US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines by E. San Juan Jr.: A BOOK REVIEW

       Wearing a Filipino nationalist’s lens, E. San Juan Jr. examines in his book US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines the role of the United States in subverting nationhood throughout modern history by weaving a plot around sound theoretical frameworks from great thinkers fabrics culled from an impressive, if not exhaustive collection of literature written by mostly American and Filipino historians, anthropologists, sociologists and academics, who may or may not have revealed through their writing, their slant on the contentious benevolence/malevolence of the world’s only remaining superpower.

       

The book, which chronicles America’s overt and covert, brutal and diplomatic, local and global participation in shaping the lives of peoples and races across the globe then and now, is written with intellectuals and academics foremost in mind.  However, if the uninitiated to the language of sociology, as I almost am, is able to sift through the jargon and details, one can see a very informative book, thought-provoking in its depth and soul-stirring in its ability to present its case at how America literally and figuratively raped and pillaged the country, and the world for that matter.  Whatever it lacked in narrative appeal, it made up for in thoroughness in detail and consistency in argument.

However, I would like to see this book written in a language and tone that reaches out to ordinary Filipinos, inviting them to examine their view of the world, of being a Filipino or whatever it means and symbolizes for them, of how they were robbed blind of their power over self-determination while they were too busy believing that the unequal partnership with America was the best thing to happen since the Spaniards inflicted on the country its very first myopia – religion.

But alas, the book is what it is: a brilliantly written tome in highstrung language, for the mental masturbation of the learned and erudite who can participate in endless discussion of how the US had gained advantage over every nation by putting everyone else at a disadvantage, impressively punctuated by lines and passages written by such and such authority on such and such fields.  Though no fault of its own, or the author’s, the book ironically manages by omission to distance the issue of oppression and manipulation from the very people who should be able grasp it by heart, if only to spark a little ember of anger, and hopefully, revolt at why they are who they are.  Eerily, this is ironically similar to how America took away the ambit of discussion from the masses by empowering the ruling elite to run governance, dictate social norms, and generally perpetuate the oppressive system which they no longer desired to dispose of themselves.  No, they are above that.

Language has a way of alienating discussants, and making what is plain and obvious obscure and unrecognizable.  The Americans were, and still are masters at this.  30,000 American soldiers obliterated hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, and by many accounts up to a million, or one in seven Filipino, and we were mesmerized by the term pacification of the brigands, as if fighting for your home, for the way you want to live, to protect and exploit your own resources in a manner that benefits you and your kin was a beastly crime that needed to be rustled to the ground, and buried underneath it, preferably with the shovel still in our hands.  No, they didn’t want to call it for what it was – a massacre, a genocide, a most barbaric killing -- words too raw and well, bloody to include in polite, polished, educated conversation.  Didn’t they say we were savages? 

The Americans absconded with our nation’s collective pride, co-opted our minds, and forever changed how we view ourselves and they called it benevolent assimilation, a manifest destiny of a nation bound to be led to a world that is just, progressive, free.  Or at least that’s what the rhetoric wanted us to believe.  No, they wouldn’t call it brainwashing, annihilation of a culture, or disenfranchisement of a nation – words that don’t give justice to the brilliant strategy they employed to systematically and mercilessly strip us of our dignity and pride, first by force, then by guile.  How dare us, we ungrateful bastards?

The white people twisted our elbow with one hand and patted our shoulder with the other and condescendingly called us their little brown brothers, as they carted out our natural resources from our mountains, seas and land.  And we are supposed to beam with pride and expect that snow would fall on our benighted land the moment we all sing White Christmas.  They wouldn’t want to call it plunder, rape or the eradication of one’s belief in sovereignty and patrimony.  They called us brothers, didn’t they?  What were we thinking?  We should be glad that we are able to please our benevolent white mentors who went out of their way, and their country, to show us how to exploit everything we have for their consumption.  So stop using words that cite contempt.

All throughout its history, Americans have shown their propensity for so righteously using might to subjugate races that stand in the way of their greed.  They drove American-Indians from their land, which happened to be oozing with gold and timber, decimated their ranks with superior firepower and shackled their pride in far-flung locales euphemistically called reservation, where curious tourists may visit them to marvel at their culture, like children gawking at colorful fishes inside an aquarium. 

They went to the Korean Peninsula to fight off the “evil” communists; and they sent mayhem to Vietnam, except that their napalm bombs were no match for the grit of the Vietcongs.  They did not win these wars, but they didn’t lose either.  They simply managed to ensure that the world will be a more dangerous place.

Ironically, even as America is at the forefront of every significant war in modern history, not one of the significant battles occurred in its soil.  And no war is considered significant without the stars and stripes involved in it.  Why?  Because America, inspite of its posturing as the protector of the free world and the ally of the burdened, chooses which war to use its ammunition on; and this is mainly predicated on what good, and in what quantity can they gain from such an incursion.  And when they can’t be in the battle zone, they conveniently supply weapons and resources to those willing to fight for them.  They supplied weapons to Nicaraguan rebels trying to overthrow a communist regime, to the mujahideens of Afghanistan who would later become the core of Al Qaeda, to the warriors of Israel who promise to defend its territory, and it goes without saying America’s interests as well, against any and all forces.  They sent warplanes and boots to Afghanistan and Iraq when they lost trust in local militias to get the job done, which is to actually install a regime that is willing to satiate its thirst for oil until it can take in no more, or until a more effective and renewable energy source is discovered – whichever came first.

America must get something, preferably everything from its effort.  Victors, after all, devour the spoils of war.

America watched in mock horror as Rwandans killed each other by the hundreds of thousands with machete, clubs and bare hands.  They did the same when fragments of disintegrating Yugoslavia drew genocidal blood across the Balkans.  They continually thumb their noses at North Korea as its population die from hunger even as its demigod leaders gorged on caviar, expensive wine and everyone else’s pretty daughters.  But why should they lift a finger?  Rwanda was nothing more than a vast untamed forest, it had diamonds underneath its mountains but America had never been enamored with precious stones; Yugoslavia was nothing more than beautiful mountains, ice, snow and plenty of pine trees; North Korea is little more than a barren land in the peninsula – South Korea, its ally is richer in resources, as well as in technology that are aligned with its own.  Why problematize over issues that pay nothing or little in return?

America is not afraid that its bases Subic and Clark have been removed in the 1990s, they still have the Visiting Forces Agreement and a strong ally/lackey in the Philippines to ensure that if any shooting war happens with China, Philippines as a de facto extension of the US, will suffer the onslaught long before any Chinese missile hits American soil.  That’s what small brothers are supposed to do – take up the cudgel for big brother.

Another Filipino, Jennifer Laude, dies in the hands of an American soldier.  America is not alarmed.  A few years back, an American soldier raped and dumped the victim on the road like a banana peel and the soldier, Daniel Smith, is now back in US soil, shamed perhaps but safe and in anonymity in his land of milk and honey.  Meanwhile, the Philippine government plays it cool.  Come on, it is as if this is the only fatality that an American soldier has ever inflicted on a Filipino before.  Remember up to a million Filipinos were massacred between 1899 and 1913, we should be immune to the news by now.  After all, aren’t we supposed to feel that way after the ultimate sacrifice of a million Filipino brigands?  No one remembers because no one knows.

The book under review contains stories about my country: how it was rich and pillaged, how it was populated with a people fighting for freedom and how the fight turned from a struggle for freedom into a battle for racial survival, and of how the mantle of thought was taken away from the masses and entrusted to the intellectuals, the elite, and the academics.  These stories will not reach the masses, the book was never intended for their consumption.

This is a well-written, well-researched, well-argued book.  And I don’t like it.

May Tama Ba o Maling Lingwahe sa Edukasyon?: Why speaking in tongues is essential to national identity

Image not mine

Much has been said – for and against – the Department of Education’s (DepEd) recent shift to Mother Tongue Based-Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE).  Proponents assert that the utilization of the language/s that school children use at home will facilitate learning for students, resulting to more confident, effective and active learners as evidenced by the results of numerous studies conducted locally and abroad, which show marked differences in performance levels of students under the MTB-MLE over students exposed to traditional mono and bilingual education.  Critics, meanwhile, assert that such a move is impractical, even downright ambitious, given the meager resources of the government vis-à-vis the enormity of the required financial outlay and logistical difficulties contingent with its implementation.  At best, they contend, the MTB-MLE program is a noble initiative that will fizzle out in the end because of the above cited barriers.  Furthermore, they argue that it will weaken our nation’s advantage in English proficiency, which is instrumental in the migration of Business Process Outsourcing companies to our local shores and the almost seamless transition of local labor exports to foreign lands – both valuable dollar contributors to the Philippine coffers.

The challenges facing the implementation of the MTB-MLE program are real, varied and daunting.  However, I am of the position that it should be given the best chance to succeed and mature by allowing the program to undergo the process of distillation and fine tuning as it inevitably goes through the initial setbacks and growing pains of its first few years. 

While MTB-MLE is primarily an educative strategy, I believe that sustaining it will result to a much more important and far-reaching consequence – the crystallization of a national identity, something that previous lingual policies, which placed much credence on the dominant language Tagalog and the supposed universal language English, have failed to do.

There are roughly 93 million Filipinos who are fragmented not just by more than 7,000 islands, but also by 180 live languages.  Such is the diversity in our peoples’ ethnicity that it would seem impossible to unite the country, let alone conceive a palpable sense of self.  Attempts to cobble a unified front often involved introducing some sort of symbol that proponents hope will galvanize the citizens into thinking or feeling the same way – national this, national that.  There is no specific designated National language except for the generic term Filipino, which is loosely applied to mean any of the 180 languages.  In practice, however, because Tagalog is the language most used and understood by majority of Filipinos whether as a first or second language, it is often considered as the de facto national language.  This dates back to 1935 when, fresh from the supposed independence from America, the framers of the Philippine constitution elevated it to premier language status.  What this designation essentially institutionalized was to impress on non-native Tagalog speakers, that their mother tongue – and their culture, for that matter -- is not as important as Tagalog.

Language is identity; identity is sense of self.  When you are told to use someone else’s tongue, you lose your sense of self because the validity of your identity is compromised.  We, as a people, began losing our identity some 600 years ago when Spanish colonizers imposed Spanish as the medium of instruction inside the classroom.  We lost our pride in our culture when the Spaniards derisively called our ancestors barbarians for having their own religion, government system, values and way of living.  A new set of Filipinos emerged from this imposition.  They were well versed in Spanish, dressed in the same manner, shared the same value system.  Unfortunately, these new educated and landed elite will, for centuries, define the dichotomy of the Philippine society.

The desecration of the Filipino continued and became almost irreversible when the Americans came and asserted their Big Brother colonialistic approach, again centered on introducing English as the official language of education, even bringing in a boatload of soldier-teachers from the mainland to consummate the subjugation of the Filipino mind.  Like a chameleon, the Filipino elite changed language and colonial preference, even as the societal makeup remain unchanged: A ruling class that is far outnumbered by the poor and downtrodden whose hope for improving their lot in life lies in either serving the society’s cream or acquiring their language through colonial-based education.

The nation would have had the perfect opportunity to reverse this colonial malady when the Philippine Commonwealth was formed in 1935, which came with the chance to forge a new constitution and a fresh start to seek its identity.  But alas, Tagalog, the dominant language, was chosen to represent the nation of 180 languages.  And the Filipino perpetuates colonialism, this time subjugating his own, the result of which we see and feel till this very day: non-native Tagalog speakers being ridiculed for their hard-accented Tagalog, pretentious families in rural communities training their children to speak in Tagalog rather than in their mother tongue, and hardluck probinsyanos flocking to Metro Manila, where they are misinformed that progress and a better life remain in wait – all because they are made to believe that their mother tongue should take a back seat for a dominant language.

It is about time that we acknowledge our country for what it is, and its people for who they are.  We are a nation of 7,107 islands. There is nothing wrong with that. We are a people 93 million strong, speaking 180 languages.  There is nothing wrong with that either.  We lost our identity and pride through language and education.  We will regain them the same way. MTB-MLE should be given the chance to prosper and work its effect on our collective pride, one language at a time.

This is an essay for my graduate school course Socio-Cultural Foundations of Education at UP Diliman.

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. 

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. 

Orange halo-halo and Sunday Morning on a Friday afternoon

I don’t know if it’s because I got stung by a bee on my right eyelid or because my body thermometer is saying that it was the hottest day of summer so far, that I decided to grab a quick ride on my bike.

I wanted to start off trembling so I opted to take the San Salvador to Tibig road which gave me almost 3 kilometers of ro-ah-ah-ah-ugh road before turning right to Tangway and exiting to the main highway.  I dropped by La Salle for a quick spot check of the Green Wall then proceeded to Lodlod via Villa Lourdes.

I like this loop going toward San Jose, passing by Lodlod and Pangao.  It is fast, with a lot of downhiiiiiillllls that will generate enough momentum for the uh-uh-uh-uphills, and not to mention the occasional aggressive-looking dogs that amp the adrenaline rush a notch.  But I also was on a mission to sample halo-halo, any halo-halo, which turned out to be a problem because the more I thought of it, the more I got thirsty.  So when I saw the first halo-halo stand as I reached Pangao, my thirsty instinct was to pull over.

I knew I was making a mistake when I slowed down and made a motion of stopping because some 10 meters ahead to the left was another halo-halo stand which looked more interesting.  Unfortunately, a thin man lying across a bamboo bench, alerted by my presence, suddenly sprang up wearing a welcoming smile.  We made eye contact and it was clear that he was prepared to serve me halo-halo.  I was trapped.

I saw the man spoon one color of gulaman after another, then red sago, then what looked like minatamis na saging, kamote, corn, ube and brown sugar, which he topped with shaved ice and milk.  It looked like any halo-halo, but this one was different in that every time I stirred the mixture using my spoon, something was spilling over the lip of the plastic cup no matter how careful I was.  By the time I was ready to sample the halo-halo, my hands were all gooey and wet.

I think the halo-halo man played some sleight of hand on me because I was so sure he put in assorted colors of gulaman, but I only saw orange.  I fished them out first, planning to move on to a different color.  But lo and behold, every time I spoon orange gulaman into my mouth, more orange morsels appeared.   I was holding a cup of miracle in my hands.  I really don’t like gulamans in halo-halo, lucky for the thin man it was the right color – my favorite.

In my headset Adam Levine was crooning “That maybe all I need, in darkness she is all I see,” and I was nodding and weaving my head to the tune.  Unfortunately, the thin man gazed at me as I was doing this and again we made eye contact.  He smiled the smile of a satisfied host.  He asked, “Ayos, sir?”  What can I say, “Hindi?”  So I gave him the thumbs up sign.

I paid the man P15 for my halo-halo.

Like a shopper not satisfied with his find, I pedaled slow as I scanned the other halo-halo stand.  It was beside the road with a long wooden bench adjacent to the table where the condiments were neatly placed.  I said to myself, “Sayang, nakaupo sana akong parang mukhang tambay lang.”

And I saw the halo-halo man in that stand, bald (shiny kind of bald, not like my shaved kind of bald), dark with a big belly menacingly protruding from his waist.  He was wearing dark-colored sando with his nipples poking fun at the thinness of the cloth.  And I was thinking, “Sayang! How cool would it be to be served halo-halo by this tough looking dude.”  And I imagined how he would react if our eyes met and he sees my head bobbing up and down to Sunday Morning, would he smile or would he ask, “Ayos ka lang ga?” with a growl?

Oh well, as they say, good things come to those who wait, or in my case, pedal some 10 meters more.

#100Happydays, joys and hushed tugs to the heart

Rockies, Mt. Maculot

Lately, I’ve been encountering a lot of #100Happydays from my friends’ facebook posts, and I am thinking, “Huh, do you actually count the number of days that you are happy?”   That is sad, because as far as I am concerned, I prefer making lists (But I don’t have one written down, and if I did, it would run up to 365) over counting.  But that is just me.  Easter came and it produced even more counting numbers, and since I am a newbie (and blissfully ignorant) to a lot of things modern and current, I decided to use Google to discretely satisfy my curiosity (and ignorance).

Ahhh, yun pala yun.  #100Happydays according to 100Happydays.com is actually a challenge for anyone to post a picture on facebook and Instagram -- any picture, of any place, of any person, of any event, of anything, really -- that has made a participant happy.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Not really. According to the website, a full 71% of those who decided to participate in the challenge failed to complete the task primarily because of their lack of time.

The rationale behind the challenge: to make people realize that happiness is literally just around the corner  – runs smack against the pace by which people run their lives nowadays, which is too fast, too frenetic, too frantic and too competitive to be even taking track of happy occurrences, let alone snapping a shot.  Sad but true.  People have become too enamored with the pursuit of happiness – however one defines it – that they fail to realize that it is not even running away from them.  It is just there.  If one learns how to slow down.

In Dingalan Bay, Aurora

My Harvard-educated graduate school professor always says that for anyone to be truly happy, he/she must be able to live with himself/herself first.  I love being alone.  I guess this makes me a happy person.

I like to keep things simple.  It is no wonder then that the things that give me the greatest joy are right wherever I am; or at the very least will take some effort to get and some luck to come across, but they never cost much.  I just have to be ready.

When I am alone I get to notice fleeting moments that will not necessarily alter my life noticeably, but will certainly warm and enrich my soul no end.  I once saw a hummingbird as I was coming home from a bike ride (click here for story), and for a few seconds I was mesmerized by the beauty and stealth of this amazing bird that was no bigger than a wasp.  One of my earliest recollections of amazing bird encounters was of a blue kingfisher that was snappily searching for prey in the small fishpond that my father dug in our family farm in Pangasinan when I was still in elementary, but the rich hue and majestic flight of the bird are still vividly etched in my mind.  Recently, in a hike along Maculot, two birds, perhaps owls, suddenly took wing not far from where we were treading; undoubtedly disturbed by our footfalls.  It was a magical moment for me. And so are the frequent sightings of birds, of all colors and sizes, in our yard, some giving us the privilege of a few minutes, others are content to letting us hear their songs.

I love random things that I see.  In my head I paint pictures, framing scenes that otherwise would look ordinary.  These scenes are precious because I may never see or experience them the same way again.

At a  secret bike getaway

UP Sunken Garden

Dingalan Port, Aurora

Nueva Ecija

Taal Lake, Balete, Batangas

It's not only the sight that inspires me, but the scents of the road as well.  I remember during one span in our epic Manila to Dingalan, Aurora ride where we passed by a citrus orchard that seemed to stretch up to a kilometer, thrilling my nostrils with the sweet smell of citrus blooms.  It was heavenly.  And so are the smells of Narra flowers, and Ilang-ilang which waft in the air in some of my secret bike routes in Lipa.  And when the air does not host any memorable scent, it would suffice if I can hear it swiftly whistle past my ears as I zip by at some speed.

It does not take a lot to make me happy -- joyfully happy.  Leave me alone and happiness will take care of itself.  I guess that's what #100Happydays is all about.  I hope you also have a limitless share of happy stories to tell.

Dirty Halo-halo Ala Pacquiao

Distance from home: 22.9 kilometers

Place:  Barangay San Lucas

Establishment name:  Apartment for Rent

The back story:

I have the road literally to myself because it’s Pacquiao fight day; proof of this is the 35kph I registered along the normally busy stretch along De lasalle where, on a normal day, one would be lucky to do 10 without stopping or pulling over to give way to tricycles or motorcycles who are themselves being muscled to the side by jeeps, cars, buses and trucks.  So while Pacquiao re-established himself as a boxing icon, I was king of the road.

The Stopover:

The halo-halo stand I chose was not my first option.  The first, which came at around Km 20 into my ride, turned me down because it had run out of ingredients.  The store, I suppose, is either doing good business, or must have a store policy against serving halo-halo to tall, sweaty bikers.

I knew I had a winner when I passed by this particular stand with an Apartment for Rent banner to call attention to its ware.  Anyway, aside from not saying it sells halo-halo, what sets this halo-halo stand apart from any I have seen is that the number of children gathered around it was greater than the number of ingredients in the halo-halo itself – I counted 10, all below 5 years old, 11 if you counted the baby inside the womb of the woman shaving the ice.

Now, you know that when there are so many tykes gathered in one place there must be a birthday party somewhere, right?  I don’t know.  I can’t tell.  There were no balloons, spaghetti or cakes, only kids getting their hands all over the big block of ice used for the halo-halo.  I understand the relief the freezing cold must be to the kids who are sweaty from running around and playing hide and seek --  they were squealing in delight -- but hey, as long as they are happy then I can forego my concern with sanitation.  At least the ice was kids-tested and found effective in bringing cheer.  So this must be a fun halo-halo.

The Candidate:

The halo-halo looked, well, like any regular halo-halo, with ice on top and colorful rekados at the bottom.  I stirred and swirled the mix until the colors at the bottom had generally spread around the plastic cup.  I could see langka strips, minatamis na saba, melon strands, pinipig, minatamis na kamote, and colored sago.  I’m pretty sure there’s also ube in it, or at least some purple colored goo that has lent its color to the mixture.

The first spoonful was satisfying enough.  It could have been better though if the jueteng kubrador, who was passing by, announced that the store owner’s bet won; I could have gotten the halo-halo for free as a balato.  But no, I wasn’t that lucky.  But still, the halo-halo was satisfying, it was not too sweet nor too bland.  Though the number of rekados paled in comparison with the number of squealing kids, the halo-halo however came with a two-year old playing with my bike’s rear tire and a grandfather asking how much my bike costs.  Now, that's something you don't get everyday.

The Verdict:

Because of the overall impact of small children cheering me as I spooned the rekados and drank the liquid, this Halo-halo is a winner, as far as I am concerned.  Perhaps, the kids are pleased that I am taking in the product of their dirty hands with considerable gusto.  And at P15 a pop, this halo-halo is not a bad deal at all.  I even asked for some extra kids-massaged ice shaving for my water bottle, so what more can I ask for?