It was a pretty normal day for me earlier at work. The phones were still almost literally ringing off the hook, and irate people were still calling in after screw ups happened with their vacation plans. Yep, it was a pretty normal day.
Until, that is, I got around to talking with an Italian-American. He was late in planning for a vacation, so he was a bit pessimistic about getting an availability for the places he wanted to go to. He was just hoping that maybe someone would cancel their vacation plans at the last minute, which would allow him to take that person’s spot. After going through all the motions of looking for space but finding nothing, I offered to set him up on a wait list, so that at least if something shows up, we would contact him right away.
Apparently unused to being accommodated and treated with respect, he asked me where I was from. When I said I was from Manila he said, “No wonder you’ve been so accommodating. If I was talking with an American, especially here in Manhattan, I would’ve been shooed away without a second thought. That person would’ve said that there was nothing, and I should stop wasting his time. God bless you, God bless the Filipinos. You’re an asset to your country.” He then continued his story of how all the Filipinos he’s come across in the Big Apple have been really nice, and in his stay there for the last 8 years, he hasn’t come across any news clipping of any Filipinos involved in any crimes, petty or otherwise. He also added that Filipinos were the complete opposite of most Italian-Americans who when they got to the US, got involved with crime, or worse-the Mafia.
What really got to me was how foreigners like him perceived our countrymen. Of course we know better, and we know that Filipinos abroad would eventually, if not already, be involved in some petty crime one way or another. But for him to really go out of his way to praise us speaks much for the country. Makes me almost want to throw up when I remember the local problems that we have. While our leaders are busy squabbling with each other or busy with putting the country’s resources to waste, it is the overseas Filipinos who’re doing the groundwork in making our image in the international community a good one. It apparently is the ‘unknown’ side of our ‘modern heroes.’
Question is, do we care? Or better yet, does the country care?
