An Italian-British colleague of mine remarked that Filipino sounded Italian after listening to my conversation with another Filipino colleague. I said we have so many Spanish loan words and pronunciation that sometimes we do sound Italian or Portuguese. We used to have compulsory Spanish subjects until college but that was removed during my generation. It was just an elective when I entered college in the late 1990s.

So we do still use Spanish/Spanish loan words in everyday life. I tell time and count in Spanish. Household items and house parts are in Spanish e.g. abre-lata, plato, platito. I do use pero, por que, and que horrible quite a lot.

Chavacano is more Spanish than any language in the Philippines but that is pidgin Spanish that uses Bisaya grammar. I watched a video about some Spaniards from Spain who tried talking to Cavite Chavacano speakers and Zamboanga Chavacano speakers. They still couldn’t understand them completely but somehow but they could get the gist of what the Filipino Chavacano speakers were saying.

I tried learning the language on my own by watching soaps but damn, I didn’t realize Mexican or Latin American Spanish is completely different from Spain Spanish. Filipino Spanish is more related to Latin American Spanish, more precisely Mexican Spanish, since we were governed by Spain through Mexico for 333 years. I decided I should just learn the language formally by enrolling in Instituto Cervantes because it’s hard. The grammar is more related to French and Italian (hence the term Latin languages) than the Anglo-Saxon (i.e. Germanic) so it twisted my brain a bit. Learning the words is easy since we do have a lot of loan words but grammar is tough. The feminine/masculine part of the language—it’s a hard concept to remember because Filipino languages are genderless. Even before wokeness became a thing, Austronesian languages (like Malay) are already genderless. Our pronouns are genderless.

During the First Vatican, Catholic mass was in Latin. My parents heard mass, especially high ones (i.e. Advent), in Latin. This is the reason why many Filipinos are just religious but do not understand the meaning behind so many things in Catholicism—it’s because the language is not understandable. The mass became in English or Filipino under the Second Vatican, which pissed off the conservatives. But my mom still prays the novena in Latin/Spanish and I really don’t know if she fully understood it. This requires a whole different blog entry so I leave this for now.

So yeah, this video about Philippine Spanish vs Spain Spanish is funny. You would think we would be able to understand Spaniards but we really wouldn’t. But at least half of the battle is won since we can pronounce Spanish words easily unlike monolingual Americans who mangle Spanish words.

¿Intiende?

We went back to the trade fair yesterday to buy samples to show clients and our financial sponsor. Even though we thought we had slim pickings, we still had some good ones. I also did one interview and that exec gave me one intro to one of the biggest companies in Vietnam. Another interview prospect is still hanging in the air but it could be worth pursuing.

After the trade fair, we hopped to the Factory Outlet where they sell export overruns of foreign brands manufacturing here in Vietnam. I bought Adidas apparel for my sister and Crocs for my girls. My friend bought six pairs of footwear (including the Saucony running shoes she bought near the exhibition center).

This morning, we were awakened by jets flying overhead again. We were shocked to see all the roads closed off and breakfast places shuttered. We had to walk several blocks to get to the nearest open restaurant.

It was hard booking Grab on the way the airport even an hour after the roads had been opened.

And I need to buy a new laptop bag. This one is already saying farewell. One zipper already gave up and this handle is on its last thread.

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Landing in NAIA is wasteful for airlines. The planes circle around Manila Bay until the pilots get the go signal to land. They do this for 30 mins because we only have one runway so there’s a long queue of planes circling above Manila Bay.

So technically, Ho Chi Minh should only be 2.5 hrs or less but it takes longer because of that idiosyncratic airport.

I didn’t realize that being 1hr behind would really wreak havoc to my schedule. My brain was fixed on having the online presscon at 10 am Manila time that I forgot that it meant it was 9 am HCMC time. 😱 I was already having breakfast when I realized I have to log on Teams.

After breakfast and the presscon, we hopped on to our Grab car and went to the trade fair.

I have two interview prospects so far, which is a bit disappointing. But then again, the main reason why we’re here is we’re scouting for potential suppliers for the business that my bff and I are going to put up. So I have to think positively that this trip is not really a waste of resources.

However, we had low pickings. We realized that it would have been better if we attended the Hong Kong leg and the Canton Fair because the choices are wider and they have a variety of price points to choose from. Even though they say that China is getting more expensive, we still find that Vietnamese goods are still more expensive if we base it on the minimum order quantity.

After lunch, we decided to go to Ben Thanh market for ground coffee and fruits. Bff was hankering for a giant atis.

I know Ben Thanh is also the center for knock off things and I’m not interested in that. I’m not really a coffee drinker but I ended up buying freshly ground coffee worth PHP 3,000. 😩 The vendors there were smooth operators.

It was so hot and humid inside but that didn’t stop me from trying some noodles.

We do have them back home but not in those sizes. Our mangoes are still better though.

Today is a bit hectic as I had a meeting at 10 am and we were only able to get to our breakfast place at 9 am.

I was 8 mins late because traffic was heavier than usual. The government was closing down streets in District 1 because they were having some kind of celebration to commemorate the reunification of Vietnam. Jets and helicopters were flying overhead, with Vietnamese flags on their tails.

The culminating celebration is on the 30th but they’re already in a celebratory mood.

After my meeting, bff and I went to the Adidas factory outlet store in District 11. She used to be an active triathlete—the first Filipina to compete in Norseman triathlon—so naturally she wants to check out some bargain finds.

Twin A is really serious about her volleyball training so she asked for additional training gear. Twin I, on the other hand, has taken up long distance running/walking. I added two more shirts to this lot and it only cost me PHP 6000++.

Then we went to a nearby Lotte supermarket for Vietnamese instant coffee, some tea, and lots of instant pho.

We had lunch at past 3 pm—we were already starving. We went back to out hotel back in District 1 and opted to have lunch in a restaurant just within spitting distance.

We were pissed. We were like eating beef jerky. It was so tough that it was such a chore to eat. The rice was really dry. We just had to plod on because we were ravenous but if we weren’t, we would have left the restaurant with only a few bites of our food.

After coffee, we ended up in a plaza where people were starting to converge.

This is so unlike me to arrive in another country in the afternoon. Normally I take the earliest flight out of Manila so I can take advantage of my free day after arriving. This time, I’m with one of my bffs who has a toddler. They had to bring the son first to her brother who will/had sent the kid to daycare so my friend’s husband can drive us to NAIA.

The last time my bff was here was 20 years ago. She said things have changed so much that she failed to recognize HCMC. She was surprised that 4-wheel vehicles outnumbered motorbikes now. When she was last here, it was just motorbikes. She was also wondering why all cars look relatively new and half of them were EVs or hybrid.

Our Grab ride was cheap—only about PHP 200 from airport to our hotel in District 1!

The good thing about traveling with a friend from childhood is that more or less you’re on the same wavelength. Our agenda after checking in our hotel is just this: Vietnamese coffee, pho, and massage.

It seems like we’re located in an expensive part of town because there were a number of older white tourists all around. We were just spitting distance from Hyatt and a large Louis Vuitton store. Our meal was cheaper compared to Manila but it wasn’t as cheap as I expected because it cost us PHP 500 each.

We were so full and satisfied with our dinner. 😎

It was like Manila without potholes and heavy traffic. The vibe is more or less the same. Street vendors selling cigarettes and banh mi. Trash/dumpster at the corner and broken sidewalks. Same same. Bangkok also exuded the same vibe. Southeast Asia can be so familiar and yet each country is also distinct from one another.

I left so many stuff at home. 🥴 I had to rush last-minute errands and address work-related issues that had thrown me off-balance. I’m supposed go online this morning because I had a terrible article that I was editing last night. The reporter may come back to me this morning… but I’m dealing with airport stuff right now.

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This interview of National Artist Nora Aunor was hilarious. Her stories about her drunkeness sounded familiar—because she was me or I am her when drunk. We could’ve hit it off.

I am not easily star-struck but there are only a few people who I asked to be photographed with while getting tongue-tied: goalkeeper Neil Etheridge, long-time Purefoods basketball player Alvin Patrimonio, and actress Nora Aunor.

When I was still with my old TV station, I was covering/live tweeting the fundraiser our broadcast company did for victims of Typhoon Pablo (was it?). There were celebrities manning the phones, performing, hosting, etc. I didn’t care much for them so I just continued to work. But when Nora Aunor came in, I was star-struck. I stopped whatever I was doing and watched her open her bag and pull out wads of cash in thousand peso bills. I heard her say, pasensya na, konti lang to. Kawawa naman sila…

My heart melted. She was so humble and shy. I got shy, too. I would have wanted to have taken a photo with her. She was just literally at arm’s length. I would’ve bragged to my long-dead father and his mother that I had a photo taken with their idol. Well, technically Nora was my grandma’s idol and my father… It was just transference. I would have wanted to have a chat with her, I wanted to tell her that my lola, until her dying day, was a solid Noranian.

But I didn’t. I was just too shy. I should’ve.

Now she’s gone.

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