grace...jackie is great considering what she's had to put up with me. A big reason why i was half way screwed up when i married her and thru my 1st 2 marriages was the aftermath of my
experiences from vietnam and the realizations, some relatively long after it. As a gook (a term 1st used by US soldiers during the 1898 Fil Am War) looking US serviceman, not only did i have to protect my front, I had to watch my back. When not with my crew, i hung out with the Aussies since they knew which side i was on.
My dad, Natalio, use to tell me war stories about taking Jap ears since the Americans would pay for them during WWII. I thought that they were just war stories until until i saw US soldiers with necklaces of them who told me that my ears were just as brown and no one would know the difference. I did not realize what i was doing there was a violation of the Geneva Convention until after. When the NWS sent me to investigate Flash flood damage in WV in the 80s, I finally got to see the ground truth of what we were doing in SE Asia. Jac said she'd leave me too unless i got counseling. I ended up going to the Vietnam Vets for help.
There also were some issues of my experiences in Angeles, Mactan and Olongapo and what most GIs remember about the RP that bugged me as my awareness of my Filipinoness emerged. I remember a girl in Angeles from Bohol who ran out on me when she found out my parents were also from Bohol when I was on one of my numerous TDY's to Clark just for typhoon missions. Things were so different back in the early 70s than when i finally got back to the RP in 2005. Now it almost like it is here in the US and even better than some places I been here in the US where there is unbelievable poverty.
On the rabbit food diet which i've learned to like despite the lack of rice :'(, when i was growing up along with most of my siblings, we were mostly skinny and underweight. In the USAF, they put me in the 'fat boy program' because i was below the weight standard and they did not have a skinny boy program. Up to when i was in my early 40s, i had that problem being underweight no matter what and how much i ate. Once i retired from the USAF when i didn't have to maintain fitness and weight standards, things slowly began to change. It was the same for my wife Jac!
However, with my kids and nieces and nephews, it was different. By the time they were teenagers, most of them were overweight. There was little junk food when i was growing up and we probably could not afford it anyway back then. When my kids were teenagers, they would open the stocked fridge and cupboards and state there was nothing to eat in the house since my wife Jac would not buy junk food for the house and cooked almost just like my mom, since she learned a lot about cooking from her.
Now that there are fridges in the barrios of Bohol, along with electricity, piped in water, flush toilets with toilet paper instead of coconut husks, tv's, cell phones, cars and even aircon, i saw those health issues start to crop up in what many of us here in the US use to consider a 3rd world country especially in not just the barrios of Tagbilaran, but also what i saw in the barrios of Ubay and Carmen and the rural places in between.
This is not much different than here in the rural, suburban, towns and cities in the US that i been to and I've been around thanx to my jobs working for Uncle Sam who's sent me to more places in this country including Alaska and Hawaii, places where even 4WD vehicles could not get to, where we had to walk to get to where some of our sensor platform were located in headwaters areas.
Now that I'm semi-retired, and am home more than she is since she's spent a lot of time at my dad's house taking care of him with my mom gone since 2002, she saying i don't get out enough. If the weather not too cold, hot wet, windy or any combo thereof, I go out for my daily bicycle ride with my heart monitor to make sure i'm in my exercise zone, since my doc says i need to worry more about the speed of my heart than how fast i'm riding.
I think she's envious i don't have to work 5/days/week anymore in a frustrating job like she has to in the lower rungs of upper management in a corporate environment. The 2/days/week i work are by myself for good pay with little work unless the weather is bad since that's when the computers don't work as well as they should on what i call a fair weather system.
Plus I've not become the house husband she's expected being home most of the time, with no maids or houseboys either available or affordable here in this country. I feel i do more especially babysitting my granddaughter 4/days/week but i guess it's not enough. But we finally did by a dishwashing machine to make the task a bit easier to do.
I see more of my female cousins there in the RP, especially in Bohol, getting into the same situation as my wife and some of my sisters here in this country where machismo is considered to be ignorance and stupidity. Yet there seem to be more female leaders there than here. Will that spread to the home like it has here?
I've already carried on to much here in between watching all the Iowa caucus results, the wishful thinking for NH, and a political speech from Obama i have not heard the likes of since the days of JFK and RFK. I'd better sign off before i get cut off...joey
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