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Ted
Lerner's "Hey, Joe - a slice of the city - an American in Manila
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ships within 24 hours $ 14,95 |
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Back cover text: |
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"Hey,
Joe, 'you like snake?" It's the phrase that
greets every foreign guy in the Philippines on a daily basis. And
perhaps nobody personifies the meaning of this moniker better than
Ted Lerner, an American whose popular, freewheeling column, "Hey,
Joe," appears weekly in Manila's BusinessWorld newspaper. |
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About the author:
Ted Lerner originally hails from Allentown, Pennsylvania in the USA.
He graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Communications.
He first traveled to the Philippines from his home in Hawaii on a
lark in 1991 and has lived there since 1994. His column, "Hey,
Joe" first appeared in 1995. Besides frequently being on the
road, he also does ring announcing and television commentary for professional
boxing shows. |
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Excerpt: The Price Is Right |
| Paul
Burns had had enough. He was frustrated and frazzled. And he wanted
out of the Philippines, immediately. For ten straight months this 43- year-old American had to put up with things that no man should have to put up with. He had snakes drop from the ceiling while he slept. Crazed turkeys trapped him in the bathroom. Witches visited him in the back yard. Many of his friends ended up on the dinner table. He often had to catch his own drinking water. He had not seen nor used any modern conveniences. And, oh yeah, after nearly a year of waiting, his Filipina wife still did not have her immigrant visa so she could travel with her husband to live in the United States. "I don't ever want to see rice again for as long as I live," Paul said from his small rented apartment in Las Piñas, where I found him languishing with his wife Vic-Vic. We met because my wife happened to be friends with his land lord, who lived next door. When Paul spoke of his long lost life in America, he practically started salivating. "I miss my crappy American diet. I miss my barbecued chicken cooked over the black jack oak. I miss my big refrigerator with thousands of snacks. I miss my cable TV, my aircon, the toilets that flush, all my appliances that work. I'll admit it. I'm a spoiled Westerner." The distance between his home in Jacksonville, Florida and his wife's family home in the poor farming village of Tapaz, Agusan del Sur, Mindanao is a long one, and not just in terms of miles. "When I was a kid I was a boy scout," Paul said when asked to describe Tapaz. "I liked camping. I can camp for one week, maybe two weeks. But ten months living in the wilderness? No, not for me. "Tapaz was like going back in time 150 years. When I first went there they were using bolo knives to open cans, which is dangerous, because my brother-in-law has a two-year-old daughter. So my second time back I bought them a can opener. They didn't even know what to do with the damn thing. They just sat there and looked at it. That's how far behind they are." He and his wife came to Manila because they were told they had finally, mercifully, accomplished the massive amount of paper work required in order to get her the visa. But they were misled. When I met Paul there was no end in sight. Both the United States and the Philippine government seemed to have endless demands. His life had already been put on hold for nearly a year and he was very nearly broke. "In Cuba, they were handing out US passports to any Cuban that wanted one," Paul said frustratingly. "I'm an American citizen. This is my wife. It's absolutely ridiculous." And to think this weird odyssey began with a measly two dollars and an advertisement in the back of a cheesy 20-year-old detective magazine... |
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