Life in the flat

My flatmates' sense of humor is one of a kind. It is fascinating, it makes you ask: why? why? why? After some time, it makes you adapt, and really, it's fun.

First off, I have three flatmates, all of them at the height of their adoloscent life. One of them is an overstaying undergraduate, in his mid-20s, but he is nevertheless at the height of his adoloscent life.

The big one, Sergio, has recently been showing increased levels of alcohol consumption. When he drinks, he turns into a dangerous bear. He works up a conversation with you by producing incoherent sounds similar to that of a roar. Later, once whisky and Coke are sufficiently present in his blood, he demonstrates his propensity to walk on four feet on the floor.

If you come to my flat, you will notice a hole on the toilet door. It could pass for a glory hole, except that it's located way above the waist, near the level of your nipples, so it's not worth the effort.

That glory hole is the mark of Sergio's skull. Two nights ago, he ditched the bear image and transformed into a bull. Drunk, he ran inside the flat screaming chants and launched headfirst into the wooden door, like a Spanish bull aiming for the red cloth, or rather, the white door.

It's not good to mix whisky with Coke. Aside from the fact that it tastes like Coke, it awakens your self-destructive side.

To continue, the bull climbed out of the window, with only a thin piece of metal under his feet and a pair of sweaty hands to make him stick to the building wall like Spiderman. He was trying to cross over to the window of the next flat.

I almost admired the bull for such an idea, except that our flat is on the third floor and a vast expanse of deadly pebbles is waiting at the bottom, in case Spiderman loses his grip. My two adolescent flatmates got nervous, rattled out incoherent pleas, and then they pulled the unwilling superhero back into safety.

Apparently, Spiderman got frustrated by his failed acrobatic attempt, so once inside the flat he just jumped from the top of the staircase down to his room. He was not injured.

The next morning, when he was temporarily out of powers to transform, I pointed to the bull the mark on the toilet door. He said he would pay for it, or fix it, or something to that effect. Hmmm...this is sad, hehehe. I must say goodbye to the glory hole.

My Malaysian classmate

In Spanish class, I have a Malaysian classmate who doesn't seem to have anything good to say about the Philippines. I'm talking about an all-around nice guy, who is generally pleasant and agreeable according to my standards, except that he doesn't seem to have anything good to say about the Philippines. He has had the misfortune of working with some OFWs in Singapore who, like himself, have a contagious propensity to bash the Philippines to the very bottom of the global economic hierarchy.

Somehow, I've grown accustomed to this rather, misinformed opinion. It was obvious from the very start, when I first met him two months ago, that in his mind the Filipinos are so poor, that our economy is slowly but surely sinking six feet under. Etcetera, etcetera.

I wasn't upset at all, neither am I right now. Spanish culture has taught me not to take life too seriously, and that includes reacting to negative comments with a bit of humor, rather than taking offence. However, just this morning, I kind of grew sick listening to this classmate, I decided it was my moral duty to educate him once and for all.

So, I brought to class some statistics from the World Bank. Before showing him my documents, which I had painstakingly downloaded the night before, I asked him how he would grade a certain group of economies according to this scale: very good, normal, bad. He looked a bit bewildered as to why I would bring up such a topic over a 10-minute break, but anyway he replied: for him, Germany was normal, France normal, Italy very good and Spain very good.

I then showed him some figures, and he was quite surprised:

1. The Philippines has an average unemployment rate of 11.7

2. However, Spain is not far behind with 10.4, Germany with 10.6 and France with 10.1. Neither is Italy with 8.6

3. Some countries in Latin America are far worse. Venezuela, which exports oil, has an unemployment rate of 17.1

4. The Philippines is classified by the World Bank as a lower-middle-income economy (LMC). The lowest classification is LIC (low-income-economy).

5. China is an economic threat to the US, EU and Japan nowadays. It is also classified as an LMC.

6. Many consider Thailand as an emerging Asian economy, which can follow in the footsteps of Singapore, Hongkong, South Korea and Taiwan. It is also classified as an LMC.

7. The gap between the income of the rich and the poor is measured numerically in terms of the GNI index. The higher the GNI index, the greater the disparity between the rich and the poor.

8. The US has a GNI index of 0.38. It is a highly unequal society.

9. So are Singapore with 0.43, Malaysia with 0.49 and Mexico with 0.49

10. The Philippines has a GNI index of 0.46

11. According to the WB, the Philippines and Vietnam have already achieved universal primary education.

12. The WB says it will take 10 years more for Malaysia and Indonesia to achieve this goal.

Overall, after pulling off something similar to a graduate class presentation, I think I have successfully impressed upon him my message: that the situation in the Philippines is not as bad as he thinks, and that to be honest, even some countries which he regards highly are imperfect.

That many Filipinos choose to work overseas, but so do Europeans and Malaysians. That even if Filipinos make such a choice, it doesn't mean that they were dying from hunger back home. It doesn't mean that public hospitals, or social insurance, or basic education did not exist back home.

I haven't met his OFW friends, but from what he says, it seems to me that they, like most Filipinos, tend to exaggerate how bad life is in the Philippines. Add to that, how perfect life is abroad. But I digress.

The local officials here have recently passed a resolution advising the public to reduce water consumption. Apparently, if this is not heeded, a water shortage will occur in June. Now, who would have thought that could happen in Europe?

Wanna quit smoking? Try this...

In between language classes and the agonizing hours I spend with my thesis proposal, I take time off to recover my sanity by reading the life story of Giacomo Casanova. Seducer, gambler, swindler, philosopher, and once a whore-paying priest-in-training, this man is supposedly the most notorious lover the West has ever known. I bought the condensed edition of his 12-volume autobiography after a visit last year to Venice, where Casanova was born, to get an idea of what Venice was like in the 1700s. The other day, barely halfway into the book, I came across an interesting quote from Yusuf Ali, an influential Turk he met during one of his travels, and it might just be the solution people who want to quit smoking have been looking for.

Once, after dinner, Yusuf aired his theory to Casanova:

"So listen. The principal pleasure of smoking consists in the sight of the smoke. You must never see it leaving the pipe, but only from the corner of your mouth, at exact intervals, never too often. So true is it that this is the principal pleasure, you will never see a blind man who enjoys smoking. Try smoking at night in a dark room, and a moment after lighting your pipe you will put it down."

Prior to this, I've been acquainted with quite a variety of quitting methods. Among them, one must put off the fire halfway into the cigarette and break the stick; the emphasis here is on the act of breaking the stick, which is supposed to have some psychological impact. One should suppress his/her smoking urge by chewing gum or by eating candy, or one must put on a nicotine patch, which seems to me the method that requires the least effort from the smoker. So far, what Yusuf said is the most original I've ever heard - that one should not look at the smoke so as not to derive pleasure from the act of smoking - and it's interesting because it came from a man who lived about 300 years ago.

If none of the modern-day methods seems to work, who knows, this one might just do the trick for you...