Tagalog Attack!

So I'm sitting here on a 95 degree Sunday afternoon and wondering what to do with myself. You may be thinking, "Britt, you're in the Philippines! Go enjoy the tropics!" That's the funny thing about it…I've discovered that living in constant, never-ending, unrelenting heat makes a South Dakota girl like me feel quite apathetic and, dare I say it, lazy. (Not to mention going outside would cause the skin to melt off my face.) To leave my apartment would require that I 1) sit up from the prone position in which I currently find myself; 2) get off the bed; 3) put on my flip flops 4) turn off my fan (don't want to waste electricity!); 5) open the door; and 6) step outside (into heat that makes the skin melt off your face). I need a nap just contemplating it. Let's be honest – even getting up to go to the bathroom takes some serious motivation. Only after I've determined with absolute certainty that it's a choice between a) getting up to go to the bathroom or b) wetting my bed do I actually get up from the prone position I am likely to be in at that point.

Anyway, I digress. The point is that I'm unwilling to attempt anything that requires me to move more than 2-3 inches vertically or horizontally from my current position. Lucky for you, dear readers, my computer was only 2.36 inches away from me, the result of which is this blog post.

I recalled a reader comment from one of my earliest posts asking that I discuss Tagalog grammar and vocabulary. And I thought, today's the day. Up until now you've been treated to humorous and light-hearted posts on baby powder and mega-spiders. You may have read my blog thinking you'd get a break from your laborious job or marathon study sessions. No more, my friends! This blog is no longer fluff that you read after finishing your US Weekly magazine or watching General Hospital. This blog is getting serious. This blog is teaching you Tagalog.

Today's blog entry is brought to you by the letter "V," for VERBS. That's right, we're taking on some conjugation. Normally I wouldn't start with this, but verbs are something I know and they don't require me to look anything up (which would mean moving from my current position, see above). Verbs in Tagalog do not have tenses like verbs in English (i.e., past, present, and future). They have aspects. In practice, these aspects (Action Begun Completed (ABC), Action Begun Not Completed (ABNC), and Action Not Begun (ANB)) match up almost exactly with English tenses. Action Begun Completed = Past; Action Begun Not Completed = Present; Action Not Begun = Future. I am told, however, the main difference lies in the usage of the present tense/aspect. Something that would be spoken of using a past tense verb in English may, in Tagalog, use the equivalent of the present tense verb. So Tagalog speakers would view as ongoing (hence, present) something that is in the past to English speakers. For example, "I lived in the United States." Because I currently live in the Philippines I would use "lived" (past tense) rather than "live" (present tense) to express my previous residence in the United States. Tagalog speakers, however, would not use their equivalent of a past tense verb to describe this. They would use their present tense (Action Begun Not Completed). Even though I am currently living in the Philippines they still view me as presently living in the United States. It's not as if I renounced my citizenship and have no intention of ever living in the US again. The action is still ongoing. Thus, Tagalog speakers would use the Action Begun Not Completed (present) verb to describe this. These are, however, pretty technical, advanced differences that the beginning Tagalog learner need not concern herself with.

The nice thing about Tagalog is that there are very clear-cut rules for verb conjugation. Generally speaking, if you know the "type" of verb, you know how to conjugate it. The difficulty is memorizing what type of verb each is. There are three main verb types: "um," "mag," and "ma" verbs. There are more than these, and the prefix can also change depending whether you're expressing directionality (pa-), position (naka-), etc. There are also different focuses (actor, object, beneficiary, locative, and instrumental), which change how the verbs are conjugated. For this blog post I will discuss only Actor Focus conjugations, mainly because Actor Focus is what I use when I speak (and I don't know the others nearly as well). Here's an example sentence, in Actor Focus: "I ate the pineapple yesterday." = "Kumain ako ng pinya kahapon."

• "kain" is the verb 'to eat.' It's an "um" verb and I'm using it in the past tense, so the conjugation is "kumain."
• "ako" means "I" and is the topic of the sentence. Here "ako" is the topic because the sentence is written in actor focus, which means the topic is the doer of the action, I (ako).
• "ng" is a non-topic marker; because the focus is on the doer, the receiver of the action (the pineapple) receives the non-topic marker 'ng.'
• "pinya" means pineapple.
• "kahapon" means yesterday.

Notice that the verb appears before the subject of the sentence. So the literal English translation is "Ate I the pineapple yesterday." Makes learning the sentence structure a little more difficult!

Below are examples and conjugations of the three main verb forms:

UM verbs:

Root Verb	Meaning	Imperative	Infinitive	ANB (future)	ABNC (present)	ABC (past)
kain	to eat	kumain	kumain	kakain	kumakain	kumain
bili	to buy	bumili	bumili	bibili	bumibili	bumili
punta	to go	pumunta	pumunta	pupunta	pumupunta	pumunta
takbo	to run	tumakbo	tumakbo	tatakbo	tumatakbo	tumakbo

MAG verbs:

Root Verb	Meaning	Imperative	Infinitive	ANB (future)	ABNC (present)	ABC (past)
basa	to read	magbasa	magbasa	magbabasa	nagbabasa	nagbasa
trabaho	to work	magtrabaho	magtrabaho	magtatrabaho	nagtatrabaho	nagtrabaho
turo	to teach	magturo	magturo	magtuturo	nagtuturo	nagturo
biyahe	to travel	magbiyahe	magbiyahe	magbibiyahe	nagbibiyahe	nagbiyahe

MA verbs:

Root Verb	Meaning	Imperative	Infinitive	ANB (future)	ABNC (present)	ABC (past)
tulog	to sleep	matulog	matulog	matutulog	natutulog	natulog
kita	to see	makita	makita	makikita	nakikita	nakita
nood	to look/view	manood	manood	manonood	nanonood	nanood
tuto	to learn	matuto	matuto	matututo	natututo	natuto

I hope this post gives you a little insight into the Tagalog language. Unfortunately the heat coming from my laptop is making me sweat, so I need to end for now. I'll try to think of another good Tagolog-related post for the future.

Green Bay Packers = Super Bowl Champions

Congratulations to the Pack on their outstanding performance in Super Bowl XLV.  I, of course, did not get to witness this great moment, despite my loyal, unqualified support through every previous disappointing season.  It's not fair.  I've seen the Pack lose.  I've felt the heartbreak of defeat.  Shouldn't I get to feel the elation of victory?!  No, apparently not.  To rectify this injustice to me, the Packers' #1 fan, I would like to invite both the Packers and the Steelers to come to the Philippines to re-enact the game, play for play, so I can experience the roller coaster of emotions that every other Packers fan got to experience the first time around.  The game will probably be played at the beach, as there are no football fields here, but we can work out the logistics once the teams arrive.  Charles and Donald - I know you're both injured, but if you can suck it up for one more game I'd really appreciate it.

Now, I've always found it a little silly that the winning Super Bowl team is called the "world champion."  As if there are hundreds of teams across the world vying for the title.  But it is technically true - of all the professional teams playing American football in the world, the Packers are the championship team.  So then my question is this: why stop at "world champion"?  Why not "universal champion"?  Or, better yet, "CHAMPIONS OF THE UNIVERSE."  Sure it means the same thing, but it sounds way cooler, and I typed it in all-caps.  So, with the authority invested in me as the Packers' #1 fan, I proudly dub the Packers CHAMPIONS OF THE UNIVERSE for Super Bowl XVL.  Congratulations, Pack.  I'll see you all soon here in the Philippines.  Don't forget to bring along a football...I don't think you can buy one here.

P.S., to all you Vikings fans out there:  Ha!  Hahaha! Hahahahahahaha! Hahahahahahahahahaha...HA...haha!

P.P.S., to Brett Favre: Ha!  Hahaha! Hahahahahahaha! Hahahahahahahahahaha...HA...haha!

Nothing says tropical paradise like a white sand beach...

For those of you who aren't my friend on Facebook (uncool!), I wanted to post a few pictures from the pre-Christmas trip I took to Patar Beach with my friend (and fellow PCV) Mary and her boyfriend Allen, who was here for a visit.  Patar Beach is a beautiful white sand beach about 3 (bus) hours west of me, on the western coast of Luzon on the South China Sea.  This was the clearest, bluest water I've seen since coming here.

The Bolinao Lighthouse

Patar Beach and the South China Sea (with Mary and Allen in the background)

And again...

Almost at the end...

Tapos na!  (Which means "finished," for those non-Filipino speakers out there.)

I love lizards!

Luckily for me spiders aren't the only things roaming around during the night.  There are little lizards here (which look like the Geico Gecko, though I'm pretty sure they're not geckos) and they are everywhere.  They're very cute and skittish, and they eat mosquitoes and other bugs (but sadly not mega-spiders), so I like them.  There's one that's taken up residence in my room, and I enjoy watching him run around the walls trying to catch bugs.  The other day I threw away a chocolate wrapper in my garbage can.  Within 5 minutes I noticed the lizard sneaking out from behind my dresser, inching his way toward the garbage can.  He finally made it there, jumped into the can, and started trying to pull the chocolate wrapper out of the can.  He couldn't get it out, so I got up to help him.  Of course he ran away and hid behind my dresser, but I got the wrapper and put it on the floor by the garbage can.  Again, within a few minutes, he was inching toward the wrapper.  Once he got to it he started to LICK it!  He was licking the chocolate off!  I had no idea that lizards like chocolate, but this one certainly does.  A lizard after my own heart.  He certainly chose the right room in which to reside. Don't believe me?  That's okay, I have evidence.

 
If you look closely at the second picture you'll see he actually has his mouth open.  You gotta appreciate a chocolate-loving lizard.

The Spider Chronicles

I've never been fond of spiders, to which my mother can attest from one particular incident when I was in elementary school (ok, FINE, I was in college) when I, crying hysterically, called her at her office because there was a gigantic spider on the wall outside my room. I could neither kill it (way too big!) nor leave it (to crawl into my room?!), so I sat on the floor staring at it – from a safe distance – until she came home and vacuumed it up (with difficulty). Yes, you read correctly, I made my mom come home from work to kill a spider. But that's not the point. I had no idea at the time, but that spider turned out to be the petite, runt cousin of the Filipino mega-spider. I believe its scientific name is biggest spriderus in the genus of murderous arachnidus.

For the first four months of my stay in the Philippines I was blissfully ignorant of the existence of such spiders. I never encountered one myself and the stories I heard from other Volunteers I discounted as mere ghost stories, told more for their dramatic effect than for the truth of their content. And then I moved to my permanent site at Sual. One week after arriving here I opened the door to the bathroom and whoosh, a spider the size of my hand launched past me (and I have big hands). I screamed and ran in the opposite direction, never taking my eyes off it, of course, in case it decided to attack. My host family thought I'd cut off one of my limbs, but upon realizing I was only afraid of the itsy bitsy spider (which, I repeat, was the size of my hand), they got a good laugh. They soon understood, however, that I wouldn't move from my spot atop the table until someone (not me) killed it. So my host sister got out a pair of salad tongs (SALAD TONGS!!) with which to grab it. After some deft maneuvering and body blocking she successfully captured the spider. What she did with it after that I can't say. When I regained consciousness, however, it was gone. I was later informed that these spiders like to hide under the lip of the toilet in the bathroom. Great. Now it takes me 10 minutes just to use the toilet, 9.5 of which are spent inspecting it for spiders.

So that was my first run-in with the Filipino mega-spider, but unfortunately not the last, nor the most traumatic. Life went on spider-free for about a month and I had successfully blocked out any memory of the "Great Spider Incident of 2010" until one night I was walking up the stairs to my bedroom and there, on the landing, was a Filipino mega-spider. Was it the same spider I had encountered previously? I know not. I never did have the courage to ask my host sister what became of the spider she captured in the salad tongs. But whether it was the same spider or a different spider was of no matter. It was out for revenge either way because 1) I had been the cause of its capture and attempted murder or, if it was a different spider, 2) I had been the cause of the capture and actual murder of its family member.

But this time I resolved not to make a scene. My host family already thought I was nuts for my previous reaction. I'm an adult. The spider is only a spider (and no, it's not poisonous, so my fear really is quite irrational in the eyes of rational people). So I made a deal with the spider: as long as it doesn't come in my room, I won't cause it to be harmed. We can co-exist peacefully together, separately. And can you believe it? This agreement actually worked. The spider would be on the landing at night, disappear during the day, and reappear on the landing by night. I would sneak quietly by on the way to my room and he would make no move to attack me. I did take precautions, however, by stuffing a shirt in the rather large opening between the bottom of my door and the floor, thereby preventing a sneak attack under the cover of darkness while I was asleep. And then he disappeared altogether. I didn't see him for about a week, so I figured he either died or ran out of small animals to consume and moved on to another house. But I was nervous…what if there's a third option? What if he was still in the house, but had changed location? What if his new location was…dare I think it…my room? Another week went by and I still didn't see him, so I was lulled into a sense of security. Besides, he knew our agreement. Out of sight, out of mind, right?! Wrong. Of course the minute I let down my guard he appears on the wall ABOVE MY BED. In my room. I didn't know what to do. It was 10:00 PM and the spider and I were the only ones awake (which I'm sure was his plan). Luckily my bed was safely enclosed by my mosquito net, so I stealthily climbed in. This was my only protection from the blood-lust of the mega-spider, but it would have to be enough for the night. The expression "sleeping with one eye open" was never truer than it was that night. The next morning I awoke and was glad to find all my fingers and toes intact and no evidence of fang marks. My force field…um, I mean, my mosquito net…had done the job. But I'd had it. The next night, when he appeared again at a more reasonable hour, I summoned my host sister with her salad tongs. After some impressive avoidance on the spider's part, she captured him. (Of course I helped by running around my room shrieking.) He'd broken our agreement, and he paid the price. Sorry, mega-spider.

I'd like to think that is the last mega-spider I'll ever see (denial ain't just a river in Egypt, after all). For now I'm secure in knowing that my room is spider-free. I guess that's the most I can hope for in a tropical, spider-friendly climate!

Update: Since completing this post a week ago I have thrice showered with a mega-spider. The end result was me drowning it with water (which didn't kill it), smashing it with my flip flop (which didn't kill it), smashing it with my shampoo bottle (which didn't kill it), and finally forcing it down the drain (which hopefully killed it, but who knows). I think the fact that I was willing to kill it myself shows real growth. Who knows, by the end of my two years here I may have a pet mega-spider named Fluffy.