You Are A Filipino If…

September 20, 2007

I was reading one of the greatest books ever written and I think that these facts that I gathered are very important in our everyday living. As per the author, he saw these on the internet.

YOU ARE A FILIPINO IF…

- you nail all photographs on your walls in the living room

- you have a very good sense of mañana habit

- you smoke in your house

- you put up your knee while eating

- you eat kanin and ulam using your (bare) hand

- you say COMFORT ROOM instead of RESTROOM

- you say TAKE OUT instead of TO GO

- you point with your lips

- you say OPEN or CLOSE the lights

- you nod upwards to greet someone

- you or someone you know is nicknamed BOY

- you say CANTEEN instead of CAFETERIA

- you eat under-developed duck eggs

- you call it a BALLPOINT or BALLPEN, not a PEN

- you pronounce the word ALREADY as OLREYDI

- you say KODAKAN instead of taking pictures

- you do MANO PO to older people in the house you're about to enter

- you refer to your REFRIGERATOR as PRIDYIDER

- your grandma smiles and her teeth are all red because of NGA NGA

- you say PLIERS when you meant FLIERS

- you say BITCH when you meant BEACH

- you pronounce HIPPOPOTAMUS and COMFORTABLE in a funny way

- you say BOOSE for BUS

- you have a Last Supper quilt tacked on your dining wall

- your WALKING DOLL is still new even though it was bought years ago because your mom kept it in the china cabinet and never let you play with it

- you hang a Santo Niño shrine in your living room

- you have an out of tune piano that nobody in the family ever learned to play

- you say CHOL-O-LATE

- you have a WEAPONS OF MORROLAND shield

- you didn't hear or understand something and your first expression is HA?

- you are chismosa

- you're standing next to big boxes at the airport

- you like peanut butter with chocolate

- you make PARA! on a bus

- your car chirps like a bird when it's reverse

- you turn around when you hear somebody say PSSSST

- you have a BARREL MAN in your house (you know… the wooden man, when you lift up the barrel… SCHWING!!!

- you wash your clothes by hand

- you instinctively grab a toothpic after a meal

- you order the longganisa meal on a PAL Balikbayan flight

- you laugh seeing somebody slip

- you smile/grin a lot even for no reason

- you sit by squatting down and leaning your elbows on your knees

- you use a BOLO to cut the grass in the yard

- you have power failures everyday at the same time that you can set your watch to

- you own both a rice cooker and an airpot

- you refer to ACCENT and all other forms of monosodium glutamate as AJINOMOTO

- you say KUTEX instead of NAIL POLISH

- you're the plane passenger with the largest hand-carry luggage

- you scratch your head when you don't know what you're doing

- you say ANO this and ANO that

- you put your hands together and point them in the direction you are walking to pass between other people

- you say that everybody is your cousin/niece/nephew/aunt/uncle…

- you have a big Buddha at home for good luck (not the serene Buddha like what the Thais have, but the big, fat, laughing one with those pesky little kids crawling all over him)

- you bring a BAON to work everyday

- you use WALIS TAMBO and WALIS TINGTING

- your ice cold beer really has ice cubes in it

- you have a parol hanging outside your house during the Christmas holidays

- you eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner

- you fire your gun like crazy on New Year's Eve

- you drive a jeep with your family name written on the back

- you put a little bowl of PATIS on the table for dipping,  and your guests complain, "Who farted?"

- you cover your living room furniture with bed sheets

- you have toyo circles on your table cloths

- you eat BALUT and wash it down with beer to bulk up

- you wash and reuse disposable styrofoam cups, forks, and spoons and cover paper plates with waxed paper so you can reuse it

YOU MIGHT BE MARRIED TO A FILIPINA IF…

1. Your refrigerator is always full but you cannot find any food that you recognize.

2. Instead of a dowry, you got the whole bill for the wedding and the honeymoon.

3. Most of the decoration in your house are made of wicker.

4. You are expected to be able to read her mind just by watching her eyebrows move up and down and which way her lips are pointed.

5. All her relatives think your name is Joe.

6. The instant you are married, you have 3000 new close relatives that you can't tell apart.

7. Your house isn't really on fire, but there is a very charred fish right on top of the stove burner.

8. All the desserts are sticky and all the snacks are salty.

9. She eats her fruit with giant salt crystals and her fried chicken with ketchup.

10. Even the ketchup tastes weird… very weird.

11. You throw a party and everyone is fighting to chop the leathery skin off a dead pig.

12. All your kids have 4-5 middle names.

13. Your in-laws take 10 years to acknowledge your existence and to call you by something other than "that white guy".

14. You try to call her up on the phone and someone tells you "for a while" and you want to know "for a while, what?"

15. Your phone bills are all international and average 3 hours per call.

16. She sweeps with something that witches usually fly around on.

17. The rice cooker is on 24 hours a day and uses up to 50% of your electric and food budget.

18. On your first trip to the Philippines, you have 18 giant boxes that weigh 1000 pounds each and your "carry on" luggage requires a small forklift truck.

19. The same luggage is overfilled with things that cost an average of 15 cents each like old magazines and M&Ms - the worst part is when you get off the plane, the same stuff you've been hauling around half way around the world is available in every store in the airport for half the price!

20. All her pajamas look like they were worn by the Dalai Lama until they got too faded.

21. The first time she's pregnant you have to go out at 4 in the morning looking for some weird type of greasy sausages, green mangoes and bagoong.

22. You buy a new $500 freezer so she can store 200 pounds of SPAM and CORNED BEEF that was on sale.

23. Everything in your house was bought on sale, even if you don't need it. As long as it was a "bargain" is all that matters.

24. She gets really excited by sucking the fat out of pig knees.

25. Your daughter gets her ears pierced when she's 2 minutes old but your sons are not circumcised until they turn 21.

26. All your postage bills instantly double.

27. YOu hire a yaya because your wife thinks you clean mirrors with soap and sponge and the yaya seems cheaper than a divorce.

28. Her favorite sause is called patis, Americans call it turpentine.

29. She actually thinks that bowling and golf and billiards are real sports and are more important than baseball and football.

30. She prefers bistek to beef steak.

31. Her idea of new upholstery is rinsing the bagoong stains out of the slip covers.

32. She can eat and talk at the same time, in fact that's her specialty!

33. Her favorite meal is leftovers, her favorite fancy dessert is Jello mold and for something REALLY romantic, she'll offer you a halo-halo with 2 straws.

34. You still don't know what's the difference between manong and manok.

35. She and the kids are always saying, "Daddy made utot" and you still don't know what it means but they thinks it's pretty funny.

36. Other than eyebrow raising and lip puckering, her next most expensive form of communication is grunting and psssts.

37. Her homeland has more Megamalls than islands.

38. Before every holiday and visit, her sisters fax you a 10-page bilin list which says "suggestion only".

39. Your kitchen table has a merry-go-round in the middle.

40. All the vegetables she buys at the Filipino store look like they were grown at Chernobyl.

41. Your in-law's first visit lasted 5 years.

42. Her friends are named Chinky, Girlie, Boy and Bimbo and you are not allowed to smirk.

43. Her home economics course only taught shopping, eating, and siesta: cooking, cleaning and sewing were not electives.

44. Her idea of edifying reading is gossip magazines.

45. All your place settings has the silverware backwards and there are no knives.

46. She washes her hair with a bucket and her car with a broom.

47. She uses an umbrella even if it's not raining.

48. Her favorite book (she has 3 copies) is 1001 New Recipes for Pig Parts You Were Gonna Throw Out.

49. You are the only family in a 200 mile radius with 2 VCRs, 3 televisions…

50. She's done her best job planning a surprise party for you if she manages not to tell you about it until a week or two before.

51. She "cleans" her closet by throwing all the crap into your closet.

52. AND LAST BUT NOT THE LEAST: You are pretty proud of yourself because you think you snagged up for yourself some unique, rare, tropical goddess-type until you go to the Philippines and can't tell her apart from anyone else in the whole country (unless she's taller than 5'1", then it's a bit easier).