6:10 a.m. 7-11 in Cebu

Got an awesome night of sleep last night. I woke up fully refreshed and feeling great, but I still have ghost images in my left eye. Who knows? It might be a permanent part of my life now. It doesn’t affect distance vision all that much. A very annoying side-effect is that my prescription glasses are now all wonky for my left eye. And, as I’ve said a dozen times, I was stupid and paid a fortune for them while in Taiwan. I regretted buying them even when they worked. And now they don’t even work anymore. Total waste of money.

It’s funny how I twist and force the habits of my life to give me the best results. Small things can be important to me – like my morning coffee. I want my coffee hot. I don’t want to go through a big hassle to get it. I like a comfortable table that doesn’t wobble. I like it to be cool. Coming to 7-11 shortly after six in the morning is pretty much the only way to get all of that. The place has just opened up and there are no other customers yet. So there is no risk of anyone taking the good table. (I have to move a bunch of chairs and benches around so that I can get the perfect place to sit.) And there is no risk of anyone being ahead of me in line. For most people, getting out of bed at 5:30 in the morning would be a big challenge. Me, I’m willing to do that just so that I can organize my day in such a way that people don’t annoy me. There is still a big risk, though. (Sidenote: big rat just went skipping past my window and down the sidewalk. Scary monster. Huge colonies of them live in the sewers around here. I’ve looked into some broken gratings from time to time and seen what looked like rat balls in there – big bunches of rats all coiled together in a big ball – squirming. It’s a crazy sight.) The risk is that 7-11 won’t have any coffee. They use a relatively small machine for that. You push a button and let the machine grind the beans and brew the coffee and serve it one cup at a time. It works well and makes a half-decent cup of coffee, but it is a complicated machine and needs servicing. They don’t really take care of it, and it often has broken down. My only other option then is to go to McDonald’s. The problem there is that the coffee is very weak and expensive. And you never know if it is going to be hot or lukewarm. Plus, if you have a man serving you, chances are that you will get two thirds of a cup instead of a full cup. That really annoys me because I don’t realize it until I’m sitting at the table and take the lid off. And then I can just sit there and be annoyed, or I have to go through the hassle of going back up to the counter and asking for them to fill the cup up to the top. It’s a pattern I’ve noticed in my life and it holds true everywhere in the world – men are horrible at serving. There’s a reason that women are the norm as waitresses. Men usually suck at it. I hate it when I have no choice but to be served by a man in any restaurant. They always do a bad job and give small portions and forget things. They take no pride in that kind of work.

Another sidenote: a youngish man just stopped outside the window of this 7-11 and asked me for money. I’m generally befuddled by that situation. We’re separated by a thick slab of glass. So what does he expect me to do? Get up from my table and go outside and give him money and then come back in? Is he supposed to come inside the 7-11? Obviously, I don’t want to go through the hassle of going outside. Equally, I don’t feel comfortable giving him permission to come inside the 7-11. It’s not my business, and I don’t want to set the trend of all beggars coming inside.

An interesting aspect to the situation is that he made it clear that he was asking for five pesos. He wasn’t expecting a lot of money. Five pesos is, perhaps, twenty cents Canadian. And he wasn’t a beggar exactly. After I said no by shaking my head at him, he went across the street and started “working” by directing passengers into jeepneys. Or something. I’m not quite sure what these guys do. I see them all over the city in areas where a lot of jeepneys stop to pick up passengers. They wave their arms around a lot and point at jeepneys and direct them up the street or other things. They appear to be working, but I don’t see any actual effect from all their work. And I have no idea who would pay them anyway. They don’t work for anyone. My guess is that they kind of hang out and help as much as they can, hoping for a tip or tips and then a chance to get a job on one of the jeepneys. Each jeepney has a driver and a young man in the back herding passengers and collecting money.

Ah! I just witnessed something!! Success. I’ve never actually seen money change hands before. I just saw it. One of these volunteer workers was standing behind a jeepney. The jeepney was about to start moving and leave. (They stop for just a second or two, if that.) But this guy saw a potential passenger – a woman in a nursing uniform – hurrying in their direction. This volunteer dude shouted at the jeepney to wait and held up his hand in a “stop” gesture. He then urged the woman forward and sort of passed her on to the jeepney. THEN the young man actually on the jeepney flipped a coin onto the pavement as the jeepney drove away. I have no idea what the coin was, but it was certainly no more than one peso. It was either a one-peso coin or a twenty-five-centavo coin.

It was an amazing transaction to watch. I’m fascinated by the economic lives of these people. And it’s great to see someone working that hard and, in effect, creating their own job. It’s something I’ve seen all over the place, of course, but the details are always difficult to make out. I remember the kids in Ethiopia making a huge deal out of showing people where to park and then “protecting” their cars. The pattern was always to force their services on you. And then there is a guilt trip at work so that you give them a tip.

Of course, life at this level is only possible because they can keep their daily expenses so low. They certainly sleep outside somewhere or jammed into an abandoned building with lots of other people. And they would pay extremely small amounts of money for their meals. In the past, when I’ve given five pesos to street boys or these young men, they almost instantly go to a place like the Golden Crust and buy a bun. These buns generally cost five pesos, and I get the impression that they make up their breakfast. So this guy that was just outside my window asking for money probably had had no breakfast and was going to have to work all morning before he would have enough money to buy some food. My refusing to give him any money basically denied him breakfast.

I’m extremely conflicted about all of this sort of stuff. One problem is that I feel weird about giving only five pesos. It feels so cheap on my part. So I often ignore beggars when I’m feeling irritable or impatient. I ignore them, not because I don’t want to give them five pesos. I’m clearly not going to miss five pesos. I ignore them because giving them five pesos doesn’t feel like enough. So I give them nothing instead. It’s stupid logic. Yesterday, I went for a long walk to a camera store that I know. I plotted a route through a brand new neighborhood, and it was an interesting walk – a new district of hell on earth. I wish I had brought my camera with me because there were so many images of abandoned and decrepit old buildings. And signs are always amusing. There was one awesome building – like the ruins of a castle – jagged cement walls rising up three or four stories. No roof. It had a sign on it that said something like “Caution. There is danger of falling!” As I walked, scruffy and scary men came out of the shadows and offered me various things and indicated that I just had to go down this or that narrow alley to buy it. I have no idea what they were offering, but it’s a safe guess they were pimps. They kept saying, “Just look! Just look!” The point of this story is that at two places, I spotted an older woman with some ragged children lying on the sidewalk ahead of me. The children were holding paper cups to beg for money. And when I saw them, I crossed to the other side of the street so that I wouldn’t have to deal with them. And, stupidly, when I did so, I had to make a show out of looking around and pretending that I had crossed the street for some specific reason rather than just avoiding the beggars. And I avoided the beggars, not because I didn’t want to lose five or ten pesos. I did so to avoid the feeling of being a cheap asshole for giving them ONLY five pesos. Deep down, I feel like I should give them a thousand pesos or take them under my wing and take care of them forever and put the kids through school. It’s crazy, but that is the emotional logic.

The other side of it is that following the urge to help people just conjures up the image of a paternalistic Westerner who is “helping” people only to make himself feel better and feel superior. I’ve been in this neighborhood long enough to know most of the regulars by sight. And I’ve seen many Westerners come and go. There is a mid-range hotel just up the street – right beside my old Internet café. Low-end tourists sometimes stay there, and I have seen these people come out onto the street and then gather up a big bunch of street children around them and give them all money and then take a picture of them. Now they have a story to tell back home about how they met all these poor beggars and have pictures to show. The kids are not idiots, and are more than willing to put on any show for the Westerners that do this. They’ve seen them come and go. It’s nothing new to them, either. So even though I have the urge to go out there and give five pesos to each of these guys working the jeepneys so they can get a morning coffee or a morning bun, I would feel like one of these stupid Westerners getting their third world experience.

Anyway, it is certainly not as desperate as all that. It’s certainly nothing like the situation I saw in Ethiopia. There is tons of money here in the Philippines. It’s a very rich country by any comparison. The Filipinos themselves have more than enough money to keep their own beggars alive. They don’t need Westerners handing out pens and balloons.

It’s funny, but just like in every other country, I feel the need for an assistant. For example, I want to know all about these jeepney men, but it would be difficult to find out on my own. It would be great to have a young assistant and send him out there with a bunch of questions and come back and deliver a report. From here, I can also see the old man with lymphatic filariasis who sells newspapers in the morning. I want to know all about him, too. My assistant could go interview him. I’ve actually seen this old man inside a somewhat cheap and shoddy local shopping mall. He hangs out in a food court area near this giant bingo hall. It makes me wonder if he spends his days playing bingo with the money he makes selling newspapers. I’d love to know how much money he makes per day, if he has to pay to use that patch of sidewalk, where he lives, where he is from, and, of course, the history of his disease. He certainly contracted it in a village somewhere. You don’t get it in a city.

Watching the jeepneys ply their trade makes me ponder work habits here. I’ve often complained that Filipinos work very slowly and often very poorly. Yet, I also see very hard workers. The young men that herd passengers onto jeepneys work extremely hard. They expend huge amounts of energy shouting and waving and running around and gathering up passengers and collecting money. They often do things to make their jobs even harder. They often let the jeepney start moving away from them before they get on board. Then they have to run after the jeepney and jump onto the rear bumper. They remind me of skateboard kids. They wear sunglasses and jewelry and act cool and crazy. The volunteer helpers are even crazier. The main guy currently working across the street from me is very energetic. To be honest, I think he is little mentally unbalanced. He works so hard to look like he is working. And he is very flamboyant and wild in all of his actions. Most of the time, he does nothing effectual. The street can be completely empty, but he waves at a jeepney to direct it to where to park. There’s no need for that because the street is empty and the jeepney can park anywhere. Then he stands at the back and yells and shouts and waves his arms. He’s doing nothing, but he looks busy. Then he walks up to the driver’s window and asks for some money for all his help. I just saw him do that, and the driver waved him off and gave him nothing. The dude simply shrugged and spit in the gutter and went to the next jeepney. So they work very hard. And there are lots of examples of Filipinos who work that hard. But then there are the 7-11 clerks that are sooooooo slow. Jobs are so difficult to get here, you’d think that anyone with a job would work extremely hard just to keep it. But it doesn’t work that way. I often feel guilty about my lifestyle, especially when I am in an Internet café. Out of thirty people sitting in the non-game section of an Internet café, twenty-five of them will be working on a resume or a cover letter. They are all trying so hard to get a job – any job – here or in any country in the world. I could fly to Taiwan and likely get a half-decent job and live a good life. I could fly to Korea or Japan and likely be working in a short time. They’d kill for that chance. And, of course, I could fly to Canada and maybe work there.

Tags: Ethiopia, fly, job, Philippines Bike Trip 2013, Taiwan