| 22
July 2003
 'Pahabol'
IT couldn't be a deadlier combination:
Filipino passengers and their cellular phones on a Lufthansa flight.
As many readers know, cell phones are supposed to be shut off during a
flight because they might interfere with navigation equipment. On
Lufthansa flights, even while the planes are on the ground, the flight
attendants go around the cabins requesting passengers to shut off their
cell phones.
On two flights I had on Lufthansa, I happened to be seated next to
Filipinos who were madly dashing off text messages on their cell phones
as the stewardesses made their rounds. The stewardesses were firm but
gentle, "Sir, turn off your mobile phones, please."
Both times, my seatmates continued text messages while muttering
something like "Wait a minute, ma'm. One more." Both times I
saw my seatmates dashing off not "one more" but several
messages, much to the annoyance of the German stewardesses, who would
return and find the passenger still working on "one more"
message.
With one of the passengers, the stewardess actually stood by waiting for
my seatmate to turn off his phone but no, he just kept going while the
stewardess kept up with her warnings, less gently with each succeeding
request, "Shut it off, sir." Mr. Texter was oblivious and
continued to send text messages. The stewardesses finally went off in a
huff and brought back someone who looked like a pilot, at which point
the passenger finally turned off the phone, but muttering something
about the stewardess being unreasonable. After all, all he wanted was
"one more" message.
There's "pahabol" for you, loosely translated as "Let me
catch up." Pahabol takes many variations, sometimes amusing,
sometimes most annoying, depending on the situation.
When we write letters, instead of doing a P.S. (postscript) as
Westerners do, we add pahabol, afterthoughts, which is fine, similar to
the meaning of P.S.: a postscript.
But our pahabol goes beyond a postscript in many cases. Pahabol is often
related to having lagged behind with tasks -- missing deadlines for
example -- and then negotiating, using the "pa" suffix to make
the word a request, sort of asking someone, "Please allow me to go
beyond the deadline."
All kinds of business ventures thrive on, and perpetuate, the pahabol
syndrome. There are the neighborhood variety stores and their modern
equivalents like 7 Eleven, open all hours of the day, all days of the
week, allowing you to buy the things you had postponed buying.
Smokers can run out of cigarettes at midnight and dash out to get new
packs, probably without walking more than a few blocks. Same thing if
you wake up famished at midnight and find out you have nothing at home
to eat -- there are the stores, even some restaurants, open.
Our informal economy is especially dependent on pahabol. With cheap
labor and low or no rental costs, hundreds and thousands of vendors can
ply their trade at all hours of the day, all days of the week. Let's not
forget the vendors who weave in and out of traffic lanes selling what
you should have bought earlier from a store. It used to be just candies,
cigarettes and newspapers but pahabol has caught up with the times. Are
you stuck in traffic in the middle of Katipunan Avenue in Quezon City
and find yourself starving, but with no food in the car? Don't worry,
there are vendors selling food, like peanuts kept warm with portable gas
burners.
Late for your appointment? Horrors, you realize your cell phone is dead
because you forgot to charge it. Never mind, pahabol, there's a vendor
selling cheap fake Nokia chargers.
On the way home, you realize you forgot it's your partner's birthday or
your wedding anniversary? Yup, the cigarette vendors sell roses, too.
Transport the Filipino smoker to a Western country and he will find
pahabol can be disastrous. When I was a student in the Netherlands many
years ago, stores used to close promptly at 5 p.m. every day except on
Thursday, when they'd stay open till 9 p.m. On Sundays most commercial
establishments were closed. You had to plan your life carefully,
scheduling groceries right after work or classes, or run the risk of
finding yourself without food over a weekend.
Here in the Philippines, the neighborhood variety stores and street
vendors assure us we can always get something at the last minute, which
means we end up not having any sense of a last minute. Time is
negotiable, stretchable, because of pahabol, spinning off many other
ways to manipulate time. Thus, we see the pahabol of pedestrians, making
a mad dash across the street, and of motorists trying to beat a red
light.
We are not alone when it comes to this playing with time. The
Indonesians have "jam karet" (literally, rubber time) and are
even more cavalier about punctuality than we are, people strolling in an
hour after an appointed time without too much ado. Our pahabol has an
element of an apology -- living up to the word, we try to look like
we're catching our breath, a way of saying, "I did try to make it
on time but..."
Sadly, pahabol always involves haste, and so the work output is often
inferior or mediocre. Perhaps in a rural agrarian setting, pahabol and
jam karet are acceptable but in the 21st century, the demands of life --
from getting newspapers off the presses each day, to saving the lives of
patients in hospitals -- depend on getting things done within deadlines,
with more time to spare.
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