Around the World

Around the World

June 24, 2004
By Condrado de Quiros

I TOLD my friend, a journalist from Paris, that the last time I was in her city, which was the early 1990s, my impression was that the number of migrants there had grown tremendously. In the 1980s, you saw only a sea of white faces in the Metro. In 1993, you saw faces of different colors mingled among the white ones. She was surprised and said she hadn't noticed but had the same impression when she went to London. The number of migrants had positively exploded there. Well, the hardest thing to see is always what's under your nose.

She said there was still a sizable community of Filipinos in France who did domestic work. Though most of them were there illegally, they were being protected by their employers. The reason for it was not the French passion for liberty, equality and fraternity, it was the French passion for a bargain. The Filipino maids fetched half the price of regular babysitters. And they were by far more patient and caring.

I told my friend that when I was in Paris, I spoke to one of the maids, asking her if her French was now excellent. She said no, she just knew survival French. I asked her how she was able to communicate with the kids she was babysitting. She answered, "Oh, no problem, they've learned to speak Tagalog."

I told my friend, we would conquer the world someday by the principle of the hand that rocks the cradle. She found it very, very amusing.

* * *

Former Thai foreign minister Surin Pitsuwan, a Muslim, had an interesting story to tell. On the way to Barcelona from Frankfurt, he asked for the Muslim meal, which was provided by the airline. His aides to the right and left of him ordered the regular meal. When the meals came, his aides were served with metal spoon and fork. He was served with plastic spoon and fork. The same thing happened, he said, when he flew to Rome some years earlier. He asked for the Muslim meal, and they gave him plastic spoon and fork to go with the food.

When the stewardess came around, he asked her why this was so. She answered a little exasperatedly, as though it was self-explanatory: "Well, you asked for the Muslim meal."

A Dutch had the last word, however. After hearing the Thai say this, he said. "Next time you fly to Barcelona from Europe, take a Dutch airline from Amsterdam. You won't feel discriminated against. They won't give you plastic spoon and fork. They won't even give you spoon and fork. In fact, they won't serve you food at all!"

* * *

I met an Indian from Kerala who now teaches in a university in Toronto. He is a Mathematics professor who has done considerable research in, and has written a book about, the non-Western origins of Math. I told him I had read somewhere that Algebra originated from the East, specifically from Arab land, while geometry originated from the West. He said that both in fact had non-Western origins. Geometry originated from that part of Greece that was in Africa.

He did research as well among the aborigines of Australia to disprove the notion that primitive tribes had no mathematical sense. They did not have one in the conventional sense, he said, but they were amazing in the way they reckoned distances accurately, which they did by measuring length of journey, speed, the movement of the sun and stars, and the length of shadows, which was a nascent form of Geometry.

I asked him why Indians were so good at Math, even producing human calculators. Arguably, he said, the long history of civilization had to do with it. But quite apart from that, he said, Indians took a joy in numbers. That was so because they associated numbers with entertainment. As a kid, he said, he was given puzzles by his father to solve. A thing though, he said regretfully, that was now being pushed back by television. Kids no longer diverted themselves with mathematical puzzles.

In fact, he said, the unabridged "Kama Sutra" contained these elaborate puzzles. They were part of foreplay. Couples entertained themselves first by giving each other puzzles to solve "before getting down to serious business."

What can I say? Maybe you need Math to do those contortions.

The Spaniards have a joke about Generalissimo Franco, the dictator who ruled Spain from the early 1930s to 1978. While he was in his deathbed, a crowd of his followers gathered at the plaza facing his home and chanted, "Franco! Franco!" Hearing the chants, he asked one of his aides what the commotion was. His aide said with passionate loyalty: "They are for you, Generalismo. The people have come to say goodbye."

Franco lifted his head and asked: "Why? Where are they going?"

Talk about tyrants not knowing the meaning of leaving.

* * *

Josef says proudly he is Catalan. That is his identity. They have their own history, traditions and ways of doing things that are different from the rest of Spain. Of course, they are not separatist, like the Basque, but they are fiercely independent. The government of Catalunia is currently waging a battle to prevent the central government from skimming off its taxes. But Josef is also proud to belong to Spain, a country that is now advancing by leaps and bounds. "We have lot of catching up to do," he says. "Franco devastated us. While the rest of Western Europe charged ahead, we were left behind."

The advance is more than economic, it is also psychological. From the puritanical days of Franco, Spain now allows same-sex marriages in some parts.

Unfortunately, says Josef, a man in his early 30s, the youth of Spain no longer know about the Franco days, and what it took to get out of the rut. "We must be reminded," he said. "We must remember."

I thought of the aftermath of the Ferdinand Marcos days, and felt a tinge of bitterness.