OF DINERS and BLEEDING HEARTS

When traveling abroad, should we be converting the cost of food to pesos? This is a constant debate that I have had with fellow Filipinos traveling abroad because we, ordinary mortals, get very violated disbursing foreign currencies and computing the equivalent in Philippine pesos. Our peso has really devalued over the years. One US dollar now is 48 times our one peso. The Great Britain Pound (GBP) is now 78 times our peso. The Euro is now 68 times over our peso. If the one million dinner worth at Le Cirque, New York were had in the early sixties, the peso equivalent would have been just P40,000 or if it happened in 1981, the cost would have been just 7 times over or P140, 000. Of course, in 1981, the average wage in the Philippines was about a thousand pesos a month or so. So, we, the bleeding hearts who are in solidarity and working with the poor really regard a million peso worth of dinner for 15 or 50 people as too much, anytime and anywhere under Philippine circumstances.

In the sixties, I read one such lavish party hosted by the patriarch Eugenio Lopez ( the scions have the same names plus Roman numerals.) It was the time when Fernando Lopez was the Vice President and the President was Ferdinand Marcos). That dinner party picture is still very vivid to me and it landed in the front pages of national newspapers, too, because champagne looked like it was flowing from a fountain that seemed to spring from a large pool in the garden. The news writers, then, quoted a provision in the Civil Code, “ Article 25. Thoughtless extravagance in expenses for pleasure or display during a period of acute public want or emergency may be stopped by order of the courts at the instance of any government or private charitable institution.”

A few weeks ago, while in England, I was invited to a working dinner in a not so expensive Italian restaurant and the fish meal was GBP 18 or Pesos 1,404. My total meal ( salad, fish and drinks) was Pesos 2,418. So, I thought to myself that the cost of my dinner is about one week’s work wage of the average worker in the Philippines now. As I was hoarding my pounds sterling so I could better spend them in the Philippines, my next meals, if it were to be paid by me, consisted of fish and chips and the like at GBP 5 or Php 390. One zone ride in the underground tube train is about Php 300. There are ways of saving though such as one day/one week train tickets or return tickets ( round trip tickets are cheaper than one way tickets because labor or service is expensive) To see a musical or a play at West End London ( where Miss Saigon was shown) costs more or less P10,000. So, I did not buy anything at all, except GBP 50 worth of seeds ( of summer plants) for planting in Bandera, the summer capital of the Island Garden City of Samal.

While entering the nurses’ lobby of a big hospital in London, I felt like I was in a Philippine hospital because almost all the allied medical professionals were Filipinos and the language was Filipino ( Tagalog & Binisaya). The drift of the conversation was about where their recent holidays were and when the next holidays will be and where. I said to myself that either they were missing home so much or most of them were just working for the wages that thoughts of holidays are a respite from the monotony of tasks in a workplace that is far from one’s homeland. So, our economy is still afloat because of these hard earned foreign currency that our fellow Filipinos get from working abroad. Never mind, that they are not able to dine in cost prohibitive fancy restaurants abroad because the bulk of their income is sent home so that their loved ones in the Philippines can keep body and soul together.