Ang Peregrino Recommends 31: Yabang Pinoy

Yabang Pinoy
URL: http://​www​.yabang​pinoy​.com

From The Yabang Pinoy Website

Yabang is the Fil­ipino word for PRIDE. And Yabang Pinoy is about get­ting our pride back. It was founded by a group of Fil­ipinos who real­ized that one of the biggest prob­lems faced by the Philip­pines today is Fil­ipinos not believ­ing enough in their nation­al­ity. The goal of the “Yabang Pinoy” cam­paign is to unite the Fil­ipino peo­ple in believ­ing in them­selves and in fel­low Fil­ipinos. And I think this is such a timely goal con­sid­er­ing the myr­iad of things that have damp­ened our spirit about our coun­try the past few months.

Our pol­i­tics have given us infamy (we’ve been named one of the Most Cor­rupt Coun­try in the world)—and Bil­lions in debt. Our sports pro­grams are in shambles—our bright­est hope to win a gold in the Olympics, boxer Harry Tanamor, was humil­i­ated in the first round. We also lost in tae kwon do–both in the first round. And whether we make a spin of it and say we fought well, the fact of the mat­ter is that we lost! We also had rebel Mus­lim groups attack our towns and cities in the last cou­ple of weeks partly because of a botched Peace Process, but also because there will never be last­ing peace with­out a bet­ter qual­ity of life for everybody.

And yet there are still a lot to be happy about and thank­ful for. Manny Pac­quiao con­tin­ues to bring us pride—and 0 crime—every time he fights. Our stu­dents have won numer­ous inter­na­tional awards,like the World Cyber Games Asian finals, or the Inter­na­tional Math Olympiad. Arnel Pineda is doing us proud in the inter­na­tional music scene for lead­ing the band JOURNEY.

Yabang Pinoy wants us to remem­ber that, and inter­nal­ize it, and feel it in our bones and let it flow in our blood, and shout it to the world. Call it a cool rev­o­lu­tion, a cool Pinoy rev­o­lu­tion. Wear the band and raise your fists in the air, not to over­throw, but to uplift.

Just think about it. What would the world be with­out Fil­ipinos? It’s a kind of men­tal game that I love to play myself. Pamela Ayson puts it this way: “It’s prob­a­bly a bit dif­fer­ent. No, come on, exam­ine and really imag­ine what it’s like for a world to exist with­out us balut-eating species. For sure it would be a sur­prise for you and you’ll real­ize that it’s com­pletely different.

If there were no Pinoys, the Karaoke that was invented by Roberto del Rosario, will not exist. On a more seri­ous note, if Fe del Mundo wasn’t born, stud­ies that con­tributed to the inven­tion of the incu­ba­tor would not have sur­faced. Mil­lions and mil­lions of babies would have had dif­fi­culty fight­ing for their lives if not for that piece of equipment.”

Or maybe it is that beautiful–albeit its urban legend-status– answer of Pre­cious Lara Quiga­man (Miss Inter­na­tional 2005) to the ques­tion: What do you say to the peo­ple of the world who have type­casted Fil­ipinos as nan­nies? Her answer was sup­posed to have been:

“I take no offense on being type­casted as a nanny. But i do take offense that the edu­cated peo­ple of the world have some­how den­i­grated the true sense and mean­ing of what a nanny is.”

“Let me tell you what she is. She is some­one who gives more than she takes. She is some­one you trust to look after the very peo­ple most pre­cious to you — your child, the elderly, your­self. She is the one who has made a liv­ing out of car­ing and lov­ing other people.”

“So to those who have type­casted us as nan­nies, thank you. It is a tes­ta­ment to the lov­ing and car­ing cul­ture of the Fil­ipino peo­ple. And for that, I am for­ever proud and grate­ful of my roots and culture.”

Sayang that this whole episode is not true. But this is still a great Ms. Uni­verse answer, right?

For help­ing us get back our pride as Fil­ipinos, for insist­ing that there are a lot of things to be proud about, and that if we just find our pride, we can get our groove back, AngPere­grino Rec­om­mends Yabang Pinoy this week.