Convenience: American Style vs. Pinoy Style

Tweet

Convenience (ken-ven’yens) – anything that adds to one’s comfort or makes work less difficult. In my first visit to the United States, I was given the chance to travel to stay for a while in different places—San Francisco and Los Angeles in California, Orlando in Florida, and New York City, where I went around the five boroughs. I visited the homes of old friends as well as made some new ones who graciously accommodated us. After talking to all of them, I was exasperated with their desire to get me to stay in the land of opportunities, whether as a TNT (tago ng tago, an illegal alien), as an employee who will eventually be petitioned for legal status by an employer, or as an unwilling bride of an arranged with marriage with a local. Their ideas ranged from gentle suggestions to blatant insults on how hopeless the Philippines is as well as the Filipinos who are contented to stay in their own country. And they all agree on one thing that they like most about America—convenience. One married woman I know even said, “Everything is so convenient here as Americans don’t want to worry about trivial. They leave it to machines. Even toothbrushes are battery-operated so that they don’t have to do the brushing.” Indeed a lot of things in this progressive nation spell convenience. It is short of saying that Americans are a lazy bunch that’s why they create all sorts of things to make life easy. Which, of course, is not a bad thing for I think everyone would want to take the elevator to the 40th floor rather than take the stairs, wouldn’t you? A visit to their stores also spell convenience—the doors open automatically to let you in. The stores are usually manned by a single employee—the cashier—who punches the sale on the machine and who also packages the purchased goods, but everything seems to work out fine, and boy, Americans give gracious and fast service. The aisles are labeled and each product is tagged, no need to call for ignorant sales personnel who know nothing of what you are asking. If the product doesn’t have a tag, you can always go to a product scanner where all the items are encoded in with their corresponding price. Everything is so convenient—that’s why they are called convenience stores. Even the road networks are so established that one will not get lost as long as you know how to read. You can go through several states using only a single highway! Even the side streets and back roads in different communities are all connected somehow and you can go to different cities without using the big city streets. Every street, avenue, or drive is named and can be searched either on the Internet or through a Global Positioning System. You just enter the house number, street, and zip code of the place, and voila! A map of the vicinity you are looking for is plastered on the screen. Here in the Philippines, a single purok has so many street branches that one finds it hard to locate a house that he is looking for. And most especially, it is hard to get directions from people, as they will only say things like, “Turn left by the basketball court, and when you see a mango tree on the right, that’s the house. It has a white gate.” I wonder when we will get literate with your directions. Libraries are well established and it is very convenient for researchers of any age to find what they are looking for. They have a cataloguing system encoded in a mainframe computer and the classifications of reading materials may be accessed from any working computer around the library. Even toddlers find it a breeze going to libraries (assuming, of course, that their sitters or parents drive them to the library. They are not as sophisticated as you think.) One thing that I really appreciate is the numerous decent restrooms that one can find everywhere—the malls, restaurants, parks, and rest areas in every city. These restrooms are clean and complete with a tissue paper, disposable seat covers, liquid germicidal soaps, paper towels, hand driers, and maintenance personnel. And the people respect public property. They don’t vandalize these public toilets, nor do they gather those bathroom tissue and paper towels to bring home. And I really appreciate the people who line up outside, and whenever a cubicle is vacated the first person in line gets to use the room first. Unlike here that everyone lines up behind a door and if you unluckily stand behind a door where the previous occupant is battling with indigestion, then brace yourself for a long wait and cover your nose for the smell! In the restrooms of restaurants, I often saw a sticker that said something like, “Employees are required by law to wash their hands thoroughly with soap and warm water after using the toilet and before returning to work.” It is assuming that their restrooms are equipped with water heaters and have a steady supply of soap. I can only imagine what restaurant employees in the Philippines do where there are only a few restrooms in the malls, and much less in buildings where there are office spaces and restaurant blocks for rent. These public toilets most of the time do not have water for flushing the bowl and no water flowing from the faucet. Soap and alcohol are personal belongings and only a conscientious person would spend an extra buck to buy soap that will be used for work. So don’t our local restaurant employees wash their hands before going back to work? Don’t ask me, as I can’t really be sure of the answer. I’m just telling what I see and it’s up to you to find out what your usual server is up to. Then of course, there’s the convenience of banking, of being able to talk to your mobile phone without minding the charges (making a call on a mobile phone is so cheap that people that they are not bothered by the hassle of reading and sending text messages, especially if they’re driving on the free way), and of using credit cards. Yeah, almost every one of legal age has a credit card and a checking account, too. Cashless living, that’s the way to live. But the irony of the matter is one also needs money in order to live in this cashless society. As I stayed longer I grew weary—things are not as convenient as they seemed to be. With the exception of New York City, you can’t go anywhere around the United States without a car. Unless, of course, you’re willing to spend at least an hour at the bus stop and walk a considerable distance home (think about it when the temperature gets down to even just 40C), as buses can’t make a stop anytime you feel like getting off. For someone like me whose legs are a few inches short of reaching a car’s pedals, this is a rather cumbersome undertaking. Oh, how I miss the trisikad (a bicycle installed with a side car) and our crazy jeepneys. We got to visit New York City at the dead of winter, so going around the city was literally a pain—in the neck, on my shoulders, my lower back, and my knees. My uncle had a car but since we wanted to go around Manhattan where parking was either zilch or too dear, we had to park the car at a safe place and take the subway to the points of interest that we wanted to visit. But most of the time we had to walk our way as Manhattan is not such a big place and is very crowded to say the least, yet it was just very cold during our visit. In order to get of the house and remain standing without freezing to death in 30 minutes, I had to layer four pieces of thick, warm clothing and had to literally carry a very thick jacket to prevent the cold air from seeping in. With these, I had to wear warmer pants under my jeans, two layers of socks under my rubber shoes, a muffler, a knitted cap, and a pair of gloves. All my clothing must have probably weighed half my body weight and I had to carry it around with me the whole day. Well, I had no choice, if I wanted to see Manhattan I had to do it. How convenient it is for us to walk around our malls in our slippers and shorts! My thickest garment here would be a denim jacket during rainy days. And because it was wintertime, I experienced so many discomforts, like chapped lips, skin breaking out, and hair falling limply on my shoulders. To correct these problems, I had to spend more money on lip balms, skin scrubs and moisturizers, plus hydrating shampoos and tons of conditioner. My time in the bathroom was more than tripled in order to finish an entire regimen. Did I mention that taking a bath is no easy thing? So much water is wasted while taking a shower. I have to let the shower flow until my desired temperature is reached before I move under it, lest I’d risk shaking all over from the coldness of the tap water and I’ll end up with a bad case of stomach ache. When the water is warm enough, I could already take a shower, after probably 5 minutes of water going down the drain. But that doesn’t end there. When I get under the shower, the water has to remain flowing, even while I shampoo my hair and soap myself. If I get out of the warm water the cold would seep in my muscles and I would get a chill. And besides, it will take another 5 minutes to warm up the water and by that time, I would already be frozen stiff. And this doesn’t just apply to taking the shower, but also with washing the dishes and even just my hands. Although dishwashers are so common in every household in the United States, Filipino households prefer to wash their plates by hand. They do have dishwashers, but they only serve as dish racks where with to drain the washed plates. I met up with a retired Filipino teacher who had to fly all the way to New York in order to take care of her grandchild while her daughter and son-in-law went to work as nurses. She said, “America is a God-forsaken place. When it’s winter, we have to put on the heater in order to remain warm inside the house. But when it gets warm, the air becomes thing so I have to use the dehumidifier so that I can be able breathe without effort. If you can’t afford all these things and pay for the