SYNCHRONICITY
There's this odd habit of Filipinos that a couple of German guests brought to my attention last March. How is it, they asked, that watches here are faster by 15 to 30 minutes?
Trust in the time-conscious Germans to check their watch against the clock at the Mactan airport upon their arrival, then again at their hotel lobby upon checking in, and finally tuning in to the cable TV in their room. "We thought at first that our watches were wrong," my guests said, "until we checked it against CNN." But in our local radio and TV stations, and with everybody else and every where, they were late.
Nonsense, I reassured them, haven't you heard of Filipino time? "It's usually 30 minutes to an hour late," I explained, "so if I set my watch 30 minutes ahead, then I will be on time or at the most only 30 minutes late for an appointment." They nodded their heads in understanding but their bewildered expression reminded me of a similar conversation with an American friend. He pointed out, "if you know your watch is 30 minutes faster what's the point?"
And how is it that our radio and TV stations have different times? Another question from the Yankee, "If you set your watch against this radio station and this other guy sets it with a TV station which has a different time and you agree to meet at a certain time -- you will miss each other." Speaking from experience, he had a date with a fellow American whose watch was 15 minutes faster and left after waiting for 10 minutes. "That would never happen between Filipinos," I told him. Why can't we just follow CNN time? "It's no big deal, we give everybody a 30-minute allowance." See, Filipino time = one hour late = 30 minutes advance in watch + 30 minutes waiting/allowance time.
Group dates is always a hassle, what with everybody waiting for somebody. No surprise that people are always checking up each other's watches before agreeing to a rendezvous. When people go to the mall as a group it often calls for a game plan to organize and thus make the most of everybody's time. Somebody wants to shop for groceries, another one wants to buy some office supplies, and the rest want to check the sale at the ground floor. No problem, we'll reassemble at this place in an hour. Get it? We don't say 7:30 p.m. if we can help it, we say in one hour or in two hours so it doesn't matter if our watches don't agree. Even better if the rendezvous point is a restaurant because then people can relax and start ordering or eating while waiting.
Thank heavens for pagers and cellular phones, these also reduce those anxious moments of waiting and wondering if and when our dates will show up. Otherwise, as soon as the 30 minutes are up, people move on and that would be it. Or as one irate Surigaonon told his Tagalog date: "Kanina pa ako hintay na'ng hintay sa 'yo, dyamo kung may dumating ..."
In our family we have an uncanny ability of finding each other in crowded places without the benefit of a pre-arranged rendezvous time and place. We just know when and where to regroup.
Of course, it helps a lot that we also know each other too well. That dad can only be in three places: the magazine store, the stereo outlet, or records and video shops. By a logical process of elimination, if my brothers are dragging his hand, I know they will be at the men's wear or shoes departments. With mom, if dad is around to foot the bill she leads him straight to the hardware or electronic shops. If she's by herself, she'd be at the fruit and vegetable section for her salad diet, or at the bags and shoes department.
Going to different movies has been simplified with malls having four or more theaters. And complicated, too, because our family like to watch different films with different screening time. That would be about a dozen people with aunts, uncles and cousins constrained by those age classifications. We appreciate it that there are now benches outside the theaters to solve this problem.
Likewise, there are now more and more "day-care centers" around the mall to make the waiting game more productive and that one-hour late Filipino time fly away. Before these coffee "shops" sprouted like mushrooms in the hallways, many husbands and boyfriends whiled their time waiting for their women and children, browsing at record stores, bookshops, and hardware and electronic shops.
So who cares if our watches don't agree? Back to my German guests, I told them I will pick them at the hotel lobby at 10:00 a.m. the next day for their city tour. I got there 30 minutes early and they were not ready until 10:30. They caught on fast.
November 3, 1998