Philippines Books

When Tampo slaps you around the chops there is not a great deal you can do about it at fist. You have to let it run its course for a while so the Tampo-er gets some value out of the exercise. Start trying to make amends too soon and you will only prolong the agony. Leave it too long and you might just burn your bridges forever.

The Filipina is a very temperamental creature as any who have one will attest. You will never be spot on, afterall she is a woman first and foremost and Man will never understand Woman. If that day should ever come the entire DNA and Genomes of the female of the species will alter as if by some cosmic signal. You will never win, OK?

So how do you lose less? First of all do not rejoice with the coming of tampo. It is not an excuse to hit the golf course or go fishing. You must remain within icy stare range so you can not only suffer, but be seen to be suffering. No point stamping feet and slamming doors if you are not there to witness that.

Always keep in mind two things, and these two things are worth a great deal. In fact they are so important I can not charge for them, I must share them with all mankind if only to rack up the Brownie Points necessary to assure me of my passage to the promised land or wherever one goes ‘Post Pinay’.

1. This Too Shall Pass – Never lose sight of the fact this will end one day. It may not end as you want it to but it will end. Try not to lose sight of this and blow your stack. Do not trivialize the actions or inaction you are responsible for that brought this tampo upon you. The reasons for this are included in the second vital point:

2. Remorse Must Not Only Be Felt, It Must Be Seen To Be Felt – Filipinas are drama queens. They believe in the ‘show – don’t tell’ mantra. You must not only feel remorseful you must show it. We men would call it overacting, hamming it up. Filipinas call it necessary behaviour. Especially so if anyone else has seen she is upset and you are the cause. It is now of national importance that you are seen to be apologizing to her.

Be very aware of your facial expressions and body language. Filipinas misinterpret so many of our words and apply them only at the extreme end of the register. ‘Arrogant’ is one of these. You will be considered arrogant if you don’t fawn sufficiently. Even if you feel it demeans you, it doesn’t. Not in their minds. They have very different ideas of what constitutes appropriate behaviour (amor propiyo) To the Filipino, being ‘arrogant’ means so much more than it might to us. It is a slap in the face of those you feel you are superior to.

Being ‘arrogant’ is difficult for us to avoid as we do not know the subtle indicators of humility the Filipino grows up with. They laugh and giggle when they are embarrassed and everyone knows it means they are embarrassed, not rude or couldn’t care less. Yet we foreigners think they are not treating the situation with sufficient gravity. We look people in the eye when we apologise yet we should cast our eyes downwards in shame and so on.

There are many other lessons to be learnt about dealing with the Filipina and hopefully we can include most of them here in future articles. Keep checking back or buy an eBook!