FB#13 – Ate Ria
http://ateria.blogspot.com/
Sumusubok Magbigay ng Payo
Name: Maria A. Jose
Location: Davao City
- When did you start blogging in earnest? Which blog platform did you use 1st?
- Nagsimula akong mag-blog noong 2004 sa pamamagitan ng Live Journal.
- Why do you blog? What/who gave you that 1st push?
- Nagbo-blog ako dahil mahilig akong magsulat. Nais kong ibahagi ang buhay ko, ang aking mga karanasan, mga opinyon, at mga leksyong natutunan.
- Tell us about this featured blog. Purpose? Target audience?
- Bunga ng aking kagustuhan makapag-ensayo ng pagsusulat sa Filipino ang blog na “Ate Ria.” Upang mabigyan ito ng kakaibang tinig, napagpasiyahan kong gamitin ito upang sagutin ang iba’t-ibang tanong at magbigay ng payo.
- How many other blogs do you own?
- Mayroon akong humigit kumulang labing-isang blogs.
- What “offline” activities do you do to promote your blog(s)?
- Binabanggit ko ito sa aking mga kaibigan at kakilala. Hinihikayat ko silang magbigay ng mga tanong o suliraning maaari kong sagutin o bigyan ng solusyon.
- What/who inspires you to keep on blogging? How come?
- Ang akign mga magbabasa ang nagbibigay sa akin ng inspirasyon upang maging mabuting manunulat.
- Do you currently monetize your blog(s)? How?
- Isa ito sa mga blogs na hindi ko pa pinagkakakitaan.
- How much money do you usually spend for your blog(s) per month?
- Halos wala.
- List other blogs that you read on a regular basis.
- Bakla Ako
Build That Geek Thing
at marami pang iba - In about 10 words, convince our readers to subscribe to your blog!
- Kasi wala lang…
Would you like to have your blog featured here as well? If you’re from Mindanao or if you write about Mindanao, click here to submit your blog!
Dear Ate Ria,
Sorry to quote a terrible and often used cliché, but “life is funny sometimes.â€
Earlier this year I returned back to the Motherland as a Balikbayan after a nine year absence (when I was 35 yrs. old) due to familial responsibilities.
My family and I moved to the Bay Area, when I was twelve years old and I became predictably a “product†of the California state educational system!
Presently, I am single and comfortably working in the San Francisco, Bay Area in the legal services field (no I am not a lawyer.) Like most brown “americans†I have been programmed aka learned to dis-associate myself with those “terribly corrupt†Pilipinos.
From day One, both immigrants and american born Pilipinos have decried at the sorry state of our nation due to the “inborn†corruptness of the anak ng Pilipinas.
This un-fair misperception became a reason why my family and I never really made an effort to come back home. As we cynically say, what for? when there is nothing “good that would come out of it.â€
This has change; for me!
Like many poor but mostly highly educated professionals, my parents graduated from the University of The Philippines during the early sixties. However, due to the tumultuous reign of the Marcos regime during the seventies, my mother finally persuaded my father who had a (UP law degree, class of 61) growing and lucrative corporate law practice by then to move to the S.F./BA and start life a new.
Five suitcases and thirty-two years later; we have made a comfortable middle-class life for all of us. But since the mid-nineties, my parents (longing for the land of their birth), my newly married sister with my american brother-in-law in tow made their first ever Balikbayan trip. Mesmerized by their collective stories, it was only in 1997, that I became a Balikbayan.
Ever since, my trips to the Pearl of the Orient were merely side trips to where I really wanted to go.
Melbourne, Australia.
Why?
I fell hard for a Pilipina aussie. When that relationship fizzled and it only left me with a broken heart, I made “peace†with myself to never use the Philippines as a stepping stone ever again.
And it stayed this way, until early this year, when as a necessity, I accompanied my parents (both recovering from various illness) to the Philippines.
Anyway, let me get back to the real reason, why I am writing to your blog.
Every time, anyone of us went home, we are always welcome and stayed at my father’s best friend’s home. My “tito†is one of the wealthiest (dollars) men that I know. In past visits it is customary that his wife my “tita†with driver in tow would usually come and meet us at NAIA.
Not this time.
Perhaps, because of the early arrival of our PAL flight or, since, she has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease; only her new driver and her personal assistant came to meet us.
Since, this trip was not a typical vacation for me, I already had made up my mind that the next three LONG weeks would be a series of “endless†eating marathons with cousins, tios, tias, etc.,
In other words, BORING!
Boy was I wrong!
Her personal assistant who met us instead, (late twenties) is the most appealing young woman I have met in my LIFE!
I am a grown man and have met (socially, professionally and personally) many women of all races, beautiful and successful.
However, when I first gazed at this DAVAOWENYA, I knew right away that she is the complete package.
Please don’t get wrong Ate Ria.
My admiration comes not only because the young lady is indeed beautiful, but her lithe figure shows no sign of what I respectfully and graciously call “baby fat.â€
I found out later, that despite having access to the fatty diet of my tita’s household, she and the other servants cooked and eat their own foodstuff, which consists mostly of lean cuts of meat, vegetables, fish and locally grown fruits.
All of them, came from Davao and are not used to the rich, salty and fatty foods loved by poor and wealthy, Pilipinos alike who live in the Makati and greater Metro Manila area.
In the couple of weeks, that I managed to talked to her alone, I discovered that she is naturally intelligent, incredibly resourceful technically, honest beyond reproach (she is trusted by my tita to hold her cash any given time, since, it is her responsibility to dole out the weekly salaries of the house maids and drivers) and un-failingly courteous.
My mother described her as napaka sipag!
My tita, as proof that she is good at handling money, shared with me a story.
One time, she gave her a five peso note to buy some bananas at a street vendor, only that she came back empty handed because she could not bring herself to buy a single banana for a peso, since in Davao where she obviously grew up, a banana went for something much less than a peso!
In the precious moments, that I spoke with her alone, (I could not think of anyone else, but her in the short three weeks, that I was there!) I found out that she was born and raised in Davao, but she had to move Manila in her late teens to work!
Why?
Her father died and as the eldest child, she became the sole provider for her widowed mother and seven other siblings!
At that moment I understood what she meant, when asked teasingly, by father on the way from NAIA to my tita’s home if she has a boyfriend?
When she said. “Wala po, na paka hirap, po nang buhay.â€
I do know. Ate Ria, through this Davaowenya.
That…
I have found a new profound respect for the land of my birth. Sure the Manila traffic, the pollution, over crowding of Makati and the general Metro Manila areas will never disappear. Even the ever present stain of corruption, sadly will never disappear in the Philippine fabric.
But
Days upon returning to S.F./ Bay Area I feverishly got busy in the internet and have been researching anything and everything about the “Land of Promise.â€
I am thinking and wondering whether, there is a possibility, that I can fall in love again with this beautiful, engaging woman and if she so desire can make a life in her native Davao?
What do you think??? Care to me an advise???
AnakNgPilipinas@gmail.com