The Wily Filipino

In the Philippines, #2.

As many of you folks probably know, Asia is video/music/software piracy central, and the Philippines is no exception -- camcorder-shot VCDs of The Aviator, The Incredibles and Alexander for about 50 cents each sold quite openly on the streets (and sometimes in malls themselves).

(Of course, the legit releases are good as well -- you can get fairly cheap Asian movies, that sell for three times the amount in the US.)

I usually check the places out to see what stunners appear in Los Banos. Over the summer they used to have full seasons of The Sopranos and Sex and the City on the streets; they're gone now. But alongside Spiderman 2 and The Matrix (perennial best selling bootlegs here) were some "weird" DVDs -- weird for a small provincial town in the Philippines, that is: Control Room, Supersize Me, The Hunting of the President. At one stall I saw at least 8 different Tinto Brass titles; bizarre, I know. But the biggest surprise was an actual set of the Criterion edition of Inagaki's Samurai trilogy (no booklets, of course), selling all together for 120 pesos, a little over 2 American dollars.

Speaking of wild goose chases (and consumption -- this is all related, I swear), another friend of mine asked me to bring back some duhat as a pasalubong, which she can apparently use to improve her complexion, not that it needs any improving.

Since I wasn't sure whether she meant duhat soap, duhat lotion, or whether I was supposed to bring back a fruit and a twig, I went straight to the girly section of Mercury Drug and didn't find it. Lots of papaya, though (could it have been papaya?), tons of facial whiteners, and the real surprise: armpit whitener. "No dark spot in 7 days," the box said.

(As it turns out, duhat seems to be primarily used for diarrhea. Someone's pulling your leg, girl -- I'll bring you the Dunhill Lights instead!)

Meanwhile, Leny gets angry about Bloomberg and the tsunamis, and my favorite cringeworthy line from a seasonally-appropriate cringeworthy song suddenly comes to mind [cue Bono here]:

"Well tonight thank God it's them instead of you!"

Let them know it's Christmas time indeed.

Posted by the wily filipino at January 3, 2005 12:10 AM