The Philippines Experiment, Track Five
If you know who I am or have been reading this blog, you are probably aware that I spent two and half years of my life living in the Philippines. Now I'm back, and I'm going to attempt to chronicle the entire experience as best as my vague recollection allows.
Mirage - Lake Of Dreams
Being unemployed was a deliberate choice for the first few months of my stay, and as a result, I had copious amount of time to fantasize. At times It felt like I was a kid straight out of college with a degree in philosophy or art history: not quite sure what path I want to take in a world chock-full of paths. I have passions other than music—some are realistic, some are delusional—and I was having fun exploring the possibilities of these ambitions coming true while I was out there splurging my savings. Here’s a bullet-pointed shakedown of my Philippines pipe dreams, in alphabetical order
- Coach Marc Benoza sounds fabulous, doesn’t it? This would allow me to live out my fantasy of making sound decisions during crunch time and devising substitution patterns based on my players’ five-man unit +/-. I needed to get a reputation going, and to accomplish that, I needed to start with a team consisting of my group of friends first. Sadly, we couldn’t get a sponsor for jerseys.
- Filipino television shows need a lot of work. Everything is just overdramatic, unrealistic, and insubstantial. Now I don’t have any experience in writing scripts, or anything with a narrative really, but I was blessed with a lot of spare time so I can waste it on watching countless TV series and this gave me a lot of ideas that would translate awesomely in the world of Filipino television. Here are some of them:
i. In the Philippines, basketball has a vice-grip on the soul of the people. It’s the common thread in every single young man, and I want to create a series that shows that. At the same time, it’ll touch on other issues that young men face such as poverty, drugs, gambling, teen pregnancy, and broken families. It’ll be the Filipino version of Friday Night Lights.
ii. I want to create a reality television show following the lives of young people living in Metro Manila’s rich residential areas, maybe from places such as Forbes Park, Ayala Heights, or BF Homes. The Hills and Laguna Beach were successful here, why wouldn’t it be in the Philippines?
iii. I want to create a show that touches on journalism and mass media during former president Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law in the 70’s and 80’s. It would be interesting to see how the media dealt with the severe censorship, and how the human rights of the people were being abused. I see it being like the fifth season of The Wire meets Mad Men.
iv. Curb Your Enthusiasm is so explosively funny that I just want to copy its format, an improvised, fictionalized account of the experiences of someone wealthy, powerful, and bored. Maybe its Larry David would be one of the country’s comedic veterans, like Vic Sotto or Dolphy.
v. I was thinking how great it would be to create a call-center adaptation of The Office. Seeing that more than 160,000 people were employed in the industry, tons of people would be able to relate to the show. But then NBC created Outsourced for their upcoming fall lineup to steal my idea.
- I could’ve gone back to school and gotten a mass communication or a journalism degree—and in hindsight, that’s probably my best move—but looking at it in the short term, it wouldn’t have given me income. I figured that I needed to make some money for food, beer, and car maintenance.
- I had aspirations of opening a restaurant/bar/music lounge. Maybe it’ll have a patio, maybe it’ll be bi-level, maybe I’ll have guest DJ’s from all over the country. What I do know is that it’ll be trendy yet affordable, it’ll be flooded with neon lights, and it’ll be magnificent. I would also try to incorporate popular weekly events like cheap wings night, martini Mondays, and ladies’ night. I could’ve invested all my savings in a restaurant when I first got there, but I wouldn’t have known anyone to generate the proper buzz for my place. It sucks that when I did know a few connectors to reach an appropriate tipping point, I didn’t have enough capital to start my business.
- Naturally I explored the sports writing route and I tried my hardest to get into the business, even getting a widely known sportscaster like Ed Pecson as a reference. I wanted to specialize in the juxtaposition between NBA and PBA players, as well as PBA advanced statistics and fantasy league (or lack of). However, no luck so far.
- People convinced me that if I was a contestant in Pilipinas, Game KNB?, which is the Philippines’ version of Jeopardy only with moving platforms and synchronized dancing, I would kick ass. Since I usually answered most of the questions correctly whenever I watched it, for a million peso prize, it wasn’t a ridiculous idea. So I started boning up on my Philippine geography and history—the two topics that would most likely kill me most—and texted the show everyday to register my name. Of course, I was one of more than a million Filipino people trying to apply everyday and thus my efforts were fruitless. I had persistence though. Unfortunately they cancelled the show eventually because the host wanted to run for vice president.
- Years of watching reality shows have given me a handle on reality show tactics and social politics. Reality shows were still in the emerging stages in the Philippines, which is why I thought I would dominate. If only I could swim, I could’ve been the Boston Rob of Survivor Philippines. Big Brother is not a bad option considering that I don’t have to be marooned on an island and past contestants were able to parlay their success on that show into greater affairs, but the rules are constructed differently in a way that wouldn’t favor me. Because whoever gets eliminated is determined by viewer text à la American Idol, strategy consists of having the sappiest life story or being part of a couple that causes the audience to shudder in delight.
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