Bobby Alexander Cypocalypse's posts with tag: communism
 Cypocalypse: Manong, pwede ho Tandang Sora?
Taxi Driver: Sige!
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Taxi Driver: Monday seems to be quite a busy night for Eastwood even at this time of the night, isn't it?
Cypocalypse: Must be the call center people. Eastwood is a call center haven anyway.
A few minutes later....
Taxi Driver: You're a call center agent?
Cypocalypse: No. Not here. I just attended a band gig here. My favorite band performs here every Monday, so that's why I'm here. But I used to work as a call agent before, a couple of months ago. It will be soon before I go back. I need to.
Taxi Driver: Is the pay good? I head that you guys earn something like 20k for a startup?
Cypocalypse: 15k would be a more appropriate average. Not that big but it can get me going. I still get support so, if anything, that's just extra luxury money.
Taxi Driver: Well, that's big enough.
Cypocalypse: Comparatively, yeah. But....it's not the kind of thing that's really sustainable. The job is hardly stable to begin with, but that's fine with me.
Taxi Driver: Why unstable?
Cypocalypse: Too many things not normally accounted for can get you fucked up. An asshole of supervisor, etc. It's hard to explain, but if you're there, you can easily understand what I mean.
Taxi Driver: Yeah, I think I do get where you're pointing at.
Cypocalypse: For a newbie, basic English competence is a requirement, of course. Anyway, being from UP myself, in the future, I may consider Eastwood as a prospect venue for finding work. Transportation is not that cooperative, but I need to expand my horizons.
Taxi Driver: Ok.
Cypocalypse: It's not that easy to get hired in this industry. Everyday, probably 90% of applicants are not getting accepted just because they don't know how to 'sell' themselves. Of course, communication skills in an issue. Realistically, only around 10% get accepted. And we're talking of everyday hiring here.
Taxi driver: Incompetence?
Cypocalypse: Ethics. Improper communication ethics. For most Filipinos, speaking English is a scary thing where they think too much of the rules rather than the act of saying anything. It doesn't help either if you have other people ridiculing you for your sheer effort in saying anything.
Taxi driver: Kinda like how we treat the Visayans and their accent?
Cypocalypse: Exactly, not to mention the other bullshits a new employee would have to live up with once he gets hired. Anyway, I stayed too long in UP Diliman, and I need a working experience to have a paradigm shift of things--like a feeling of being productive, for one.
moments later.....
Taxi Driver: Diliman?
Cypocalypse: Yes!
Taxi Driver: I'm a friend of one of you guys. Do you know _____________?
Cypocalypse: Uhmmm....that skinny dude? Wow! I never realized that he's one of us.
Taxi Driver: I'm quite familiar with the way student activism works in your university.
Cypocalypse: Student activists? Hmmmm....they're not that active anymore. Not like they used to. If anything, they sort of represent a dying ideal. I'm referring to the red, of course.
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Cypocalypse: You know what, I can clearly see a distinction bewteen my old UP life, and the way corporate stuff works. It's like...they're two completely different things. The reds used to rally about socialism and whanot...and how the university should not be influenced by anything corporate. If anything....if you think about it, it's not right.
Taxi Driver: Exactly.
Cypocalypse: What if.....the future country leader would come from UP, and he want to start a business? Maybe do something good for the country by hiring people. Will UP give him enough training? Certainly not. what we have there are small-time stalls selling snacks as pricey as 7-11 sells them. Certainly not that efficient. Certainly, I would have wanted to see a Mini Stop there instead.
Taxi Driver: Good point.
Cypocalypse: Certainly, I couldn't represent what the reds represent. What if, let's say, I'm a son of a quite affluent parents? Will I ever represent their cause? Hardly. I wouldn't be able to relate to that, probably. There are other causes I can better represent. It's just sometimes, the reds are too noisy to make other perspectives rise.
Taxi Driver: Autonomy is quite a false ideal. I learned the hardship of being an NPA soldier a few years ago.
Cypocalypse: You were?
Taxi Driver: Yes, for about a year or two.
Cypocalypse: What made you leave?
Taxi Driver: If you think about it, our main boss is out of the country, but we still need money to get things going. Ever got an idea where we get them? We get them from the people, visit their house once in a while. Even if we act friendly, they'll give us a thing or two. They're scared. We have guns. I just realized that it's not right to get money from them when they're hardfly rich to begin with. I eventually left.
Cypocalypse:.....
 The Current Events section of Peyups.com gave rise to the prominence of a specific forum member, known for his "affront" towards the core of Philippine culture, rattling the status quo of what we are, in the context of that elusive quest for Philippine economic prosperity. He's known primarily by his username, Benigno (also the webmaster of www.getrealphilippines.com) and for the last couple of peyups.com meetings I've attended, he's been the subject of discussion among us, easily giving the likes of Revo and Discostu a run for their money. So what is it about him that catches every peyups.com members' attention? It's simple--his piercing views about the essence of being a Filpino, the things in us that can't make us....take-off to economic nirvana.
The Cypocalypse also has a knack for a making criticisms and Benigno perfectly fits the definition of one, though I would no longer expound my perspective on the righteousness of his agenda.
Like what I've stated a few months ago in an earlier blog, the key to economic prosperity divides the Filipinos into two forces--those who understand at hand the issue and those who have no freakin' idea at all. The sad reality is, the latter is so big compared to the former. Modesty aside, Benigno and I are among the two who belong to the former. Though personally, discussing issues as complex and as sensitive as that is not among my most legitimate fortes. Benigno can take the glory for himself but I'd rather be a silent observer on the issue. I still think I contribute something to the country even in the smallest ways.
In my circle of friends in peyups.com, those that understand the picture almost always come from the corporate (working) sector--they understand the picture because it's a part of their daily lives to understand the issue. It makes me more at ease interacting with them because, at least, when it comes to that issue, we're wired pretty much the same.
I don't claim to be among the most efficient yuppie though. I'm a critic of capitalism almost as I am a critic of communism and honestly speaking, I see a lot of soulless-ness in capitalism to make me a perfect capitalist slave (in fact, I may be far from it). Corporate people may then view me as a slacker from a comparative perspective but I can deal with that. My opinions are not anchored on alliances or affiliations. I have a pretty much independent way of thinking.
Though much like Benigno, for the past couple of years, I kept thinking of the issue and I myself have been wondering on the more feasible steps we can take to get things done. For one, I know that culture is a starting point. Yes, culture. It all starts there. Culture define our ethics, and before tangible measures can be done, ethics should be the primary consideration to look at.
When an applicant applies for a job interview, the interviewer is already assessing the applicant's ethical standpoint by making him answer questions. Ethics overrides, everything. A mediocre applicant with good working ethics can be trained. An intelligent slacker can hardly be trained. It makes a lot of difference.
We can view culture then, as a collective ethical standpoint of the Filipinos as a nation. If what we are as a people don't have the formula for economic takeoff, what do we do then? Do we change things? Where do we start?
It's hard to fight for a cause something as big as this because changing the status quo of what we are as a nation is the ultimate attack on our soul as a people--the ultimate nail to the coffin that doesn't look good on a lot of angles, but to only a few who see the bigger picture of things.
I kept on wondering about this myself. How do we start? Some atheists I know have showed dismay over the catholic church for holding us back, and as a spiritual deviant myself, I would imagine an attempt to diffuse the Catholic influence by infusing different ideas into the mainstream would be a good starting point. Ridiculously hard to execute but a logical choice for a starting point. What do we infuse then? Pragmatism? Rationalism? Empiricism? Dichotomy of religious rights over civil rights? Personally, I leave that to the powers-at-be. I can still contribute to the bigger picture in my own right.
 A question that I would like to ask my fellow UP students is, "What do you guys know about the struggle? What do you guys know about the social class struggle? And nope, I'm not talking about the stereotypical social class struggle that you see on an average ABS-CBN soap opera. What I mean is, what do you understand about the ideology that the red represent? And what do its righteous capitalist rivals say about it? More importantly, do you even bother? Or, when you took up your Social Science 2 during your early days in UP, did you see the course as just a means to lift your general weighted average? You know that the course was easy. But, did any of Karl Marx' ideals have a bearing to your current life? Or, was he a figure that you just remembered when you took the course?"
To be honest, I'm too interested with this capitalism/communism clash but I'm too lazy to blog something about it. I don't know. Maybe the issue is too deep for any of my multiply contacts to read, let alone understand. For one, how many of them really understand the layman's plight? So what do I call this--underestimation of their understanding of the issue? Or is it the apathy that they have that gives blogs like this a certain degree of futility?
The truth is, I hate the red. I hate communism because it reduces the individual to a mere sheep--a sheep to the shepherd, which is the state. I hate being a sheep. I have needs as an individual that I doubt if the state would ever understand. That probably explains why I have a capitalist inclination--they can cater to my needs, even if the capitalists sees them as just a ways for them to earn money. At least I am identified as an individual, and not a sheep to a flock for which every move I make has to be attuned to their overall direction otherwise I'll be lost. There, I have no freedom. In the world of capitalism, at least I am my own person, even if I have to struggle with my fellow dogs--self centered, greedy dogs. At least we're all dogs. The question is, can I win it? Can I survive?
I wasn't born realistically poor, I don't normally experience the poor man's struggle, but don't get me wrong. I have my own struggles, a lot of which those people from the mainstream don't understand. Sometimes, to them, their sole objective to climb their way up the hierarchy of life, but they always blame the elite for it, like they're responsible for their plight, and then the hatred arises--a catalyst for a communist ideals. Rich guy is always the bad guy. The truth is, maybe as long as we have poor people, the effects of the communist ideology will never be fully eradicated. It's the sole thing they cling to. Ironic is it then, that Karl Marx envisioned religion as an opium to the masses, but eventually, his ideals became the opium replacement--ideals that looks good on paper but fails to overlook the eventual stratification, and rise to sophistication of the constituency. And maybe, that's where a lot of my problems lie--lot of things are being overlooked, and they're being reduced to mere simple things by the state, or more specifically, some people around me who have no idea how much the commies have influenced them.
Or maybe it's the price that an individual has to pay for being assertive--the possibility of being alone, because of his self-specific needs, that the flock can no longer relate to.
 (Quote of the century: Ang di marunong magmahal sa sariling wika..........ay call center agent. LOL!)
Disclaimer: Just in case I get clobbered in this blog, I would call for Astro Boy's assist (inside joke). LOL!
A guy friend told me, "You know what Bobby, not a lot of UP students speak English." It's a very good observation on his part. Very true. Not a lot of people notice it. In theory, UP students, being branded as the intellectual elite of the country, should exercise speaking the language. The awful reality is, we don't. Well, this isn't exactly an absolute truth. Uhmmm...I did manage to use the language on some occasions during my stay there. Like...uhm...when a Korean UP student came to me and decided to practice his English. It sure gave me an opportunity to speak the language. Honestly, I would have been more enthusiastic had that person been a Korean girl. LOL! (Talking about wishful thinking. But seriously, a lot of them have invaded the campus). Surprising as it may be, shouldn't UP students already have a good grasp of the language by the time they become UP freshmen?
Think about it. The three courses (subjects) that are glaringly supported by the country's educational curriculum are: English, Science, and Math. These have always been the primary triumvirate. Everything else have always been considered a side course (subject). By the time a freshman enters UP, the neglect in English would be apparent, but the support for Math and Science continues. But consider this: looking at the institutions of the math and sciences, how come they look like they're rotting like most other U.P. buildings?
- Math Building - so so. They attempted to put air-conditioning units before to all the rooms there, but I couldn't say for certain now if all of them are already functional.
- National Institute of Physics - Let's skip this for Christ's sake.
- EEE Building - the only entity that seems to have a legitimate 3rd party support. Or maybe the College of Architecture as well, if we consider its departure to Melchor Hall as a significant achievement.
- College of Engineering - Hahahahahahahahaha!
- Chemistry, Biology Dept. - refer to my comment on NIP
Let's look at this from this perspective: You have three courses as your triumvirate. You neglected one of them, hence there are now two. Now, you'd expect these courses as the dominating ones and it should manifest, at least in the structure of the buildings that hold them.
But I guess some people have intellectualized too much and forgot to add practicality in the equation. For example, any UP Physics course is a dreaded one. It's right up there with any Engineering course. But....uhmmm....I haven't heard a lot of UP students who took up physics. Maybe because they know early on that after years of intellectualizing with the course, the employment landscape looks dim. So much for burning your brain out.
On the other hand, English, with all of its practicality, even employment-wise aside, has never been realistically implemented in the University, either essentially or realistically.
I guess it's time now bash communism, don't you think? Too much nationalism, all in the wrong context. Koreans' level of nationalism is very remarkable, hands down, but you do see a lot of them going to the country just to learn English. Well, at least they know how to put practicality in the picture.
UP's idea of nationalism, has always been tinted with leftism. Even its concept of liberalism has always been tinted with the red. And the last time I checked, the red communist countries of the past century are either dying, dead, or deader than dead. The only red country that's glaringly alive is China, and it's nowhere even close to being realistically red.
Personally though, I'm motivated to learn English for all the trivial reasons--being able to fully understand a full length movie without resorting to rewind, being able to read a book fluidly without getting a dictionary, being able to understand Victorian Era poetry without asking for Ma'am Evangelista's help (May her sould rest in peace). Well, not just those but the benefits clearly far outweighs anything that a commie from UP would tell you. With most of the courses in college that are written in this language, wouldn't it be beneficial to learn the language first, instead of letting the wall create a gap between the course and the learner just because of restricting nationalistic views?
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