The crab.

It's much easier to stay silent, and sit by yourself in the imagined cubicle you erected - walls impenetrable by people who don't like to be dealt with.

When we were young, and unsure of ourselves, we preferred to remain quiet during recess at school and on class hours, we acted prim and proper and listened to our elementary school teachers with ears and eyes wide opened. We never bullied anyone, even if "slum boys" pestered our girl school mates.

But as we grew older and saw  the real world for what it was, we couldn't help but stand up noisily for that was what was required to be heard and seen.

Especially for small or short people, being heard is a hard task. With big and tall people, being heard is even harder if the meat of the message is a dung.

Politicians in the Philippines, a lot of times, don't need height nor weight to be heard, seen or get elected. They simply need to have the right network of manipulators and vote buyers. Sad but true.

In ordinary people's lives, there are manipulators, instigators, and provocateurs working behind the scenes. They are the destroyers of dreams, visions, projects and lives.

They act vile because they want to get the credit for your work, they have been paid to do the dirty job, envy you and your family, or they are just simply mean and evil ( like rude drivers who drive you crazy, thieves, hold uppers, car jackers, rapists, those with crab mentality,  and pork barrel scammers).

But in simple, community environs where proper decorum and etiquette are still required, there are still scums who ignore "hellos and hi's" and smiles and small talk as if wealth is the only yard stick for returning the greeting and the warmth.

Pets, especially dogs are man's best friend, indeed. They may have the brain of a pea, but they respond warmly to man's simple gestures of care.

My name is..

English as a second language (ESL) is a popular course in Toronto, Canada. That's because Canada welcomes about 260,000 immigrants a year.

For a lot of immigrants, an ESL class is the stepping stone to a successful assimilation into Canadian economy and society.

Immigrants needing ESL go through a language assessment where their proficiency/knowledge of English is tested; then they are assigned a level. Next, they are referred to a school, a not-for-profit or an organization where they would attend an ESL class. Some individuals attend private ESL schools, (e.g Hansa), more specifically foreign students from all over the globe.

The lowest level of ESL is 1(basic), the highest or advanced level is 10.

Learning how to read, write and speak English is a big hurdle, more so is the learning of correct pronunciation and of the Canadian accent.

I have a Russian friend who would get irritated every time her Canadian boyfriend corrected her pronunciation of English words; they broke up later.

This friend is already a financial officer yet she still has difficulty writing in English, and her accent still shows a lot of Russian. So, she hasn't stopped and still takes courses to improve her English.

I've observed through the years of living abroad that Pinoys who didn't speak any English to start with are the ones who learned the language and the accent much quicker. How could this be?

Let me clarify that. These types of Pinoys usually live with people who speak English as a first language, and they live with them 7/24 hours. So, they hear English being spoken even in their dreams, perhaps.

I can recall several acquaintances, some married to Americans and Canadians, who speak beautiful English now as opposed to when they were in the Philippines, where they tell me they spoke little or no English at all.

Once, when I still lived in Ohio, we had Filipino friends visiting from Australia. The kids' parents were Ilocanos and they called their daughter, Vanessa.

It was a revelation to hear the parents pronounced their daughter's name, and a friend calling her, (this friend spoke no English and only learned it in the U.S.), because my friend's "Vanessa," sounded better and softer, as in "V-en-ess-ae," as contrasted with the parents' "Ban-essaaa."

"My name is," is the first phrase any ESL student would learn.

I didn't do it.

LEFT - DR. CONNIE Mariano, a Filipino American doctor, has achieved historic feats throughout her career as she broke barriers and shattered the glass ceiling. She is the first military woman to become the White House Physician to the President; the first woman Director of the White House Medical Unit and the first Filipino American in US history to become a Navy Rear Admiral.


Someone was googling "Philippino immigrant criminals,"and the engine pointed my blog.

Obviously, the googler was not a Pinoy, or it could be a second/third/fourth generation Pinoy who didn't know how to spell Filipino.

Now thinking about it, I remember a Pinoy immigrant in Toronto who was nabbed for knifing and killing a co-passenger in the Metro subway about four years ago. The young man apparently was pissed off by the victim's glare, and an exchange of words escalated.

On the other hand, there was a young Pinoy boy, about sixteen, who was gunned down by the Toronto Police because they thought he carried a knife and was about to lunge at a policeman. The boy had a stone in his hand; before the police was summoned by an area resident, there had been a fight between some Pinoy boys and some Russian kids.

The police force had been sued by the parents of the boy, but the policeman who was not on duty and in civilian clothes at the time of the shooting, went scott free.

Then there was the unsolved crime of the Pinoy teen, Michael Santos, a student at the Marc Garneau Collegiate who was found dead in the vicinity of the school. Circumstances surrounding the crime pointed to murder, but the police ruled it was a suicide.

In the U.S., a famous crime which had been committed by a haf-Pinoy, half-American was the Versace murder. Andrew Cunanan went on a killing spree, and his last victim was the famed designer Versace. He committed suicide in a luxury boat before the police could get to him.

In Canada and in the U.S.A, anytime a crime or misdemeanor has been committed by an immigrant or someone with a mixed parentage, the media would not fail to mention the accused or criminal's ethnicity.

If the perpetrator had been a white guy, media would not mention his origins, (e.g . Irish-American, of Scottish descent, etc).

My former boss, a feisty lady from India, was at the forefront of fighting media stereotyping of immigrants into Canada, and one of the studies her group produced pointed to media's preference for this ethnic coverage.

But anytime an immigrant excels in sports, in arts, sciences or other fields, media would not bother mentioning the other half of the person's ethnicity. For instance, Americans don't bother noting that Tiger Woods is half-Thai, nor that Cristy Yamaguchi is Japanese-American. But Andrew Cunanan was splashed in the news as a Pinoy killer. Or that the guy who was gunned down in a hail of bullets by the New York Police in a building vestibule, who carried a cell phone instead of a gun, was a Haitian-American.

There are thousands of high achieving Filipinos all over the globe. The ex-family physician of President Clinton at the White House was a Pinay, the present chef at the White House is a Pinay, and there are thousands of medical practitioners working the hospitals in Canada, U.S.A., U.K. and other parts of the world.

Pinoys should be drumbeating instead of flagellating ourselves.

The recent hostage taking at the Quirino Grandstand, while it should not be forgotten, and should be the basis of credible change in policing, should not be a cause celebre among the opposition, and not to be used as a bullet to kill the changes which President Aquino had boldly begun and the growth potential which his two-month presidency has already shown.

I could not imagine President Barack stepping in on a bus hijacking situation, even if there were foreign nationals on board. He would have left it completely in the hands of his police force. And nobody would have questioned him.

The Manila police force fumbled big; there's an investigation going on. Enough of these "I'm sorry stuff" from the high ranking government officials, already.

Clear as Mud.

It's not just annoying but maddening to be in a situation where you don't know what's going on. When you don't have control and everything depends on outside factors.

Look at how we've become slaves to the weather report. We sit by the television or read the daily report to check on the future weather. We prepare a light jacket, then next morning, it rains. Yes, there's always a probability of rain - no matter how sunny it looks.

I hate it. Another time, you prepare for a 25 degree summer day, a beautiful picnic, or a day at the carnival and kaboom... the wind blows in the wrong direction. Your anticipated trip to the park turns into an indoor couch potato-eing.

How about if you prepared for a dinner and about to go , then your host cancels the last minute?
Or the hostess sends an invitation, you RSVP, then she ignores you at the supermarket the day before the party?

I'm sure like me, you'd feel like a kite suddenly losing altitude and plunging way, way out in the mud.

Wipe your face, loser. Yes, you cannot smack the face of the weather forecaster. Yes, you cannot sue your neighbour for cancelling the party. Yes, it's all right to feel awful and angry.

You can always switch channel and check out the other weather reporter. Or stay friends with the neighbour but don't give him/her a Christmas card. Or just call or email and find out what's going on. Hey, what's the real score?