Barrio Fiesta London 2005

[smallfry]

Hey I have had a great idea............

Why not do what all westerners do when in the Phils ? Either look at the floor, or pretent you have not seen the other western guy with his girl ! This is always a constant source of entertainment for us, especially when you can see the other guy NOT looking :lol:

Why is this ? Surely not everyone is embarrassed to be seen there ?

[ginapeterb]

Why not do what all westerners do when in the Phils ? Either look at the floor, or pretent you have not seen the other western guy with his girl ! This is always a constant source of entertainment for us, especially when you can see the other guy NOT looking :lol:

Yes thats true, i have noticed that myself, walking in malls, I have seen lots of Western Guys with their girls, I have tried to nod and say Hi, like "Hello mate Im from UK" with my eyes, the chances are though they are probably yanks and want respond, I notice with the Brits, they do respond, I sometimes wear an England shirt in town, and Brits will talk to me immedeatly as they feel comfortable, I bumped into a guy with his girl at the NSO, he came over to me straight away, as I had on England shorts, it depends on whether people feel able to make a conversation easily, Im not sure if Western guys tend to look down on the floor, although i do take your point, sometimes they dont want to stop and chat, so they look the other way, I find also, that my wife knows so many people in town, we are constantly stopping in SM to chat with her freinds, and most of the time they are not freinds, just long term acquaintances, or maybe High School freinds, or former colleagues, I must admit, I do not look down at the floor, nor do i seek toa void eye contact with other Western men with Filipina's but they do it to me, so you have made a very valid point.

Whether we should adopt your suggestion for meeting up at the Barrio Festival, I think we should not avoid each other and look down on the floor as geeeeeze there are going to be thousands of brits there so i dont think looking down at the grass is going to work, do you take my point ? and wearing England shirts, isnt going to make much difference, but thanks for thinking about it anyway, you made a very good and honest point about the way that Western guys seek to avoid having contact with others, its not that their ashamed to be with their Filipina, its just that they are not freindly I guess, but I put those ones to be mainly Americans, the Brits are freindly and will stop for a natter.

[peterdavid]

Originally posted by smallfry@Jun 17 2005, 09:55 PM
Hey I have had a great idea............

Why not do what all westerners do when in the Phils ? Either look at the floor, or pretent you have not seen the other western guy with his girl ! This is always a constant source of entertainment for us, especially when you can see the other guy NOT looking :lol:

Why is this ? Surely not everyone is embarrassed to be seen there ?

Quoted post

Smallfry, you are exactly right, lol. I noticed this happening a lot when I was there. The only times British guys felt comfortable talking was inside the Embassy, and that was usually to offload the sheer utter frustration most of them found when dealing with Embassy staff.

It did depend sometimes on where you were. A lot of our time was spent in the Greenbelt/Makati areas, where we were based, and in those areas, it didn't really happen as much. Not that people were really friendly, there were still very few conversations, but the reason (it felt to me) was more due to the fact that the people in this area were just busy going about their day, not that they were embarrassed, and were no more inclinced to stop and have a chat than the daily commuters on the London Underground are disposed to breaking out into spontaneous conversation.

But, when you went to the less "businessy" areas, such as Mega Mall (a personal non-favourite of mine), where you would occasionally see a british 'visitor' with his wife (you can always distinguish them from the expats, as they are the ones wandering around in shorts), they would, as you say, look downright embarrassed.

But, as a British/white guy with a filipina wife, the embarrassed avoidance of white GUYS is nothing compared to the scornful looks you get from English/white FEMALES in the Philippines. I think they sometimes assume that if there is a British/filipina relationship, it must mean she is a prostitute and he is a sex tourist. Most probably derived from their female jealousy - lets face it, it must be hard for your average dumpy and pasty-faced comparative giant of a woman when ending up in a country full of cute and pretty women - she instantly ends up at the back of the 'fit' queue and gets NO attention whatsoever.

In the end, I put the embarrassment of a lot of britishamerican guys there with a filipino gf/wife down to the fact they either (a ) were embarrassed about HOW they met or (b ) felt that everyone else was assuming they were some sordid sex tourist taking their latest concubine out to buy some gold, and felt unconfortable about it.

But you're right - for some reason, in the Philippines more than elsewhere, other "white" guys do, on the whole, seem to go out of their way to avoid eye contact with other white guys. When I first arrived, if I were passing another 'white' guy, I'd do the customary raising of the eyebrows or little smile of acknowledgement, and got nothing back, so in the end I stopped bothering. After a few years, I noticed a guy smiling at me who I had previously been ignoring, not because I was deliberately trying to avoid him, but because I had gotten so used to the normal non-contact between white guys, it didn't even cross my mind to acknowledge him. So maybe it's all just a vicious circle.

Of course, being very polite, once I realised, I did acknowledge him. Height of manners, me.