the year. Bam says the $25,000-grant his group received via Project Inspire will help them expand their program.

“When we started this program, we envisioned that in five years, we will be present in all cities and municipalities in the Philippines with hundreds and thousands of sari-sari stores.”

Project Inspire was launched in March 2011 to commemorate the 100th year of International Women’s Day and to celebrate MasterCard’s 25th year in the region.

According to Judith Dayrit, MasterCard’s vice president for marketing and member relations, Project Inspire “serves as a worldwide platform for 18- to 35-year-olds, offering them the chance to make their ideas a reality in an effort to empower disadvantaged women and girls in Asia Pacific, the Middle East, and Africa.”

She explains that despite the great strides in their socioeconomic standing in the last 100 years, statistics show that women account for 70 percent of the world’s poor.

“There is a growing body of research that demonstrates that there is no tool for development more effective than the empowerment of women,” she says. This is why MasterCard’s corporate social responsibility thrust is “to help empower women and children, because they are really the underdogs in society.”

It’s probably not easy being an Aquino, considering the pinnacles of success many of its members have reached. But having become an advocate for the oppressed and the poor mothers of this land, Bam, only 34, certainly more than measures up to the task of keeping the family name not only respectable, but honorable. I’m pretty sure he will reach far greater heights, as well.

•For more information on Project Inspire, click on www.5MinutestoChangetheWorld. Those who wish to support Hapinoy and its projects, click www.hapinoy.com.

(My column Something Like Life is published every Friday in the Life section of the BusinessMirror. This piece was published on Oct. 7, 2011. Photos courtesy MasterCard/Microventures Inc.)

Being a good Catholic

"Religion was and never will be an issue when a woman decides whether she would go on the pill. We don’t think we will go to hell for using the pill, an IUD or diaphragm (are those things still around?). And those who don’t understand how it feels to become bloated and cranky every month, suffer intolerable pain in their lower belly or migraines, not to mention the substantial weight gain, the stretchmarks and the hormonal distresses when pregnant, or postpartum depression, have no right to tell a woman what she can or cannot do about her womb." (Click Something Like Life for the rest.)

Your P200 will go a long way

JUST wanted to remind everyone of Pink Kitchen 2008 this weekend at the Rockwell Tent, Power Plant Mall in Rockwell, Makati. Your P200 will go directly to ICanServe projects that raise breast care health awareness and subsidize medical treatment for breast cancer patients.

Here are the chefs, professional cooks, and restaurants who/that are whipping up their specialties so we can eat for a good cause:

COMPANY/BOOTH - cuisine / specialty

Bambina Herbosa - Tapa / Bibingka Galapong
Bettina Legarda - Mediterranean
Boyd's Coffee (Robert Francisco) - coffee & tea
Buddy Trinidad - desserts
Café Juanita (Boy Vasquez) - Asian, Filipino
Chariya Thaikupt - Thai
Chelsea - Deli sandwiches
Chocolat Bakeshop - Mini cream puffs
Cristina Santiago Rivera - desserts / Strawberry Charlotte
Dely Fernandez - Tuscan Provencale
Dimpy Camara - Frozen Brazo de Mercedes
Enderun - Salad & Smoothies Station
Estrel's - Caramel Cake
Everybody's Café (Poch Jorolan) - Kapangpangan
Galileo Enoteca (Vanessa Vitrano) - cold cuts and cheeses
Ipe Cruz & Mariko Jacinto - Italian & Japanese
Jaemark's - Tuna Panga, Belly & Buntot
Jasmin Magallanes - Healthy Cuisine
Judah Liu - Spanish
Kai (Chef Gilbert Pangilinan) - Neo Japanese
Kanin Club (Tony Cancio) - Crispy Dinuguan
Karen Young - Red Velvet Cake
La Tasca & Pazzo Gelato (Marilou Senn) - Spanish & Gelato
Maj Lazatin - Italian
Malu del Rosario - pastries
Mara de la Rama - desserts
Maricel Cunanan - Cunanan Ensaymada
Michele D'Orival - French
Minnie Puno - Wraps
Mona Valdes - Indonesian
Myrna Segismundo
Nana Meng (Margaux Salcedo) - Tsokolate
Offie Benavides - Filipino
Old Swiss Inn (Katrina Limcaoco) - Fresh Corned Beef
Pauline Gorriceta - Banusing Iloilo Specialties
Picole Healthy Pops (Candy Mejia) - Healthy Pops
Quito Jose - Thai
Rob & Sunshine Pengson - French
Roselyn Tiango - Desserts
Sigalit Djemal - Caviar Pie, Salmon Cream Pie
Suman Gogna - Indian
Susie Quiros - Lasagna
The Farm at San Benito - Macrobiotic Cuisine
Tippi Tambunting - Continental
Vargas Kitchen - Comfort Food
Wendy Ozamis - Singapore Hawker Style
WynnWynn Ong - Burmese
Happy Living Wines - wines
Premium Wine Exchange - wines

Clap for them, guys!

To help you navigate the maze of concessionaires, here's a map c/o the I Can Serve Foundation (click to enlarge). Btw there are shows every every evening starting at 8 pm so diners can hum along while having their dinner.



Here's a shout-out to my colleagues in media, shuck your free entrance and fork over the P200. It's for a good cause naman, noh?

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AT the same time, it's also Power Plant's pre-Christmas sale, so a visit to Rockwell this weekend is surely worth it.



Kain and shopping na!

Emerging from financial illiteracy

Something Like Life
Oct. 10, 2008

A COUPLE of years ago, writing for a women’s magazine, I was able to interview young stage actress Cathy Azanza. While the interview was basically about her life as an actress and what beauty products she bought, we also spoke about personal-finance matters. (By the way, Cathy has just gotten married to film director/cinematographer Paolo Dy—with our good friend Mr. Caps as ninong—and we would like to offer our best wishes to the couple.)

Most people think that a career in theater doesn’t offer financial stability. There is just not a lot of jobs around to steadily earn from, considering we are a nation of—dare I say it?—cultural illiterates! You can only count on the fingers of one hand the number of theater companies which actually have a regular season’s worth of stage plays.

Between our work, domestic duties, cable TV switched on for most part of the day and the amount of surfing, chatting and playing we do on the Internet, how many of us still go to the theater? And even if we wanted to, tickets don’t exactly come cheap. (I used to buy Rep season tickets until I learned to, ahem, prioritize my spending. I guess that makes me a cultural illiterate as well, hehe.) So most of us would rather go to the cinema to watch the latest Hollywood blockbuster, or—worse—go to our suki DVD retailer to get our pirate fix.

According to Cathy, stage actors are paid rehearsal fees, usually at the end of each week. The release of “show fees,” on the other hand, depends on the actor’s contract with the theater company he is working with. “Some pay after every weekend run, some at the halfway mark of a run and then again at the end, and still others at the end of a run.” (Click here for the rest. Photo of Cathy Azanza from The Rep.)

Good reads (and another thing Pinoys should be proud of)

From The Economic Consequences of Mr. Bush by Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist of the World Bank and Nobel Prize laureat:

"Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting. There is no threat of America’s being displaced from its position as the world’s richest economy. But our grandchildren will still be living with, and struggling with, the economic consequences of Mr. Bush....

"Whoever moves into the White House in January 2009 will face an unenviable set of economic circumstances. Extricating the country from Iraq will be the bloodier task, but putting America’s economic house in order will be wrenching and take years."

Read on at Vanity Fair.

Also, from the Asian Sentinel, a story on vigilantism, female style:

"A rambunctious and fearless posse recognizable by their pink-colored saris, the Pink Gang is the nemesis of violent husbands and inept government officials. Having personally suffered abuse, members of the vigilante club thrash abusive men, wife beaters and rapists, confront and shame wrongdoers and storm local police stations to accost lackadaisical cops."

Watch out men. We're on to you.

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Proudly Pinoy again

The Manila Standard Today reports that Lagen and Miniloc islands' resorts have been included in Travel + Leisure's 20 Favorite Green Hotels in its January issue. Actually, the issue was November 2007. Anyway, here is the relevant passage, as quoted by MST on Jan. 19:

“Surrounded by 123,000 acres of protected forests, jagged limestone cliffs, and hidden lagoons, travelers to sister resorts El Nido Lagen Island and El Nido Miniloc Island can take their pick of daily activities: bird-watching, kayaking, rock climbing, or simply watching fish swim below one of the guest cottages-on-stilts, which are set above the crystalline ocean.”

The El Nido resorts were actually ranked number eight out of 20 resorts wordwide, coming after well-established and major establishments in the Maldives , the Swiss Alps, and Bahamas. Just goes to show the Philippines still has something to be proud about.

Wassup por yu?

Something Like Life
Oct. 12, 2007

I’VE been sick again and, after finally consulting a doctor on Sunday, I was basically told to shut up for 24 hours to rest my inflamed throat, which I probably got from cheering excessively during the La Salle-Ateneo game two Sundays before, then downing half a bag of microwave popcorn that night. (During the championship game against UE, all I could do was clap my hands silly. But yay, Green Archers! Animo La Salle!)

So I was pretty much sidelined in the last two weeks, unable to meet my deadlines because I was also feeling fluish. I was downing all sorts of drugs and incessantly gargling with Bactidol to help ease my discomfort. Because my greatest fear in my life is to die from sheer hunger, I still ate meat and all sorts of yummy chewy treats, which my doc eventually told me were no-no’s. (“Soft foods only!”) Great. That meant lots of lugaw and chicken noodle soup with crackers, but I was too afraid to follow the doc to the letter, lest I become runny like Romy Neri. Ick.

So during the past weeks I was away from the real world, I was occupied with the cyber/video world. I watched the first episode of Private Practice (the “bleah!” Grey’s Anatomy spinoff), the first episodes of the new seasons of Grey’s and Ugly Betty, and now I’m deep into the sex, blood and gore of Rome, the first season. Needless to say, I got involved in the online debate regarding the real or imagined slurs against Philippine medical schools and former President Cory Aquino.

Frankly, I don’t watch Desperate Housewives. I find it a ditzy, boring and brainless show. I watched it only for two seasons, because of James Denton, the actor who plays the sexy hotbod hunk of a plumber who falls for the ridiculous Susan Meyer, played by has-been actress Teri Hatcher. (I hear that Denton’s character is now in a coma and is under the covers most of the time, so why anyone still bothers to watch this show mystifies me.) Out of curiosity, I downloaded that premiere episode of Housewives which contained the allegedly inflammatory remark against local medical schools. Truth to tell, I didn’t find it that offensive.

It’s only a TV show after all, and it was a joke. Susan Meyer is supposed to be an idiot who probably wouldn't even know how to find the Philippines on a map even if it was as large as North America. Besides, I can tell the difference between reality and fantasy because I’m well-educated and because of my own experience with Filipino doctors and nurses. All races and nationalities are always stereotyped or insulted on TV...the arrogant waspish American, the poor hip-hopping Black Americans, the noisy cliquish Chinese, the British and their bad teeth, the Vietnamese and their extended families, the Italians and their mob connections, etc. But these nationalities don’t gnash their teeth or pull their hair over these supposed insults because they know, in TV land, everyone is fair game.

Even our own local TV shows are riddled with all sorts of regional insults — the Visayans who always confuse their “e’s” with “i’s”, the Capampangans who reverse their “f’s” and “p’s”, the kuripot Ilocanos and the angry Batangueños with their balisong, among others. Where are all the online petitions against these TV stereotypes?

Now, if you read the comments left by our kababayan on YouTube and on the Desperate Housewives web site, it showed how some of them are even more racist than the clueless writers of the show. Invectives and slurs were all over the place, not the least of them the anti-American everything! I cannot help but feel ashamed there are Pinoys like that.

The management of ABC has already said sorry along with the promise to delete the offending scene from their reruns, international editions and DVD version. Malacañang has already accepted the apology. Still, some of our kababayan continue to scream for blood! Instead of being gracious enough to accept the apology, we continue to curse Americans, the writers, Teri Hatcher, ABC. There was this old lady who was even crying hysterically about how uneducated Americans are compared with Filipinos during an LA Fil-Am TV show’s phone-in portion. It was so sickeningly OA! If you think so lowly of Americans, why the hell are you killing yourselves trying to get a US visa or even buying their products?

(It's a fake news show, people! Notice the Comedy Central logo at the bottom right corner of your TV screen? Sos.)

Riding on the Housewives controversy, some people also tried to pick on a month-old episode of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, who is my husband by the way, so lay off! If the aggrieved – led by Sen. Noynoy Aquino, who seems so desperate to have his 15 seconds of TV airtime that he has to use his poor mother to generate news – actually watch The Daily Show, they would know it is a political satire. The piece by Samantha Bee in a Sex and the City format on whether Americans are ready for a woman president was actually poking fun at Americans themselves. Here are these countries — the UK, Israel, the Philippines — which are many light-years ahead of the US in having elected their own female heads of state. It played to female stereotypes—idiots, tramps and sluts — and because most intelligent people know that in real life Golda Meir, Margaret Thatcher and Cory Aquino are not, they get the joke. Sadly, the rest don’t. Hello? Have you eaten your galunggong today? If you didn’t get that one either, here’s a gun and go shoot yourselves.

C’mon, do you ever hear the White House complaining every time David Letterman puts out his piece, “Great Moments in Presidential Speeches,” which basically portrays President Bush as a bumbling idiot? In the first season of Ugly Betty, Mark, the gay assistant of Wilhelmina, persuades Betty to be his fake girlfriend. In trying to memorize facts about each other, he asks the eternally unfashionable Mexican Betty, “You’re from the Philippines, right?” Naku, how dare these Americans mistake us for Mexicans! Or what about Will & Grace? Karen to her maid Rosario: “If it weren’t for me, you’d be flying back to Cucaracha on Air Guacamole with live chickens running up and down the aisles!” Any diplomatic protests from El Salvador or Mexico? As Fil-Am comedian Rex Navarette jokes, “Wassup por you?”

What does this say of us and our relationships to other cultures?

We often ridicule others and make stupid jokes just about every political issue (“AB-ZTE-FG!”), but we cannot take a joke about ourselves. We can dish it out, but we aren’t so accepting when we’re on the receiving end. We are pikon, because I’d hate to think that we are bobo instead and just don’t get the joke.

We have such fragile egos that if anyone makes fun of us, we automatically lash out. It’s as if we love reveling in acting api-apihan to foreigners, so we strike at them by pushing online petitions, rallying, sending diplomatic protests, and demanding for the moon and stars to assuage our hurt amor propio, instead of proving them wrong by being on our best behavior. Was this attitude formed because we were colonized by foreigners, so we have some sort of superiority complex that masks our actual feelings of inferiority toward other cultures? Other nationalities, especially Americans, know Filipino doctors and nurses are among the best health-care professionals in the world, never mind that Liz Taylor has banned the latter around her hospital room. (Anyone picketing her by the way?) So how can 10 seconds in a 45-minute episode of an idiotic TV show change that opinion and fact?

Sadly, I can only blame Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano for these unfunny events. If he had only continued the ZTE broadband hearings, we would be happily texting more ridiculous jokes or poking fun at Ateneans, Ben Abalos’s Viagra prescription, JDV3’s high forehead, Romy Neri’s intentional flu, Mike Arroyo’s dirty finger, and Presidentita’s Victoria Court ad (“shhh”). Get it?

(My column, Something Like Life, is published every Friday in the Life section of the BusinessMirror. Main photo from BusinessMirror.)

Tough choice for women

THIS issue is overwhelming. But it is something to think about especially now that more people are getting involved in environmental issues and are on their own, starting to take the necessary steps to heal Mother Earth.

Sanitary pads: A feminine challenge
BY ISA LORENZO, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism

THEY COME with or without wings, ultra-thin or maxi, regular, extra long, or g-string. One can also have them unscented, but some brands tout scents like lavender and baby powder. There are sanitary napkins with green tea, while others boast of additives such as aloe vera and vitamin E. Recently, a Chinese company launched a sanitary pad that it says contains anions, which purportedly decrease bacteria and even gradually eliminate dysmenorrhea.

Modern sanitary napkins have come a long way since the days when women would try to contain their monthly flow with thick pads of cloth. Yet for all the innovations manufacturers of sanitary napkins have come up with to ease women’s discomfort during "those days" of the month, they seem to be stumped by this challenge: producing a practical yet eco-friendly sanitary pad.

Environmental groups like Bangon Kalikasan Movement (BKM) say the mountains of trash in dumpsites like Payatas in Quezon City contain a very hefty share of soiled baby diapers and used sanitary napkins. The trash in Payatas has piled up to a towering 50 feet, equivalent to five stories. Seven years ago, a thousand people were killed when the trash came tumbling down on scavengers and those living in huts near the steaming mounds of garbage.

(For the rest of the piece, click Tough choice.)

The alternatives to what are being currently practiced may be impractical for most, but are clearly safer for the environment. Despite my being a staunch environmentalist, I must admit, I find it difficult to choose Mother Earth over practicality, reliability, convenience in this case. I'm at a loss on this one.