By: Iris P. Concepcion
While waiting for a teacher to explain the veritable words "awful" and "terrible" to kids who are taught English, I set my unshod feet inside this upscale coffee shop by the road. It looks like a Coffee Beanery outlet. Delectably cosmo, it offers iced mocha and other coffee varieties at 30 baht.
Yala, at each turn, offers glimpses of the old and the new. Everytime I had vowed that I had already combed its corners, a new vista appears, surprising my writing pen and pad.
As is usual, the educator helped me. Do I want coffee, she had thus asked. I tried the cold one. Its cup is industriously fascinating as a concept. It is a cup made in Taiwan with brewed ground coffee sent in from Bangkok. I presumed the main ingredient was probably imported from the Amazons of Brazil. I was likewise given a Redondo Luxury Cream Wafer canister which was manufactured in Indonesia.
To a touristy kind of take, one could provide astonishment at the variations of sources to get these products done.
To this writer, the thinking is different. The impact of globalization, a much maligned "idea" in some parts of Europe, is truly sinking inside the Asian belt. Has anyone truly written about the commonality of the ASEAN nations and how it has made an impact to the interlinked business and economic dialogues among Asian countries?
In this ordinary and sublime piece of the Earth, I have observed the immediate fruits of grassroots globalization. You need not cry over the demise of lost time frames for our leaders if they reach out to our neighbors. They are bearing residual effects for our products to have huger access to the world market. The only way to do it is to have them "presented" and "packaged" like how our neighbors do it. There is a faster manner and access to the otherwise unreachable goods.
If our dried mangoes shall be repackaged in avant-garde packs, designed by the creme-de-la-creme creative geniuses of our multinational-oriented advertising agencies, I can see moolah trickling inside the country as fast as bullet trains. They would surely be a hit to Parisians and New Yorkers. It is an inferior idea to have them perpetually bundled in plastic bags with often, unimaginative designs. Indonesia's wafer is simply a Stick-O material back in the Philippines but its packaging? Brilliant. That is what a leader must travel to. To easen up these trade restrictions. It is not a badge to while away the time in some gondola waiting for Burt Reynolds to shed off his moustache while carrying a plane-full of sidekicks as if the Green Hornet needs a million Katos.
I am lucky to have been tuteleged by a businessman who goes abroad strictly to attend trade fairs, promoting Philippine products. His conversations spin around the new manufacturing implements that Filipinos can match, if not with superior outcome. He truly observes and incorporates them in his line of work. There is always this one shot to possibility and he always carries that with him whenever he is mobile all over the globe. He pays for his own fare too, unless officially invited as part of a business delegation. I never saw his wisdom to scrimp before. Now, I do.
I sipped my coffee in cups made by co-Asians, listening to Thai kids speaking in Americanized English, eyeing the exquisitely carved wood chairs, freshly varnished, which I presume, are locally made. Brad Pitt had paid a lot to buy our artistic furniture, the rest of the world can follow. I surmised, these foreigners are not buying Philippine products for their mundanity. They are willing to shed their hefty currency for craftsmanship.
Yala, is no means a Manila. Manila has its world-class malls. Yala is very conservative. What it offers though is a chance for everyone to get a sample of what the universe can offer in terms of trading and economic opportunities. Barriers to education access had been torn down; logic dictates that economic boon is set to follow it.
As I am sipping my coffee with Thai kids buying from a lady a marble cake, I am reminded of my own urban meanderings in the past. How little of me to think of the universe in a small box then. Now, I see it in a wider and far more enriching details.
From afar, our country mesmerizes. I see no reason why I should be selective with my places though. If only the whole area can be as bold as Quezon City in beautifying its government buildings, passing through its underpasses with its city History carefully laid out in memorably haunting pictures. In Malaysia, I see a Quiapo of the future if we are only daringly innovative.
We also lack this drive to capture our country in photographs. We have the best photographers in the world catching the visages of famous people, why not our sights? I am dismayed that when the Children's Playground at the Rizal Park was improved, one newspaper broadsheet opted to flash on its front page its old and dilapidated see-saw. We breed professional messengers who are only excited when floods come. I have still to read an essay about the Quezon Circle and its surrounds with the accuracy of a deeply-nuanced documentary piece. Literary piece. When I had my camera then, I consider it my citizen's responsibility to have these things clicked, to be shared and spread as my own contribution to volunteering tourism.
Abroad, it is easier. I speak and Thais commend my accent. But I also tell the world the country does not lack geniuses. In fact, they are helping other countries too, proof of its strong manpower pool.
Who shall start it? The President is giving everyone a leeway to do his share in aesthetic nation building (I insist on the creative, always the creative) but who is brave and daring enough to keep the bullets off cynics and howlers and elbowers and nitpickers and faultfinders when the blueprint for progress is laid? Who is ready to get muddied to get this thing done?
I think a lot of Filipino people would take our President's lead.
The Chief Executive made this statement in his speech during the 113th DFA Foundation Anniversary at the Bulwagang Apolinario Mabini, DFA Building in Pasay City. The anniversary celebration has for its theme: “Kabalikat ng Bayan Tungo sa Matuwid na Daan."
“Kung dati, puro batikos at kahinaan tungkol sa Pilipinas ang naka-headline sa mga banyagang pahayagan, ngayon po, sa pamumuno ng inyong matapang na Kalihim Albert del Rosario, nakakatanggap po tayo ng mga papuri mula sa ibang bansa,” the President said.
The President said the Philippines regained its reputation from other nations as a result of his administration’s directive that only hardworking, honest, and knowledgeable person in foreign policy should be assigned as career diplomats.
“Kung gaano tayo kasabik na maisakatuparan ang bunga ng pagbabagong nangyayari sa ating bansa, siya ring pagkasabik ng ibang mga bansa na paigtingin pa ang ugnayan natin sa kanila,” he stressed.
Earlier, Secretary Del Rosario expressed his profound thanks to the President for appointing 24 career diplomats, the biggest group of career ambassadors in the history of DFA, to ambassadorial positions in various parts of the world.
The President assured officials and employees of DFA that his decision for appointing at least 24 career diplomats to foreign assignments is a manifestation of his administration’s effort to ensure that every diplomat works hard and serves not as a jetsetter or a tourist in the country where they are assigned.
"Tanda ito sa pagpapahalaga sa ipinuhunan niyong tiyaga at sakripisyo," he stressed.
“Makakaasa kayong mananatili ang ganitong sistema, kung saan umaangat sa pwesto ang mga kawani ng pamahalaan batay sa kanilang performance, at hindi sa palakasan,” he concluded.