• Jodythinks,  Love/Life,  Work

    Today’s pet peeve: Filipino time

    I hate the notion of Filipino time, and the expectation that it’s okay to be hours late to a social gathering, or meeting a person. I am not one of those people who can just show up at my own leisure to something I know started at a certain time. It’s demeaning and disappointing that the “Filipino time” concept is an acceptable, even expected in our culture. Why set a time when no one will be there? I have actually set fake times, 2 hours early sometimes for things, and people still show up three hours later. I know of people putting fake times at their wedding invitations because they know that…

  • Jodythinks

    There’s a funny thing about touch

    A thought came over me today, as I was hugging a colleague goodbye. Touch. We as a culture, are very careful about it. We’re not a touching culture. Shaking hands, hugging, are foreign concepts to us, that we took on when we absorbed other cultures and became more global. And I get it. We’re very conservative. The Catholic roots, the idea of propriety and the horror of a misconstrued gesture. Of jealous husbands or wives seeing their significant other with their arm around a friend and thinking there must be something funny going on. Even standing too close can be the start of an argument, since it’s not just their…