I Thought The South Had Prepared Me

Before coming to the Philippines, I was told to expect very polite service everywhere I went.  And I figured that living in South Carolina had effectively prepared me for that.  All the "sir" and "ma'am" everywhere, all the friendliness, etc.  But no.  This place is... different.

Everybody is extremely friendly.  I defy you to walk into or out of a building in Manila without someone holding the door for you and saying "good morning" or "good afternoon."  It can't be done.  And then there's the people behind the counter at the fast food places, grocery stores, etc.  Exceedingly polite and service-focused.  Like I said before, as an American I'm simply not accustomed to this.  It actually feels patronizing and uncomfortable to me.

I'm sure that says something about American culture.  But we're not here to talk about American culture.  We're here to talk about these weird foreigners.

I walked out of the office to go grab something to eat a few moments ago, and this allowed me to walk the streets and the underpasses during a much busier time.  Perhaps even the evening rush, though it wasn't too crowded.  There was one thing I did notice about the traffic through the underpasses, though.  See, the underpasses have escalators, but only for ascending to the street.  That is, there are no down escalators.  Only up escalators and stairs.  So, naturally, you take the stairs down and the escalator up.  Makes sense, right?

Note also that the stairs are very wide, while the escalators are comparatively narrow.  (Perhaps two thin people could pass one another, but most people can't.)  And you know what I noticed?  Everybody was taking the escalators.  They'd rather wait and stand around and be carried up a flight of steps than just simply take the stairs.  That made me smile, actually.  You see, I'd always thought that sort of thing was a very American habit.  I'd thought that we had some kind of exclusive rights to laziness.  But it turns out we don't.

(In fact, after seeing how much fast food there is here, and there is a lot of it, we Americans don't really have an exclusive hold on any unhealthy behaviors.  Suck it, Michelle Obama.)

Well, maybe that's not entirely fair.  While there are fast food restaurants every 20 feet here (meters?  what's a meter?  aren't those the things you pay for parking?), I still need to get used to the diminutive portions.  Things are just so much smaller here.  Even the napkins from the napkin dispenser are such pitiful little things.  So I need to get back in the habit of asking for the largest sizes available when ordering food.  A habit I've spent much effort trying to break back home.  In fact, I may just have to order multiple meals.

Perhaps I can try to pretend that every visit to a fast food restaurant here is like a visit to Sonic.  (For those who don't know, when I go to Sonic I can never decide what to get.  I want everything.  I'm physically incapable of spending less than $15 at Sonic on even my most conservative visits.)  There's no such thing as too much.  And if I do somehow manage to get too much, I have a fridge at the hotel.

It's a lesson I need to learn while I'm here and then forget when I return, I suppose.  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have 8 grams of food to eat and 2 milliliters of soda to drink.  I wonder if this building has vending machines, actually.  Because I've been amassing a collection of coins whose value is entirely unknown to me.