Philippines

PocketCultures world tour: best of 2011

Happy New Year! Our roundup of 2011 begins with a reminder that 1st January is not the beginning of a new year throughout the world. Carla wrote that Brazilians consider the year to start after February’s carnival, and Anu wrote about new year celebrations which take place at different times in different parts of India. Of course many parts of the world do celebrate the start of the New Year on January 1st, and Sandra’s post explained all about new year celebrations in Portugal.

Bolo Rei – part of the New Year celebrations in Portugal. Credit.

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Hand gestures from around the world

Hand gestures play an essential role in nonverbal communication. However, the same gesture may have different meanings -or even none- in different cultures. This collaborative post is an effort to bridge that gap.

India – Namaste

Namaste (India)

Namaste literally means “I bow down to you”, or “Salutations to you”, but it is used in the sense a handshake is used in the western world. For us, no matter whether the person we greet is older or younger, important or not, a man or a woman, he/she has to be greeted with due respect, and the most common way is to join our hands as you can see my son doing in the image, and say, “Namaste”.  When we are greeting an older person or someone important, we bow down a bit. This shows the additional respect due to that person. (more…)

Loving Knickknacks = Loving Anik-Anik

Language is dynamic and it tends to be true when the word ‘knickknack’ takes a form more appealing to Filipino ears. We have a word for that and it’s ‘anik-anik’, the stuff that we hold near and dear.

All of us, in one way or another, had a personal collection. It could be of stamps, toys, books, bottle caps, comics, insects, photos, paintings and even Care Bears.

It’s said that our favorite things can inspire or reflect what we think or prefer. It’s no longer about showing your friends to reveal yourself to others. It’s now: “Show me your ‘anik-anik’ and I’ll tell you who you are.”

With that, ask Filipino artists, directors, writers, designers and even an ice cream maker to show their Batcave/laboratory and one would come up with a truly unique blog: anik-anik love, a feature on creative spaces of talented Filipinos.

Illustrator Apol Sta. Maria and his wall.

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Best of of 2010: a world tour in twenty-three posts

We’d like to say goodbye to 2010 wıth a world tour of favourite posts from each of our contributors. Here they are, in the order in which each one celebrates midnight. Happy New Year!

Marie (New Zealand): The New Zealand Dairy

“Where would Kiwis be without the local dairy? Certainly situations such as running out of the milk needed for the perfect cup of tea or not having enough snacks to share while watching a film on TV could get quite hairy.”

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ManilArt Scene

Paintings speak a universal language. The painter has this duty/burden/pleasure to express himself to his audience. For many years, Filipino artists have shown their remarkable skill through this medium. Our experiences as a people are reflected through their works and they serve as an inspiration for this generation to take it a notch higher.

The most notable painter who gained international recognition was Juan Luna. His work, the Spoliarium, won the gold medal in the 1884 Madrid Exposition of Fine Arts.

The Spoliarium by Juan Luna y Novicio.

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Kumusta? and other Filipino greetings

After talking about greetings around the world with our friends in PocketCultures, I would like to give a more detailed answer to this question:

The first thing one needs to know about language in the Philippines is that we have lots of them. We’re an archipelago of different cultural communities with various languages and dialects (not to mention foreign influences that enriched our languages). English is widely spoken here and we also have the vernacular Filipino with Tagalog as its base. Up to this day, this has become an issue to some who belong in other ethno-linguistic groups. It deserves a separate post.

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