The Sun Hong Kong, September 2000

Every Philippine-born Filipino aches to return home some day -- despite the man-made calamities brought by an inept government, despite the poverty waiting to swallow them, despite the hopelessness that has engulfed its people.

This ache transform into a painful yearning to be home when one reads Hey, Joe, a book written by Ted Lerner, an American -- an outsider who has spent years in the Philippines, married a Filipina and set about observing Filipinos in a weekly column for a business newspaper in Manila. In his book, Lerner caricatures various Filipino characters that are so familiar, not because you know them in person but because you know that's how Filipinos are. And, after years abroad, you realize these are the people that make you dream of going back.

Take Pilar, who owns Tadel's, a pension house on Arquiza Street in Ermita, where Lerner first stayed when he arrived in the Philippines . "Whenever I did see Pilar she would always relate some fantastic story to me. And always as if she was dead serious," he writes. Such as about her group digging for gold in Bicol, and she promising that the next time he came to Tadel's it would be 10 stories high instead of two. "I suppose Pilar never did strike pay dirt," Lerner writes. "The only thing that's gone up at Tadel's over the last few years is the price."

From his second floor window at Tadel's, Lerner soaked up the scene that is Manila and became friends with the people around the area. Such as Bungeru, a fortune-teller from Zamboanga, who offered to read his palm, saying: "My friend, for P 50 your future will be very dark. For P 500 your future will look very bright."

There's Boy Lugaw: "He's skinny but with a prottruding round pot belly. He always wears loose fitting shorts, basic rubber slippers and a white sleeveless sando T-shift which he wears pulled up and resting on top of his big belly. What's also funny about Boy is that sometimes you can see him come out from behind the counter, walk to the sidewalk, unzip his shorts and urinate on his own building."

And there's Boy Balut whose wails of "Baluuuuut!" carries on a traditional cry that has "filled the warm tropical nights for a thousand years, without letup to this day," Lerner writes. One time, Boy Balut tried to convince Lerner to eat what the latter had refused to even consider for five years because it was "duck abortion."

But Boy Balut was not to be discouraged. "it's good for you! Make you good at boom-boom. And it's good for the knees. Make you strong at night time. Come on, here." Boy broke the shell of one balut, and asked Lerner to start by sipping the soup from the egg. It tasted good. Then, as crowds gathered to watch an "Amerikano" being initiated into the Filipino culture, Lerner gulped down the rest of the duck egg's content.

Says he: "It went down pretty smooth. No beak. No hair. No beady eyes. After five years of denial, at least now I could say I had finally eaten balut. I felt like I'd been let in on a special Filipino secret." As Boy Balut pick up his basket of balut to continue peddling, he gives Lerner a big smile, "Hey, Joe, Balut good ahh? Now you are Filipino." Such baptism, such immersion in the Philippines , is what the book is about.

Lerner observes that Filipinos are fond of giving people funny names. There's Boy Under de Saya, the henpecked husband in the neighborhood; Fernando Tanduay who got his name from the rum of the same name, obviously his favorite drink; Dante "Chowking" Paulino, a new boxer who worked in a Chinese fastfood restaurant of the same name; and Peping Matador, the enforcer among the drunks who gathered eveyr day at Boy Lugaw's carinderia on Arquiza, and many more.

So many, in face, that in Tondo, during a boxing match, it was no longer SRO (standing-room only) but HRO (hanging-room only). Writes Lerner: "They were hanging off the rafters. They were sitting in tall trees, crowded on to iron-barred balconies and on to tin roof tops a block away just to get a glipse of the fisticuffs."

In his book, Lerner describes crowds that also packed a park amid a carnival atmosphere, complete with fast-fod stalls jockeying for business, portable stereos blaring, and people happily celebrating. What was strange to him was that this was a cemetery -- and it was All Souls Day. He quotes his brother-in-law for an explanation: "If it was solemn, nobody would stay ... But this way, we're still here. You say your prayers, you clean the grave. Anyway it's the dead's day. We're here with them."

Filipinos love to celebrate, and this is especially true during Christmas. As Lerner notes, neighbors with whom he hardly spoke to brought foods to them and said hello, until their kitchen table was filled with delicacies. "This was a nice Christmas touch," he notes. But then, there were people who came for nothing but a handout. "Where's my Christmas?" they would ask. One neighbor, the mother of a child with whom his daughter played occasionally, was especially obnoxious, trying to extort a gift eveyr time they crossed paths. "Amazing how you get hit up from the weirdest angles during the 'holiday season'," he says.

In his trip to the Elorde cockfight arena in Paranaque , however, Lerner makes an observation that one hopes applies to all Filipinos:" ... there's this notnion that while cockfighting may be a blood sport, it is unquestionably a gentleman's game. There's no rule book and no house to bet with. All bets are made with other bettors and on an honor system. Nothing is written down. After each match, everyone pays up. When the loser is too far away to hand over the money, he rolls up the cash into a little ball and throws it across the arena to the winner. Even if the money gets dropped under the bleachers, nobody steals it. On the rare occasion that some joker tries to run without paying, payment will be extracted by a quickly formed mob, and it will not be painless."

Why would an outsider such as Lerner want to live in the Philippines ? Or as Lerner's mother, who, on her last day of her visit, was stuck in the airport that was plunged into darkness by a blackout after a typhoon, asked: "What is it that you like in this place?" Lerner explains: "... just when you get totally frustrated with the system and the chaos, you see how life simply goes on, you see how Filipinos smile through the craziness and continue to enjoy themselves somehow, someway and pass it off as if it's just another day down the block. It's utterly brilliant. A mystery that will never make sense." People, with all their warts and imperfections, as well as their good qualities, are what make a nation. And Filipinos are what make the Philippines worth pining for. In his book, Lerner describes, from his own experience, a people he has learned to love. Hey, Joe is available at Bookazine book stores ( Hong Kong ) and through the internet at http://www.hey-joe.net/

Leo A. Deocadiz. The Sun Hong Kong, September 2000