Call for field reports
Time to check in on our agents of world domination. If you’re a Filipino living outside the Philippines, we want to hear from you.
1. Where do you live? (What town or city in which country?)
2. When did you move there?
3. Why did you move there?
4. What do you do there? (Not an existential question. Are you a student? What university? Are you employed or engaged in business? What sort of business?)
5. Are there a lot of Pinoys in your area? Any idea how many Pinoys live in that town or city?
6. Do you hang out mostly with Pinoys or with the natives?
7. Are you there for good or are you coming back to the Philippines?
8. Are there any good Filipino restaurants where you live?
9. Do you get to see Filipino movies and/or television shows? How?
10. When the people there learn that you’re from here, what do they usually ask you?
Please post your answers in Comments. If you don’t want your answers to be published, just say so.
We’d like to know where our outposts are and what our agents are doing.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
May 27th, 2009 at 21:25
Where do you live? (What town or city in which country?)
I live in a quintessentially ‘chavvy’ small town village in England, Blighty. A modest terrace house with a biggish garden… Well, if you could call a couple of twiggy roses, a few weeds and some rocks a garden. But it’s the closest to what Alex James of ‘Blur’ would call ‘a house in the country’ that I could afford at the moment.
2. When did you move there?
A fortnight short before James Bond must stop a bomb that would blow the top of Millennium Dome (in London) to smithereens is scheduled to detonate at midnight of the year 2000 in ‘The World is Not Enough’.
3. Why did you move there?
Whoa! This feels like a consumer survey-thing from a rep off a call centre in Mumbai copying a ‘limey’ accent promising it won’t take a wee bit – I just had this morning. Seriously. If I only had the luxury to copy-paste my answer from my profile just as I have now: ‘I could have chosen to be a bum, live in absolute squalor in a shack in some tropical beach in the third world…’ But na-ah. I love to live in an expensive place. I often hear that London is the second most expensive city in the world. Which city got first place, I often wonder. I’m pretty sure the quaint small hamlet of a town where I live – about one hour train ride from the capital could be a runner-up in the price stakes. I also quite fancy English literature and listened to ‘The Clash’ a lot growing up.
4. What do you do there? (Not an existential question. Are you a student? What university? Are you employed or engaged in business? What sort of business?)
I know it’s a little bit clichéd, but I too am a Nurse. I’m a chap and I also got an Art and History background back home, though. LOL! I know that this is not an existential question, Jessica. So pardon me. I feel a tad self-indulgent at the moment. And again, I could just copy-paste stuff (like ‘why I become a Nurse and invent egotistic justification for my self-induced misery…’ I love the fact that I can work anywhere in the world that I want to. The world is one giant sweatshop for Nurses who will work for peanuts and a bit of sunshine, rain or snow) just as fast as I washed down a digestive biscuit with cuppa tea whilst I flick through TV channels to avoid watching the FA Cup Finals. Football is so chav. I’d watch Cricket if I can understand it. Otherwise, I’d rather watch paint dry.
5. Are there a lot of Pinoys in your area? Any idea how many Pinoys live in that town or city?
I live in the country, so nothing that you could compare to what you see in London. Or a city in Italy. But obviously, I live near a hospital. LOL!
6. Do you hang out mostly with Pinoys or with the natives?
By default, I hang out mostly with natives. There are only four Pinoys in my workplace. TGF is Pinay and her sister is married to a Brit who pretty much socially network with Pinoys in the same arrangement. So you can’t throw a weekend barbecue without the ‘de rigueur’ bland and boring ‘mash and bangers’. Most of them here are WAG’s. (wives and girlfriends). Except her sister who is businesswoman, I suspect the vast majority of Naypi’s who came to Britain before the nursing shortage crisis in the nineties, are mail-order-brides. Just a theory.
7. Are you there for good or are you coming back to the Philippines?
Definitely going back to the islands. I’m saving up for an elaborate electric fencing kit to cover a massive perimeter and lots of security cameras.
8. Are there any good Filipino restaurants where you live?
No Filipino restaurant here let alone a decent one. Such a shame, since I prefer my fish dinner with the fish head intact.
9. Do you get to see Filipino movies and/or television shows? How?
Quite honestly, I don’t see the difference between the crap that they churn out in most Filipino movies and Hollywood – so why bother. There’s some really good stuff to nick off the internet though. That Khavn lad is okey.
10. When the people there learn that you’re from here, what do they usually ask you?
I’ve encountered a thick wank who once asked me if we have MTV in the Philippines. I asked him back: Do you have books in England?
May 31st, 2009 at 06:38
1. Where do you live? (What town or city in which country?)
The North Pole, I live and work in Iqaluit, Nunavut, Canada
2. When did you move there?
Work as a pharmacist
3. Why did you move there?
for work
4. What do you do there? (Not an existential question. Are you a student? What university? Are you employed or engaged in business? What sort of business?)
Im working towards getting licensed as Pharmacist here in the North.
5. Are there a lot of Pinoys in your area? Any idea how many Pinoys live in that town or city?
Apparently, Im number 41.
6. Do you hang out mostly with Pinoys or with the natives?
Since Im fresh off the “boat”, hang out with the other pinoys. The natives find me funny.
7. Are you there for good or are you coming back to the Philippines?
Global warming will melt the ice here and flood the south. I think Im staying put for a couple of years to see how that goes.
8. Are there any good Filipino restaurants where you live?
No pinoy restaurants. But there is a chinese restaurant.
9. Do you get to see Filipino movies and/or television shows? How?
Not yet. Got no cable yet.
10. When the people there learn that you’re from here, what do they usually ask you?
Do you live in straw houses?
How come you know all the words to all the songs?
Are you a nanny? Nurse?