Work, History, & More Manila Musings

I’m back to an 8 to 5 grind. I spend most of my days poring over history books and I couldn’t really find a reason to complain, not even with a 4-hour total commute time daily from home to work and back. Yes, not even with the traffic, the fast food choices, the air pollution, the noise, the dirt. Manila is a forsaken city, I’ve concluded with a heavy albeit honest heart on the first of a weekly rendezvous in the capital city. I’ve lived in Paco, Manila for five years before (from 2005 – 2010) and the streets are certainly not new. They look shabbier now but it still feels home and I walk on these mean Manila streets only with nostalgia and almost never with regret. Good company comes super handy in my Alabang-Manila-Alabang ordeal (a.k.a. commute) that seems to last forever. Manila Bay sunset on my way home. French architecture right infront of our office. It's that... small. A visitor at work during lunch break. Browsing through vintage books during breaks.

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Where was I? Oh yeah, I am doing a research about Leon Apacible and is reading a book about his brother, Galicano. Galicano Apacible studied and lived in Barcelona, Madrid, Paris among other European cities. He’s actually fond of Paris and was fluent in French. Just like our National Hero, Jose Rizal, Galicano studied to become a Doctor, and both coming from rich families, were sent to Europe for further studies. So Galicano made rounds in Paris hospitals to do some sort of internships.
Here is the text that made me write an update now:

Source: Galicano Apacible: Profile of a Filipino Patriot by Encarnacion Alzona. 1971. Manila, Philippines: National Historical Institute, p.137-138.

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More than a hundred years later and I couldn't agree more to Mr. Apacible. All I really wanted to say is that I’ve never felt discriminated in Europe. In fact, it is there that I felt I was treated as an equal.
Let me push my luck before clock hits 3:15 and my break time is over. Equality is a tricky concept to put into the Filipino context because it is remote to the dominant culture in the Philippines. Security guards are everywhere and they already can be intimidating and discriminating, gets? There is a certain degree of freedom achieved in being regarded as an equal. Maybe it’s the self-confidence one gains that comes with the treatment. I’m not sure. What I am sure of is that this freedom is something we, in the Philippines, are not even acquainted to even after years of our so-called independence. Ah, I guess I’m reading too much (or too less) of the Philippine-American war.
In any case, I will swear on my dead toe’s tomb that being treated as an equal is worth your every sweat and libag (if and when you are a commuter in Metro Manila like me). Caveat: you gotta fight for it in silence.
Now let me rephrase that: It was during my stay in Europe that I had to consciously, deliberately, and painstakingly treat myself as anybody's equal. Heck the place is beyond intimidating! But the attitude of the Europeans I encountered were way more tolerant and thus, immensely encouraging.