The Answer

Why bother with Orphan diseases if only a number of people get it and if some don't have cures?

We, all, will have endings to our lives. We are fighting orphan diseases because we don't just want to lengthen the patients lives. We want to help them do what they love the most, what the diseases robbed them of. I will become a doctor soon but and I will be studying life. I want to ask myself this question and to ask every doctor and medical student if they know how to live their lives? It's not the quantity, it's the quality of your lives. The same goes to these orphan disease patients. We know that there are no cure to some but we still are supporting them. We are not fighting a losing battle. We are fighting to bring their humanity back and in this run, they could enjoy living. And this is the best gift a doctor could give to his patients. The gift of life.

Letter (Letitia - Ariel)

Dear Ariel,

Buenos dias!

I’m sorry I wasn’t able to make it. No, I am not doing an attitude or a statue of invisibility. I just wasn’t able to come.

Many days ago, we were only playing by ourselves. We don’t have any audience, just us, and yet, after we changed the rule and perform our attitudes and statues near the embankment, you decide to introduce yourself by dropping notes from the train. You keep on praising our game and once, I realized that you just called me beautiful.

I appreciate you for praising our game and being our audience. Ariel, I’m thankful that you called me pretty but I can’t move that much, my back is stiff. Maybe, I look the laziest among us because of my condition.

In those days that I felt spirited after you told that I’m beautiful, Mama and Aunt Ruth were trying out a new strengthening treatment on me; gladly, I felt good, I really think it was not only because of the treatment. It must be you that help me feel better for you made me happy and put shine on my eyes.
After you announced that you are going to visit us, I was hesitant to meet you. I was in my room locked, reading Ponson de Terrail’s Rocambole. I imagine myself as Rocambole. I am not an orphan or a killer but I know with my decision; I can mature and become wiser.

I’m neither a Chinese princess nor a Greek goddess. I am a paraplegic, limited to physical activities. I hope you’ll understand; I didn’t come because I don’t want you to see me in this situation.

Encased in this envelope is my letter and confidence, symbolizes by its lilac color. I just want to tell you, to watch me carefully tomorrow because after that I won’t be an attitude or a statue anymore. Tomorrow would be the last of the games.

Hastia siempre.


Yours truly,
 Letitia

Racism - Dramatic Situation

Telephone Conversation
by Wole Soyinka

The price seemed reasonable, location
Indifferent. The landlady swore she lived
Off premises. Nothing remained
But self-confession. "Madam," I warned,
"I hate a wasted journey—I am African."
Silence. Silenced transmission of
Pressurized good-breeding. Voice, when it came,
Lipstick coated, long gold rolled
Cigarette-holder pipped. Caught I was foully.
"HOW DARK?" . . . I had not misheard . . . "ARE YOU LIGHT
OR VERY DARK?" Button B, Button A.* Stench
Of rancid breath of public hide-and-speak.
Red booth. Red pillar box. Red double-tiered
Omnibus squelching tar. It was real! Shamed
By ill-mannered silence, surrender
Pushed dumbfounded to beg simplification.
Considerate she was, varying the emphasis--
"ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?" Revelation came.
"You mean--like plain or milk chocolate?"
Her assent was clinical, crushing in its light
Impersonality. Rapidly, wave-length adjusted,
I chose. "West African sepia"--and as afterthought,
"Down in my passport." Silence for spectroscopic
Flight of fancy, till truthfulness clanged her accent
Hard on the mouthpiece. "WHAT'S THAT?" conceding
"DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS." "Like brunette."
"THAT'S DARK, ISN'T IT?" "Not altogether.
Facially, I am brunette, but, madam, you should see
The rest of me. Palm of my hand, soles of my feet
Are a peroxide blond. Friction, caused--
Foolishly, madam--by sitting down, has turned
My bottom raven black--One moment, madam!"--sensing
Her receiver rearing on the thunderclap
About my ears--"Madam," I pleaded, "wouldn't you rather
See for yourself?"


The Reading.


The “Telephone Conversation” written by Wole Soyinka is maybe set in London, in America or in places where there are Omnibuses. The time frame of the poem may date until now. The persona in the poem is an African man who is a pacifist.

The poem starts when the land lady and the persona have agreed on terms about the persona’s occupation in the land lady’s apartment. Then, the persona decides to confess (yes, confession as if being black makes you less of a person) that he is an African; there’s a moment of silence after. Then, the land lady asks the persona how dark he is. The persona intelligently answers the land lady’s question in a scientific manner and asks the land lady to see him because he’s not all black. The close minded land lady hangs the phone leaving the unfortunate persona begging for a place to rent and the acceptance of his nature.

The poem depicts racism as to what happens between the persona and the land lady. With this, we can see dramatic situations or conflicts involving the persona and some other factors aside from the land lady. As I have mentioned, one of the obvious dramatic situations in the poem is the conflict between the persona and the land lady which can be classified as individual versus another individual. The persona also has conflicts with the society. In fact, it is the society that sets the idea that a race is superior to the other races and it is because of the society’s thinking that makes the persona less of a person and be discriminated because of his nature. The conflict between the persona and the society is the same as the dramatic situation between the persona and the land lady, only larger in scope.

Speaking of his nature, there’s a conflict between the persona and his race. Even if he has confessed that he’s an African; he finds it hard to tell how dark his complexion is and tries to modify the terms he used so he might be accepted by the land lady. There is also a conflict within him. He is trying to be accepted in the society and find neither an apartment nor a place in society.

Standards

The movies or the shows that you already watched on either theatre or television have been rated and reviewed, and it is the job of Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) to review films, VCD, DVD, and Television shows in the Philippines. MTRCB has the power to suspend or ban a certain movie or show that defies their regulations. Standards set the board’s ratings as follows; General Patronage (G); Parental Guidance 13 (PG-13); Restricted – 13 (R-13); Restricted –18 (R-18) and not for Public viewing (X); most of them are subjected to  Article  201, “Offenses Against Decency and  Good Customs” of the Revised Penal Code which summarizes against; crime, racism, pornography and illegal drugs.

Brillante Mendoza’s Serbis that brought the Philippines honor in the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, was given by the MTRCB an X rating. There are sexually provocative parts like the performance of fellatio in the dark area of the old movie house and the part where Coco Martin showed his thing while having sex with Mercedes Cabral. However, the film also depicts incidents that happen in real life, including poverty and immorality. The MTRCB has stands on giving the film an X rating because there were inappropriate scenes for young audiences but I think it must be rated down to R-18 where it can be seen by the adults and not totally banning it for public showing for it also shows the reality of life in the country. 

A commentary from Vera says that MTRCB just recommends the parts to be cut and during the Marcos regime, Filipino films like Scorpio Nights (1985) were the most provocative, presumably, so that people will be distracted from political turmoil. Scorpio Nights depicts scenes that have frontal nudity, illustrate adultery, demonstrate violence and show the condition of the country during the Marcos regime. However, this bold film has been approved for public viewing.

Leaders have the power over MTRCB for it is under the government. We can draw the idea that the regulations that were set can be modified by the leaders of our nation. Most of them can impart their own moralities to us and from the idea of the corruption and many more, who are they to set the moralities which they, themselves, lost because of their greed for power and money. In the end, MTRCB just suggests and is not an agency that conceals immoralities set by the regulations made by the government.

SLANGuage

Philippines is not just the home of great icons like Lea Salonga, Lani Misalucha, Arnel Pineda, Brillante Mendoza and many more. This country is also the home of different languages and dialects. I'm not only referring to the matatas na Tagalog or the kabalo it bisaya. I'm talking about the culture and language of jologs,  jejemons and bekimons. Just like the airy kapampangan and soft-spoken Ilonggo,  these slangs have idiosyncrasies.  Sociologists refer idiosyncrasies as individualizing qualities or characteristics of a person or group, and often used to express eccentricity or peculiarity. The importance of these idiosyncracies, coined languages in this case, is to bind and to identify the culture they share.

A good and a macro-scale example would be 'kanin'. 'Kanin' has many forms in the Philippines. It can be bigas, kanin, tutong, sinangag. Also, 'kain' which means to eat comes from 'kanin'. It is so very different in America because in English rice stands for both cooked and uncooked 'kanin', These languages are very important to these cultures. Filipinos giving importance to rice more than the Americans.

So let's take a quick look at these groups with their own Slanguanges..

So, what are jologs? According to the urbandictionary.com, jolog can be a substitute for ghetto, tacky, baduy, and any negative words you can think of. This word is prevalent during the 80's up to the 90's. The word jologs is not limited to just fashion sense. Mostly, being a  jolog also depends on socio-economic status. According to the writers from the tambayan.1.forumer.com, there are different types of jologs which stratifies them to socio-economic class, skwalogs (from the words skwater and jologs, the worst kind of jologs), squaconlog (from, squater, conyo and jologs, are the social climber jologs) and the coologs ( from the words cool and jologs, these are the rich people who have the qualities of a jolog). Also there are stratification of jologs according to gender: jologs ( are used generally for men),  chicklogs ( from chick and jologs, these are the female jologs) and baklogs (from bakla and jologs, are the gay jologs).

Also, according to a Jologs Dictionary from tambayan.1.forumer.com (again written by one of the writers), there are certain words created by the jologs which we are still using today like kwek-kwek (quail's eggs that are coated with flour and are color orange), Tigidig (pimples) and many more.

There is also a  movie entitled jologs. This movie has presented the different sides of being a jolog:

The movie had shown the adversities of the characters from being tacky and  baduy to their gender  being a  baklog, chicklog and up to their socio-economic status  being coolog or  squaconlog. The point of this movie is to show that there  are idiosyncrasies to which they (the jologs). These divide and unite them.

  -------Jologs are only allowed up to this line--------

Jejemon is another interesting culture. This jejemon craze has started more or less four years ago. Jejemons are the people who tYp3 l!kE thiz aNd wUd lAf wId j3Je dut'z wEr dey've gUt jeje.   Duh "mon" cAyM fr0m poke-"mon". fR. hir dey coined duh w0rd jejemon. 

According to this video, jejemon is a channel for the youth of this generation to find their selves and eventually, to be differentiated from others:

Actually, there are different levels of being a jejemon. PeOple who tExt likE this is n lvl 1. Jejemon hu sUvSkRiB N' diz stayl are in mild case. pfIf0lz hux teckz lAyK diz iz whutx u kcolled t3rM!naL cq4ze. 

jejemon is not only limited to the texting style because it also influence some fashion tastes. Also, people has made parody about jejemon's fashion for having Jeje caps, big buckled-belts, loose pants, neon colored clothes, etc. like in this picture.

Many has contested the existence of this culture. Many of these people would subscribe to facebook pages  like the jejebusters, gotta catch them all jejemon and many more. In these pages, people would usually bash jejemons that they are illiterate and uneducated.

We can see that there are  personal troubles of these people because they are trying to express themselves and to be different but the public issue arises when people start to contest their expressions and the eccentricity. With the help of Ma'am Lopez, I was able to come up that this phenomenon is an example of a culture war - conflicts between two or more cultures. As, I have mentioned, people who contest jejemons are branding them as illiterate. with the use of social conflict paradigm, this can be seen as the perception of jejemons  being uneducated because of their use of language. The bases for this conflict are economics and communication skills.

Economic because most jejemons  came from the lower class and usually the people who contest them came from the middle and upper class. Also, the communication skills because if you want to be taken more seriously, you should speak in straight English but the jejemons are more unlikely to be treated seriously because their language is perceived as a corrupt English - wrong spelling and gramming (jeje).

Also, some parents and teacher are threatened that their children and students' communication skills might deteriorate but according to Bishop Joel Baylon in one of his program in radio Veritas that jejemon craze is just a fad, expression and it will eventually be over. He has advised the parents and teachers to focus on more values formation and don't be threatened by this slang.

Apparently after these contestings against jejemons, people have gotten tired of of this craze. I think, it is around last year that the people have   lost interest about bashing  jejemons. Maybe because they are now being slowly accepted by the society but this can't deny the fact that jejemons up to this point has been a negative brand.

----------------------------bYe pfuowz---------------------------------

If it's about the colorful language, one shouldn't forget the bekimons. Bekimons has evolved from what was called gay lingo. Bekimon has started from the culture of the third sex, gays to be exact, that evolved to their language but these days, not all bekimons are gays because some are heterosexuals.
Bekimon uses coined words. The most prevalent would be echos, chuva and charot (click here to see more: https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=204350149575233). They would use mensung, nota, or hada pertain to men, their sex organs, and sex itself. This can be rooted from proprietor of this language which are the homosexual men who apparently like men also.

Masesey akech na tarush ang itechiwa na bekiness. Mausspluk ko na iba itech na lengwahe. Aber, unlike jologita at jejemonster na chipangga, chaka at nainenechos lang, kapag hustler ka sa beki wit kang eechusin dahil pasok ka na sa banga, sholbug sila sa iyo at may career ng miss congeniality.

I think, the idiosyncrasies of bekimons is their coined words, funny personalities and eccentric pronounciation. I haven't seen someone who has been bashed because of being a bekimon (disclaimer: bekimons not gay). Unlike jologs and jejemons, bekimons are the most socially accepted.

---------------------------------chanel na ako mga chakaness---------------------------------

The emergence of these slangs and cultures is a characteristic of very dynamic countries like the Philipiines. Also, what makes this language very Filipino is that it shows the creativity and innovation to stand out. I would say that this serves a function of convenient communication and a channel of creativity. However, it is also a dysfunction because it stratify people, isolating or differentiating from groups to groups.

I think, it is evident that jologs, jejemon and bekimon are very widespread and I won't be surprised if one day there would be a word chos in the dictionary or if Filipino is not 'the' national language anymore but 'a' national language together with jologs, jejemon and bekimon.