(In which a little love and pride are everything we need.)
***
The two units of the company were spiced up by the story about the latest rudeness that overly/pseudo nationalistic student has displayed. No, it’s not Lex. It’s the son of the stage mom.
I really can’t imagine how I’ll behave if faced with an eleven-year-old East Asian boy who claims that “Filipinos are not thinking” and that he’s better than his teacher. How about spelling supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?
As the other teachers share their hatred toward the ill remark, we have come up with a stand that we should start dealing with them with less kindness and more strictness. And that we have to step up for our country and our people especially in times when these siopao-faced foreigners with glasses of quadrilateral lenses ventured upon insult.
And for a little dose of racial pride, here’s for everyone.
When I See a Barong-Barong
Maximo Ramos
When I see a barong-barong neighborhood in the heart of war-torn Manila;
When I behold beside the Pasig sudden lean-tos defended against sun and rain with salvaged sheets of tin;
When I take a truck ride through Suburbia and find nipa huts clustered within the shell-punched walls of former mansions of stone –
I do not look away in shame or throw up my hands despairing for my people.
I fill my chest with the bracing breeze of this my country and say:
Though my race has been pushed around in his own land for nearly half a thousand years,
Though my people have been double-crossed again and again by foreigners,
Though my race has been pitted against themselves down the centuries;
I joy to discover that they are whole and remained unbroken in spirit;
Building them makeshift huts of nipa and salvaged tin and standing straight with heads against the stars.
