Saturday, May 31, 2014

Values miseducation in advertising: Teaching kids the concept of shame

You must have seen this on TV.

Shot opens to a boy emerging from the gate of a nice house in what seemed like an upscale subdivision.

He is next seen at the back seat of a car, with his apparent father navigating an old model car around the neighborhood.

The boy then sees a pretty girl, his crush, loitering about her home’s front yard, and he promptly slinks into the back seat, away from the gaze of the girl that makes his young heart flutter.

The father notices this and is devastated that his son is embarrassed to be seen riding in a car that has served the family well for a very long time. He had to do something.

In the next frame, the boy proudly banners his face on the window of a new car, hoping that her girl crush sees him aboard, this time in a nice, new car.  Of course she did, and he slumped back on the backseat, on cloud nine.

The father was, too.  The loan he made for a downpayment on a car, that won’t be totally his for the next few years, is all worth it.

I don’t know if it’s just me but this TV commercial makes me sick.  The message that it is pushing is this: If what you have is not new, branded or expensive, then shame on you, you poor you.  But it’s alright, you insecure you, because if you can’t afford it just yet and you can't wait to save for it, then you can always take out a loan that would assuage your poor ego that, yeah you can keep up the veneer that you belong to a class that comes and goes in style if you are only willing to pay the price of being indebted for a purchase that you don’t even need to do if you are not so damn insecure about how people would look at you if you don’t own something new or expensive, you poor insecure you.

No,  you don’t explain to your son that your car is way cooler and infinitely much more priceless than anything new or expensive because that’s the car that has brought his mother to the hospital when he was due for his first day to cry.  Or that it is also the same car that has brought the entire family to endless journeys, resulting to countless smiles and fadeless memories.  Or that it is the same four wheeler that you hope he learns to drive and take care someday because it simply has the entire family history etched in every kilometer logged in its odometer.  No, you don’t do those things.   Instead, you want to teach him that what is important is what is superficial, nice and new.


Then you grow old, faded and a bit clumsy because you can no longer tell whether you are entering your front door or getting out of it.  And in your lucid moment, you would wonder why your full grown son does not drop by to visit you even after you have thought him everything he needs to know about valuing and accumulating new and expensive things.  You taught him well.  You are old, faded and you smell like years compressed in one prune-like shell of your old-self.  That’s why. 


Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Halo-halo fur sil, ice bonding and a photo tour of an old bike route



Pinoy entrepreneurs are known for coming up with attractive names to rein in customers.  This one did not only catch my attention, it also forced me to a full stop coming from a sprint, which rarely happens, like when a vehicle on the opposite lane decides that my bike is not incoming traffic and veers into my lane to overtake a slow moving one.

Another trait of the Pinoy entrepreneur is that he/she is quick to spot opportunities, madiskarte kumbaga.  And this Ale is madiskarte.  She actually made a waiting shed right in the corner where tricycles make a turn as her de facto store.  As they say in business: location, location, location is everything.



I’ve already motioned for one halo-halo even before I could park my bike, and it was on my hand even before I could settle down.  Apparently, Aleng Halo-halo had already filled cups with measured rekados.  All she needed to do was scoop pre-shaved ice from a styro-box into the cup, pour milk and hand it over to the customer.  But the thing with pre-shaved ice is that they would clump together, which would make it more difficult to break down and mix with the rest of the ingredients.

As I was jackhammering the ice with my plastic spoon, my eyes were on two men seated on a bench across the road.  The two seemed like celebrities for just about everyone – men, women and kids on foot, tricycle or four-wheeled vehicles -- either waved at them or honked their greetings.  I’m envious; not of their celebrity, but of their bench.  It has always been on my wish list to eat halo-halo like a neighborhood tambay watching the world go by.  So when the two men decided to hop on to their tricycle, I immediately stood up and eagerly parked my butt on the still warm bench.



I must say, the bench is nice, so is the almost road level view that allows for maximum eye contact with passersby on foot or machine.  But I was having a problem with the darn ice; minutes have past and I was still waging a war with crushed ice particles that have decided to stick to one another no matter what.  Mercifully, the afternoon heat got to them and melted whatever bond they had with each other.  I welcomed them into my mouth.  They were refreshingly cold, but I was not impressed with the halo-halo.  It contained chunks of kamote that were boiled but not with sugar, leaving it wanting in flavor.  It helped that it had sweet nata de coco and some melon strips, which just about saved the entire halo-halo from turning into a disappointment.



As I was eating halo-halo like a tambay, I noticed I was getting a lot of attention just like what the two men before me enjoyed.  A car passed by and I made eye contact with the driver which prompted him to honk his horn and nod his head, which I also did.  Before a tricycle made a right turn, a boy riding behind the driver waved his hand and smiled at me.  I also did the same.  Another tricycle driver going the other way, slowed down and offered me a ride.  I would have taken his offer had I wanted a joyride with a stranger but I was only halfway through my halo-halo and I was raised by my parents to finish everything before proceeding to doing something else.



So this is how the neighborhood tambay feels.  It’s good.  Perhaps, that’s why a lot of tambays don’t want to do anything else.  I can’t do that.


I paid 15 pesos for my halo-halo.  It was not good, but not bad either.  It could have been worse.  Thank God there was no fur in it.