One Week Down

I've been in Manila almost a week, and as fast as time seemed to go living in Micronesia, that's how slow it seems to be passing right now.

There's not too much to report about work. I wake up at 5:40 in order to make the 6:40 van from the hotel to the office. They always wait until 6:45 in case anyone else gets in, but no one ever does. Despite the early wake up, the morning van is a huge perk of staying at Tropicana. I walk home, even though the driver said if I called the hotel they would send a car for me, and it takes about a half hour in the blistering heat and depressingly heavy humidity. Once I'm home I can stand in my underwear in front of the blasting AC and then take a shower, but at work I would just have to sit and stew in a sweaty suit. So it's better to get there early and not have to smell like a sidewalk heating grate.

I get there at 7am which is earlier than most people. So my first day I went to the cafeteria for a coffee, which costs me 30php or about 29 cents. I was still bitter that I had to pay until I remembered that back home I usually go to Starbucks or some other coffee shop once a day which costs me about $5 UNTIL I ALSO remembered that my same Starbucks drink here only costs me $3, and is worlds better than the cafeteria coffee. But it's in the opposite direction from the office, and somehow as amenable as my van driver is, I'm not sure he would be up for a coffee run every morning.

That first day, I had my coffee with two Filipino admin workers who were very friendly and showed me down to my unit where I discovered that I had my own office. And by office, I mean a cubicle  that has my nameplate on it which still sadly makes me feel more professional than ever before. Inside my cubicle there is a computer and a desk and a swivel chair with a broken arm and a task list left by my supervisor and not much else. There were two pens but no paper or staplers or clips or folders. I got the impression somehow that all those things are probably in short supply and high demand, so I bought some for myself this weekend.
So far the one thing I really like about work is the coffee and snack cart that comes by my cubicle twice a day. The guy who rolls it out knows by now that all I will get is the coffee for 15php, but still tries to get me to buy a sandwich. It seems typical for people in the office to eat small meals or snacks throughout the day, and maybe it appears odd or even sad that all I get is a plastic cup of coffee. "Are you sureeeee you don't want a sandwich ma'am?" Everyone calls me ma'am here and it makes me feel really old and important, which I'm not.
My task list includes things like report writing and literature reviews, things I did at uni but not really so much yet in my professional career. I still maintain that my best skills involve working with people - as un-me as that sounds - and I'm going to try and push to get some fieldwork or some kind of outside experience since that's what my inner anthropologist demands whenever I am somewhere new. But, I haven't even met my supervisor yet, and I have this dreaded feeling that it's going to be like that Seinfeld episode where George does nothing all week at his new job but transfer the contents of a file into an accordion-style folder.

Because I start work at 7:30, I leave at 3:30 which is also nice. The walk home always offers me some new and interesting experience. I can't even begin to describe the streets of Malate, which are crowded, dirty and full of all kinds of people. The smell, which is a mixture of sweat, street food, diesel and sewage is taking some getting used to, and I feel like I will leave here with a shriveled, blackened pulmonary system. I have never seen another westerner while walking home, and with my giant black purse and intern badge I am the sorest of thumbs. Everyone stares at me. And I can't even stare back lest I be mowed down by a jeepney or motorcyclist, something I feel is almost inevitable whenever I leave my hotel. I am trying to get over my instinctual reaction to stop and wait for cars but rather, as everyone else around me does, run for dear life with complete abandon to the other side while honking vehicles barrel down the road. My strategy involves waiting for someone else to have to cross the street so I can follow their path and try to learn the best ways of not being roadkill.
The poverty on the streets is more striking to me than in Micronesia, but I don't know enough about the lifestyle here to make any kinds of judgments. There are lots of people begging for money, lots of shoeless, very thin looking children in dark corners. The other day I saw a very old man, very crippled, crawling across the sidewalk with a can for money. Yesterday a boy, maybe 14 years old, was sleeping across the sidewalk. He was covered in dirt and was only wearing a pair of torn, short pants and a huge smile. It's difficult to reconcile this poverty, and the street life of Malate in general, with the photos I see of Makati, a different part of Manila. I haven't been there yet, but the photos make it look upscale, clean and fancy. Apparently, I've heard, it's where most of the ex-pats live.

But, I don't have to go to Makati to escape Malate. While outside shirtless children are eating rice out of dixie cups with dirty fingers, inside the Robinson's Mall there is a Jamba Juice and a Steve Madden. I've become enamored with this mall, mostly because its so huge and interesting, and also because it's something to do that doesn't involve figuring out public transport. Here is where all the white people seem crawl out of the woodwork. Mostly I see older men with Filipino wives. Whereas the Filipinos bend over backwards to be nice to me, explaining the best ways to eat dragon fruit and pricing all my produce for me, the westerners frown at me or look confused when I try to smile at them - an effort to try and make some kind of connection with people I feel must be in the same boat as me. In Pohnpei all us mehnwai did yoga, hikes, halloween parties and boat trips together. It seems here that life among the ex-pats is a little more disconnected. Either that, or I haven't properly broken into the group. Not that I am exclusively trying to hang out with Americans whenever I'm abroad, but it's always comforting to find people with whom you share some common thread.

After smiling like an idiot at all the old white men in the supermarket, and getting accosted by a worker dressed up like a giant orange M&M, I convinced myself that it was ok for me to buy some imported chocolate. Then I convinced myself it was ok to try some fruits and vegetables, even though I've been told this is risky. I've been here a week, and haven't been sick at all, so I figured it's time to take the next step in food because I can't continue to survive on snack packs and slightly off soy milk. I headed to the American-imported pomegranates before spotting the more interesting, and much cheaper, local fruits. I bought dragon fruit, mangosteen and ponkan. If I survive this round, I'll go back for durian and guava. There are plenty interesting products at the supermarket - in the beauty aisle, I can't seem to find any self-tanner, but there IS a plethora of skin-lightening products which boggles the mind, even though I'm totally aware of the cultural desire in many places to be light-skinned. Some are made by US companies that back home make it their business telling us we are all too pasty. There are lots of "island favorites" - dried mango, spam, tinned mackerel - which remind me of life in Chuuk and Pohnpei, and plenty of Australian brands, so I can get the best of all my worlds. Buying food here gives me a good perspective of cost. As I was walking though the midway section of the mall which has shops like Aldo, Esprit and Lacoste, a woman from a makeup stand came over to me and gave me a little blue bar. I thought it was a soap sample, but evidently taking the little bar meant I agreed to come see all of her products, called Aqua. she scrubbed my nails and hands with sea salt and oils and then sat me down and took off the makeup on one side of my face to show me a moisturizer. This was before I got groceries, so I was immediately reminded of that movie the Other Sister when Juliette Lewis agrees to a makeover and the saleswoman only does half her face. Except unlike Juliette Lewis I don't have a learning disability, just really poor sales resistance. I stopped her before she could do anymore damage and said I didn't have enough cash to pay for anything she was selling. The package of things she wanted me to buy would have cost 6,000php, around $135. My groceries cost $27. The manicure that I booked for tomorrow will be $30, but I feel I deserve it.

Departure/Arrival

When I started this post, I was somewhere over Alaska, with still about 6 hours to go until Tokyo, the first stop on my journey to the Philippines.

That cover photo isn't mine. And the blog title has nothing to do with a destination wedding as it might suggest. I am just struck by the fact that I really never thought I would make it back to Micronesia, yet it somehow found its way into my recent travel plans. In two months when I complete my internship with WHO in Manila, I will head to Palau, a part of Micronesia I haven't explored yet. My final stop is the relatively familiar ground of Australia. 

Preparing to go to Manila was just as challenging as preparing for Chuuk and Sydney, even though this time I will only be there for 2 1/2 months. The most difficult part is just trying to visualize the kind of city it will be and the kinds of people, things and work I will encounter. Pictures and well-traveled friends can only help so much. Until I am actually there, it remains a very distant place in many ways. 

I am trying to consider how challenged I felt leaving for Chuuk especially, and how by the end I felt like it was just another home. But the other difficult thing is how distant those places become all over again once I leave. I have distinct memories of morning conversations with our cooks in the dining room of Xavier. It was just small talk in the most basic Chuukese, but now I have forgotten what little I knew of the language. Something that was once so much a part of my daily life is something I can hardly remember. Most of the memories feel like dreams or stories that happened to someone else, and I am just trying to guess how they must have felt and what they must have done. I guess this is true for everything in the past, but somehow it feels like it means more too lose the things you struggled with the most, and found the most rewarding. 

My story in Manila might be similar. It's a stranger to me now. Soon it will be my home for a while, sometimes in ways that are frustrating or confronting, and sometimes in ways that are so intense and incredible it will feel like I've never lived anywhere else. Then, when I finally am just beginning to feel some sense of settling, I'll be swept up again to somewhere new, and it will become a stranger again.

 

The first thing I saw when I arrived at the airport was a sign at immigration that said "Naia is a no wang wang zone - fall in line." It was my first impression of Manila, and I have no idea what it means.
A WHO driver picked me up and drove me what seemed like ages from the airport to the Tropicana hotel suites in Malate. My room is pretty impressive for a hotel room - nice big kitchen and sitting area. I have a decent sized TV and lockbox, but either I can't figure them out or they don't work. The internet is slow and intermittent, especially in my room, and I haven't yet seen the pool or fitness center. It was on my list of things to do today, but I'm still exhausted from my day+ of travel.
It also says on their website that breakfast is included, but this wasn't the case, and they looked really confused when I asked about it. Good thing I traveled with granola bars and snack packs, because I had no food or water in the hotel room. I boiled some water and froze it in a bottle when I arrived so I had something to drink this morning.

I took a short walk to the Robinson's Place mall which is probably the biggest I've ever been to, maybe besides Sydney's Pitt Street. If I was just going for a look around it probably would have been really interesting and even fun, but I was on the hunt for very specific items - a straightening iron, a regular iron, and a supermarket, and these tasks took me about two hours to complete. The supermarket was easy, but no such luck with the other two. After walking around aimlessly through department stores and various food courts, I finally found Starbucks, which gave me strength, but tastes a lot different from coffee at home. I was trying to jot down where stores of interest were located, but all I really had were floor numbers and other stores for reference - "chemist, floor 2, next to Cotton On." That won't help me next time I am trying to make my way through the labyrinth of chintzy local retailers. On floor 3, I came across a hardware and homegoods store where they brought me to the irons. The workers were so friendly it was almost suspicious. Usually I am annoyed when sales people talk to me in the stores, but I think that's because I'm usually feeling some kind of sales pressure. The homegoods guy was more interested that I picked the cheaper, but still sturdy brand, and took it out of the box to plug it in somewhere to show me how good it was. He went through every button and dial, and I didn't have the heart to tell him that I know my way around an iron (kind of). He took all my stuff and carried it to the register for me, and stood with me until I was finished paying maybe because I look so foreign and confused. Hopefully not because he wanted a tip.
The same thing happened in the pharmacy where I found a straightening iron. They unplugged the florescent light above the makeup display case to show me how hot the irons got so I could compare them. To my dismay, they didn't let me test out any of the food in the supermarket. Maybe it's only for higher priced items. My flat iron came to about 2000php (about $65) while all my groceries came to about $40.

I also wanted to walk to the WHO office to see where it was - even though there is evidently a shuttle from my hotel that goes there in the morning. I took my life in my hands as a pedestrian. I would not say Manila is exactly "walker friendly" - the streets are small, intensely crowded, and there are no crosswalks or lights to be obeyed by the thousands of crazed motorists. Little trolley-like cars stuffed to the brim with people and rickshaw drivers are everywhere, battling for space with the venders that creep into their street space from the sidewalk. I couldn't shake the smell of the streets either. Sometimes it was the same smell as downtown Weno in Chuuk which made me think it was same kinds of foods being cooked in the street. Sometimes it was pollution, and overwhelmingly nauseating.
A lot of people stared at me, and some of them pointed. While I saw plenty of white people at immigration, and a fair few at Robinson's, I saw none on my walk down Taft Avenue to the WHO office - about 15 minutes away from my hotel. As a tall, pale American, I obviously stand out. I am trying to dress conservatively and look intimidating and properly urbanized when I walk instead of how I really feel, which is totally confused. I still can't decide what it means to dress appropriately here, and if it matters who you are and what part of the city you come from. Most people around my area seem to wear long pants or dresses, but the billboards and signs in Robinson's advertise miniskirts, and some younger girls inside were following suit.

Tomorrow is my first day at the office. I am going to try to start the day off right and get there without being hit by a motorbike.

For anyone interested, my address for the time being is
Tropicana Suites Hotel
1630 Luis Ma. Guerrero Street
Malate, Metro Manila, Philippines, 1004

No sim card yet, but always accepting emails and skypes :)