Electric Angels and Pink Bikies: The Expatriate Life

By Jay Maclean

Moving away from home, leaving the nest, could be the beginning of a voyage that ends in a faraway country we would not have even considered when we set out—until we got there and discovered its secrets, its culture, its undiscovered paradises. Half a lifetime ago, the author ended his voyage of discovery in the Philippines, a country with one foot in the world of fairies and spirits, and where every event has an unusual twist, whether wedding or funeral, kidnapping or vasectomy, getting a driver’s license or getting a haircut. There are fascinating destinations far from the beaten track and a vibrant music scene that is everywhere present, even in the operating theater. Typhoons and earthquakes add a different kind of excitement. These events and experiences, sometimes comic or tragic, always compelling, are described herein.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Jan 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781537862774

Book preview

ELECTRIC ANGELS AND PINK BIKIES

The Expatriate Life

Jay Maclean

¶

PRONOUN

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Copyright © 2017 by Jay Maclean

Interior design by Pronoun

Distribution by Pronoun

ISBN: 9781537862774

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Expatriate Life

Vasectomy

At the Hairdressers

Where a Traffic Misdemeanor can Lead

Weddings

Every Girl Wants to be a Princess One Day in Her Life

A Provincial British Wedding

Hazards of an Upmarket Wedding

The Funeral: I shall wear Socks

The Music Scene

Freedom Bar

Jazz Revival

Fête de la Musique

Rehearsal After-effects

Spy at Sa Juico

Sa Juico Reprise and Society Lounge

A Rock and Roll Experience

Mountain Rite

A Kidnapping

Renewing a Driver’s License

Do not deal with Fixers

License Renewal Day, Part 2

In the Provinces

Bohol and Panglao Island

A Real Place

Polillo Island

Siquijor Island

Dumaguete

Going North

To the Mysterious Cordilleras

Going South Somewhere

Strawberry Fields Wherever

The Very North

Typhoons

Typhoon Milenyo, September 2006

Typhoon Glenda, August 2014

Typhoon Nona, December 2015

Typhoon Nina, December 2016

The Mountain will Slide into the Sea

News beyond the Headlines

Notes

More by Jay Maclean

[e-mail]

Cover:.Sunset and fishers, Batangas. Photo by the author.

INTRODUCTION

MOVING AWAY FROM HOME, LEAVING the nest, could be the beginning of a voyage that ends in a faraway country we would not have even considered when we set out—until we got there and discovered its secrets, its culture, its undiscovered paradises. Half a lifetime ago, my voyage of discovery ended in the Philippines, a country with one foot in the world of fairies and spirits, and where every event has an unusual twist, whether wedding or funeral, kidnapping or vasectomy, getting a driver’s license or getting a haircut. There are fascinating destinations far from the beaten track and a vibrant music scene that is everywhere present, even in the operating theater. Typhoons and earthquakes add a different kind of excitement. These events and experiences, sometimes comic or tragic, always compelling, are described herein.

EXPATRIATE LIFE

I LEAD A SIMPLE LIFE in Manila, I tell myself. Favorite food: a banana squashed between two slices of brown bread. A change (good as a holiday they say) for me is shaving before the morning shower instead of after it. Feels good, luxurious, to run the soap over smooth bristleless cheeks. It rarely happens because the other pattern—shower first—is so mechanical; years of habit place my feet in the shower before they stand before the mirror. Well, as I say, when the unusual happens and the routine gets reversed, it’s a pleasant change. Were it to happen regularly, it wouldn’t feel special any more, would it?

As far back as I can remember, and that in itself is rather hazy—I can’t really remember how far back my memories extend; it is a distance in time that varies, of course, from idea to idea, event to event, and is very discontinuous. I take comfort that even real writers, like Proust who made a point of it, have suffered (or benefited) from the fragmentation of their memories. However, when I think about the mechanics of shaving, my memory actually falls down a black hole around the time I began to shave again after many bearded years; the transition to a clean face was well marked by photographs, so at least I can distinguish between those two periods.

The other night I went along to an ordinary sort of Manila party. The usual sorts of people were there, along with the usual caterers and waiters, the lights strung among the big trees and poolside, the long white cloth-covered tables with the buffet spread along them in large stainless steel dishes warmed by candles beneath. Was there an ice sculpture too? I didn’t notice; perhaps there was a large floral arrangement, or layers of fruit or cheeses and grapes laid out on leafy wreaths, or all of those things; there was something big there making a centerpiece anyway. I suppose I would have noticed if there had not been a centerpiece. Tables for four or six, scattered around the 50-meter long lawn, were also covered by white cloths, with stainless steel pegs on the edges to hold down the tablecloths should there be a wind; candles in elegant glass tubes in the middle of each table.

It was a retirement party for one of the senior, both in age and position, staff member of a regional development bank. As he was also a member of a bikie gang, many of the guests were in their black leather jackets, tight black pants and black boots. The theme of the party was pink, and so the gang members all wore pink panties and various pink highlights over their black leathers. Their wives or girlfriends were in obligatory black, again with pink highlights; the ones that were wives sported an obligatory club tattoo on the back of one shoulder. Each had a unique number beneath her tattoo, to distinguish her from the others, one presumes, although, as I remember musing at the time, there were clearly better ways.

The other guests were dressed according to their expectations. Well dressed, attempting to look casual was the rule; cool, sophisticated-bikie, a little pink, variously interpreted from deep crimson to white. I was the only one in blue jeans come to think of it; but one doesn’t think of such things at the time—you’re there and people know you and no one is going to throw you out for not wearing pink for goodness sake. Later, someone came around with strips of pink to drape over us anyway so that we would all be in uniform.

A live band, a rock and roll ensemble, was pounding out loud sounds, surrounded by banks of enormous speakers. The band was one of the house bands at Heckle and Jekyll, lair of the bikie gang at the time and a bar in which I had played not so long ago with a similar band, the Rejects, described later. We were popular there. This band played some of our numbers, I noticed with some smugness.

~

It was when I was watching one of the host’s maids, a septuagenarian at least, in her blue tartan uniform, a parody of a schoolgirl, covered with a pinafore to keep it clean, over her bowed legs, that I began to question my view of normalcy and when it began. She was being led around the floor in a ballroom dance routine by a tiny 20-year-old sylph in a red tank top and tight black slacks, one of several decorative girls who were probably hostesses from Heckle and Jekyll.

It was the normal, international expatriate scene that I was seeing, and I could pin down the time when it became normal to the first reception I attended when I joined an international organization in Manila in 1980. Our board of directors had their social gathering beside the pool of the Mandarin hotel, among Manila’s best hotels at the time. The opulence was staggering to one coming from the Australian public service, where the equivalent would have been sandwiches under the trees or chatting between the office desks. There seemed to be as many solicitous waiters as there were guests, a sumptuous buffet and bar and, need I say, an ice sculpture centerpiece. The pool lights and those in the trees and small pavilions around the pool added to the heady atmosphere of the tropical night—with its warmth and scent of dama de noche flowers—set off by unfamiliar but Spanish-rooted music from a trio playing discreetly on the opposite side of the pool.

Praised by the Board members, most of whom were also public servants in real life, for the effect that these occasions had on them, our administrative staff would try to make the following occasion even more outstanding with some new breathtaking ‘gimmick’—taking over whole restaurants, convoys to out-of-town resorts, and so on. Between these ‘in-house’ receptions we, the senior staff of our organization, were invited to many similar receptions and parties by other international agencies and individuals employed by them around Manila. You got to meet a distinct group, both Filipino and expatriate, whose members recognized each other through these functions. The relationships engendered were even shallower than the pools we stood around.

For our own organization’s activities, the Board members flew in, were treated royally for a few days and flew out again to relatively austere lifestyles, and so were always impressed by these parties. For those of us Manila-based members of the organization, it became something of a joke over the months and years—’Here we are again; hope they changed the desserts,’ etc. Nevertheless, we took them for normal and anything less became not really acceptable.

It was ironic that our company should have indulged itself in this way. It was not a profit-making company but a research institution dedicated to ending the poverty of fishing communities in countries like the Philippines. There was some ‘justification’ in that the cost of such entertainment in Manila is much less than in western countries. And at the other end of the scale, the wealthy in Manila are very, very, almost inconceivably, wealthy. Stables of Mercedes as well as of horses are not that uncommon and the horses travel on specially chartered flights along with their riders for polo matches in the US or Europe.

~

The juxtaposition of extreme poverty and extreme wealth in Manila has always bothered me. In Australia, the differences in income are largely expressed as single or two-storey houses, for all but a tiny minority, while the Philippines has millions of homeless families on the one hand, and families who virtually own cities and provinces on the other.

The expatriate community in Manila helps to maintain the huge chasm between rich and poor, helps to keep the wealthy as wealthy as they are. This is done through real estate. Wealthy families build houses in choice areas at minimal outlay, labor costs being almost insignificant, and rent them at anything from two to fifty thousand dollars per month. Often there is a security deposit of perhaps 6 months and the rent for the first year is paid in advance. Thus, the owners can build again at no additional outlay from their own capital. Skyscrapers full of enticing office space are built on the same foundations and with the same expectations.

The lessees are the expatriates. Expatriates are not allowed to own land or houses. In a bizarre way this has had the opposite of the probable intended effect. The astronomical rental fees, that may even have begun through collusion between local staff of profitable overseas companies and landlords, have resulted in the price of all real estate in Manila being ridiculously overvalued. As a result, even the growing middle class—evident now in the large numbers of low-end automobiles clogging all the streets of the city—has to live in semi-squalor crowded in tiny apartments and boarding houses in tiny lots beside the narrowest possible roads. And this feature is undoubtedly a major reason why countries such as Thailand are leaping ahead of the Philippines in economic and psychological terms. Rentals there are a fraction the cost of those in Manila. People can live with some dignity at far less cost.

Meanwhile, the foreign companies in Manila foot either the entire rental bill or the major part of it, for housing their staff and, of course, their companies. So expatriate staff in such companies pay little rent. Salaries are either tax free or are compensated for tax to some extent. Almost all expatriates hire cheap help in the form of maids and sometimes drivers, gardeners, pool cleaners, even armed guards. Were these expatriates to pay the full cost of the housing, the jobs for such help would quickly dry up (although, from the many that I know, I think almost all the middle-class Filipinos have at least one maid, but I shudder to think under what conditions the majority must work, given that Filipino salaries are more than an order of magnitude lower than those of the expatriates; however, it means that the expatriate ‘market’ is not any more dominant). In most cases, without rental subsidy, the expatriates would not be able to afford to stay in the houses themselves. Irony again. Our institution was helping to perpetuate the poverty of the majority by assisting a very few persons, the senior staff themselves, ourselves, to live in style.

And style it is. Thoughts of ‘rich and famous’ life styles were with me this night when we gave our i.d.’s to the village guards—no i.d., no entry—and passed by mansion after mansion, looking for the one where the party was being held. But once inside the party venue, there was the ease and familiarity of friends and peers, the buffet and dining tables in the garden, the lights in the trees and around the pool, the catering staff and the waiters offering drinks, all of which induced that sense of normalcy. I stepped around three bikies throwing one another into the pool and helped myself to a chilled white wine from a passing waiter.

Now, seeing the elderly maid, who was, in fact, one of a team of literally ‘old maids’ fussing around inside the house—and there were glimpses of another girl in an apron who must have been in her early teens—I was suddenly overwhelmed with the strangeness, the singularity, of it all.

The bikies for instance, were all senior staff of big companies, and their conversation was more about the stock market than about tuning Harleys. They were more into charity work than mayhem; there was a crude sort of ‘gay’ element, and the finer points of ballroom dancing looked out of place in black leather—itself a triumph of fashion over sense in the tropical environment. Trips of more than a few kilometers must have been agony in the heat and traffic. I once saw some of them who had made it to Tagaytay, 70 km from Manila, one Saturday. Sweating, their faces covered in grease from the exhausts of jeepneys and buses, they had abandoned the idea of trying to reach the coast and were waiting for the traffic and heat to ease before returning.

~

Not for my organization, but for the bank, staff have diplomatic status, i.e., they are virtually invulnerable to the Philippine law. The thought of it being otherwise is anathema to the extent that the bank, with its 600+ expatriate staff, is prepared to pack up and leave its sumptuous building and the country itself if a court ruling that one expatriate was found guilty of harassing a Filipina employee is not overturned. The case was indeed overturned; the expatriate was no doubt guilty, the situation not uncommon, but the country Agreement, the Agreement, says that the bank staff are immune to national jurisdiction. Of course, there is no international jurisdiction either, so the bank, and most other major international organizations, are societies unto themselves, with their own gods.

Diplomatic status also means being duty free. There is the commissary, a word that meant nothing to me until I was able to use the US commissary in their compound called Seafront, in Manila, for several years, a concession to certain types of passport and visa holders in the light of flagging sales to the ever decreasing numbers of US embassy staff (but the rules were later made stricter and their commissary had to close down altogether).

The word can mean a store for provisions or, according to Webster who is quite correct, a supermarket for military personnel. Either way, it seems out of place in a bank and has the connotation for me of a sort of oasis in a Kipling desert. Nevertheless, it provides duty free booze and cigarettes mainly, as well as groceries etc., that are more for convenience than cost advantage, for the bank expatriates.

There is a quota on some easily re-saleable goods, to prevent staff setting up their own retail outlets, unworthy and unlikely as it may sound of someone with diplomatic status—and of course some did before the quota system began. And unlike the rest of us, they can actually enter the international airport building to meet their friends or relatives. They can drive their cars any day of the week, while the rest of us have one day each week in which we are forbidden, at least without substantial fine, to drive according to our number plate digits. They have ‘blue plates.’

And the cars. The advice passed along among bank staff was to buy your Mercedes as soon as you were installed. You could sell it after three years at a handsome profit, even though it was then quite second-hand and the buyer would then have to pay local taxes to use the car in the Philippines. It was yet another income perk, although in recent years local buyers have found other ways of bringing in their Mercedes and the market for bank staff is not so lucrative. One bank employee from Europe, speaking of the early 1980s, when he and I were both ‘fresh’ in Manila, told me he had never seen so many Mercedes anywhere and that where he came from the equivalent employee would be coming to work on a ‘solex,’ a bicycle with a tiny auxiliary engine.

The car park of the bank is still a showcase of the big and the sporty—for the 4-wheel drive craze has overtaken to some extent the mystique of the Mercedes. Under the trees or in a coconut-wood hut at the rear (more recently in a medium rise carpark on the former tennis court), the drivers gossip and await the call from the building lobby: ‘Driver Juan, come over’, and a gleaming automobile—the drivers can be seen polishing bonnets as the end of office time nears—glides to the pick-up area where an impatient expatriate or spouse laden with commissary goods is already pacing up and down.

I smile maliciously when I watch them clamber into the back seats—one does not deign to sit with the driver—of the 4-wheel drives, because these, even more so than the sedans, are meant for driver comfort. More so, because in nearly all cars the driver sits half way between the front and rear wheels and so receives the least bouncing and left-over shock that the shock absorbers don’t absorb. The back seat is for occasional passengers and is less comfortable. Pajeros, for instance, among the bank favorites, have an elaborate suspension system under the front seats but not the back. Anyway, I don’t mean to dwell on the bank or particular cars. I tend to make such observations because I don’t have duty-free car privileges and have never had, never wanted to trust my life to, a driver.

Having a driver is a recommended practice, say the chauffeur driven, because when you hit someone, he (no she’s that I have ever seen) gets the blame and a small fine rather than you, as an expatriate, having to flee to the embassy and leave the country forthwith, forever. The victim bears no consideration.

The chauffeur driven find much to complain about nevertheless and, unremarkably, a large portion of their social life is spent comparing notes about how many families their driver is supporting—the drivers seem to be nearly all polygamous in this Catholic country—or the vast number of kilometers the car has done when the owner and his family have never traveled beyond a radius of five kilometers from the office or home. Affairs between drivers and other helpers are recounted with disgust so utter that it borders on jealousy.

The other commodity that makes up the major focus of conversation when expatriates get together is the maid, sometimes called the help, domestic help or the servant, and as gender-specific as the driver.

‘I never even saw a maid before I came here’, Roger told me. And neither had I, I realized. The thought hadn’t struck me for many years. There were few countries where maids or helpers or servants were in any way common. And by golly, it was interesting to see how they were treated from house to house and apartment to apartment, that is, how we expatriates, suddenly faced with having our own employees, while being ourselves employed, reacted to the situation.

There was David, who vowed never to exploit the Filipinos by hiring a maid—the monthly salary of a maid will always be lower than the cost of a good night out. But after a year or so, a maid appeared in his family apartment, and then another and then a driver. Employment is created and the salaries are not that much less than in other jobs that do not require formal qualifications. Unemployment benefits are nonexistent. Mad if you don’t, they finally reasoned.

Americans, in particular, tend to under-employ their maids and treat them in an apologetic way, by and large. Their relationships often extend for many years after the expatriate family has left. Their Filipino ex-employees send encouraging letters about how well their children are doing in school while the cost of tuition is getting higher, etc. Yet, one senses that the resulting flow of money to the Philippines is due to perceived moral obligation rather than happiness or gratitude.

More often, I think, maids become asked to do more and more as their employers’ confidence in them grows. They become over-employed, and I have seen it written clearly in the faces of maids in many homes. Yet, they are probably well-paid by their own standards, and only when the load becomes overwhelming do they suddenly leave for a funeral in the province, never to return—to the great surprise of the employers. But worst are the stories of those who are not paid, work long hours, and receive only a roof over their heads and basic food (the refrigerator being locked, of course). If the maid wants to leave, the employers threaten to tell the police that she has stolen their jewelry.

I remember that I reached the zenith of my expatriate madness when I rediscovered among some old possessions a small Thai bell that had a bone handle and a pleasant sound. It was probably meant to call people together: a bell is a bell is a bell. Copying a family of American expatriates we had visited in the classiest (read most expensive and with the strictest guards) subdivision in Manila, we, my Philippine wife and I, placed it on the dinner table and rang it to summon our maid, calling her name as we did so the first few times in true Pavlovian training style. That lasted maybe three days. Then, one evening, we picked up the bell, looked at ourselves and laughed. The bell was never heard again.

We began to cherish our helper who was utterly trustworthy and had such a strong sense of duty, even with no contract—i.e., could be fired without a moment’s notice and told to leave immediately: one would never allow a helper to stay once the helper knew she was sacked; who knows what she might take or do. In the end, it was she who gave us quite long notice and packed her bags tearfully for Hong Kong. We were tearful too. But salaries for maids were better there than anywhere in Manila and she had a large number of dependents ‘in the province.’ Indeed, she wrote to us from Hong Kong, but it was in regret for leaving. A Christmas card from her appears every year.

~

Tears are not only for one’s staff’ going overseas. In 22 years of Manila life, nearly all my first expatriate friends have gone and innumerable short-term friends, pals, buddies, acquaintances and soul mates have likewise flown away.

Tonight was one such occasion. There was a ‘despedida’ for the family a few nights ago. The word has overtones of despair and desperation for me, although it translates from the Spanish as simply a farewell (so I am told). Now, we were having a few quiet drinks at the chosen hotel that one adopts after quitting the house and farewelling the helpers before the day one boards the plane.

One old friend, an expatriate who left the Philippines after many years to work in Colombia and was held for ransom there for almost a year, e-mailed me recently saying that we should keep in contact, one reason being that at our age one simply cannot make new ‘old friends.’ It struck home but, I thought to myself, it is even harder to maintain short-term expatriate friends. They come, settle in and reach out, befriend us, and suddenly are gone. Often, I know the short-term nature of their stay and have/make the choice of approaching or distancing myself from them. The simple life would suggest erring on the side of being a hermit and ignoring them. I think I have become an unwilling hermit.

On the present occasion, Garry, my expatriate friend of three years, a psychiatrist, had already farewelled his friends and his patients when we sat together for a last conversation, a last laugh. Chances of seeing each other again were remote. We covered predictable ground, perhaps in a more than usually intense manner. He knew the bank, had patients there, and I urged him to write up his experiences, which would surely be useful to both bank staff and to himself (he would be the ideal consultant to prevent or overcome the mental anguish that some staff experience as they come to realize the nature of the bank’s operations and attitudes toward staff. And that would mean he would return to Manila). But ‘writing up’ was his Achilles’ heel. We turned to the possibilities of me or my wife visiting him and his wife in the future, to their vacation on the way ‘home,’ to life in the homeland. Shook hands and I walked down to the hotel car park, feeling that I would cry—we had been comfortable yarning and joking in ways that meant we understood each other’s perceptions.

Strangely, I was reminded of some stories and movies that raise the question of eternal life on Earth, drugs or potions to make you live forever, and its implications. One outlives one’s friends, defies the natural order of life, and so on: the eternal one faces a lonely infinity. And suddenly, I saw myself as the one left behind. In the permanent departure of a friend, there is not only the ending of one emotional bond, but also the renewal of normally quiescent bonds with my own roots. Already in my thirties when I came to live in Manila, there were, of course, many bonding threads with the ‘homeland’ to cherish initially. Later, unable to maintain two lives, I let many threads fall away to dangle from opposite sides of the widening emotional gulf.

Then, when temporary friends leave, I see them going back to the lives and habits and familiar places that they left only briefly, and recall my former life, a life that I can never have again because it is embedded in a package of familiar persons, places, ideas and ideals more than 20 years old. It no longer exists. The threads billow out from this side, reaching out, straining and longing to touch their partners, but those on the other side, lifeless, cannot respond.

Sure, we can keep in touch with those who have left. But it has been my experience that once a person has decided to leave, he or she has already left. Mind and heart have leapt ahead to some distant shore and the threads of Manila matters are already unwinding. Unless there is hope of being able to visit them occasionally, usually not the case, the points of contact, of common interests, become fewer and fewer; the mails briefer, rarer...

Sure, we have our friends among the nationals, the Filipinos themselves. It can be exhilarating, challenging and rewarding. What is it, then, that is lacking that makes us fret about losing expatriate friends? I think it is the nuances of different cultures that are gathered in early life, and the very expressions we use to reflect those nuances. And as an extension of that, the departees are usually associated with our work or profession, are peers of one sort or another and have brought from their pre-Manila lives, experiences and ideas with which we can resonate, but which are alien to Filipinos. Commonality of language and language use also has its comforts.

Thus, in the departure of each friend, the permanent expatriate faces, time over, a triple loss in renewed memory of an extinguished former life, some erosion of the present life and knowledge that the future can only bring more of the same. We, those who ‘stay behind,’ continue to take the potion of permanency, reassert ourselves as masters of our destinies, and move on to lose ourselves again in the wonder of being eternal travelers on an exotic shore.

Comforted by this conclusion as I swung into the car, my next thought was ‘another one gone,’ a simple statement of fact that took the place of sadness, surprising even me. I looked at the models of the cars parked under the hotel as I drove out. I would soon need to replace the Honda.

The lady at the intersection selling leis of sampaguita, the national flower, must have been in her sixties. I bought one. May the lord thank you, she said. The light changed to green and I turned into Ayala Avenue, our apartment in sight. Even at this late hour, there was a traffic policeman waiting to catch offenders in order to supplement his salary. At the next lights, there was no policeman and taxis and a jeepney crossed on the red. I knew that a policeman would materialize from nowhere if I did the same. Maneuvered past some illegally parked ‘service vehicles’ at the next lights, did a right with a sigh of relief that the usual traffic policemen (‘crocodiles’ they are called, I always remember at this strategic corner) had retired for the night, returned the salute of the guard who raised the boom for the car park entrance and that of the guard at the top of the ramp, parked and acknowledged the good evening sir from a janitor, who pressed the ‘up’ button on the elevator for me, and finally melted into the air conditioning of the apartment. It had been another usual kind of day. A simple life, I reflected.

~

I let David read this essay. He agreed it dealt well with the weirdness that affects us (expatriates) all in different ways. Even his son concluded that his life in Manila had been a big lie, and who wanted to find in dead end jobs in Canada what he thought was the real life. He has now achieved his balance, and it is way removed from his Manila life. David’s daughter was also learning to cope in Canada, though more slowly, he said, as she was very connected with her rich friends.

Garry read the story too. He wrote: "The way we as expats experience domestic helpers and drivers is something that I can recall—the initial uneasiness, almost a kind of guilt at having them to do what one wants. Is one taking unfair advantage, is one exploiting or is one in fact helping in some way?

"I didn’t get the feeling that you were ‘putting the expat life down’ and at the same time taking advantage of it at all. Yours was really a commentary on the situation. I was, of course, struck by your description of our last meeting. How you felt being left again—there are so many transients in your life, and now it feels like there are more in mine.