From First World to Third

One of Eric's friends from college, Andrew, recently moved into town to take on a job with the Asian Development Bank (shet, inggit, but that's another post altogether). Andrew is a full-blooded Australian, and he moved here along with his wife (who's Filipina but has lived in Australia since she was five months old so is pretty much Aussie na rin) and their one-and-a-half-year-old son. Yesterday, Eric helped them move from an Ortigas service apartment to a Makati service apartment, and afterwards, we took them to SM supermarket so they could buy groceries.

I knew they would be in for a culture shock by coming here, given that they've spent their whole lives in First World digs -- Australia growing up, and then about two years in Tokyo for Andrew's work prior to Manila. But when I talked specifics with Abby, I found out that some of those things that shocked her could be divided into two -- the understandable, and the ridiculous-hilarious.

The understandable:
1) The noise. Apparently, you could get fined in Australia for honking your car horn when it's not a life or death emergency. And even in Tokyo, where they say the traffic is as bad as Manila, drivers don't honk their horns as often. Abby says during her first few days here, she had difficulty crossing the street because she would get rattled and panicky by the sheer number of cars honking their horns.

2) The pollution.

3) The staring. Actually, "gawking" would be more appropriate. And to think we were already in Makati, where expats and foreigners abound; people still stopped and stared whenever Andrew and his family would pass. I distinctly remember talking to Abby along one of the aisles of the supermarket, and this lady pushing as cart actually stopped to listen to us talk -- probably because she couldn't understand why someone who's so Pinay-looking like Abby spoke with a foreign accent. And Pinoy kids actually peered into Andrew's son's stroller to take a closer look at him. I thought they were also stared at in Tokyo, but Abby says people there actually treated them like they were "normal."

Now for the ridiculous-hilarious:

1) Their impression of Philippine sanitation. Okay, so to be fair, their son did get diarrhea a few days after coming here. And I totally agreed that they should only drink bottled water, and that they should ask restaurant waiters not to put ice in their drinks. But I didn't know whether to be offended or to laugh when Abby said that they now also brush their teeth and gargle with bottled water, and that they make it a point not to eat salads in restaurants anymore. Ohhh-kayyyy....

2) All around ka-praningan. Abby couldn't understand why mall security had to check the trunk of our car as well as our bags. We said it was to check for bombs, and I made the mistake of revealing that to be honest, I bomb did go off in one of the buildings in Glorietta a few years back. Abby was absolutely horrified, and I had to quickly tell her that these things happen once in a blue moon, and while Manila isn't the safest place in the world, it's not as bad as how the foreign news makes it out to be. Somehow, she didn't look convinced.

With the rainy/storm season just around the corner, I can't wait to see Abby's reaction to Metro Manila's infamous flash floods, or the brownouts that are sure to happen. I don't know whether to feel sorry for her already, or practice my looking-sympathetic-but-secretly-find-the-whole-thing-amusing expression.