What is your perception of the Philippines?

disasters every some often 100 million people living mostly in poverty…volcano’s, floods, earthquakes and storms.

I have a handful of wonderful (internet) friends from the Philippines. So my only perception is that some nice people live there. I suppose that applies to any place, though.

I know some filippinos. The ones I know are all great people. I don’t know much about the country.

I have never, to my knowledge, met anyone from the Philippines. All I really know is that it’s a country with a great deal of poverty.

I must confess that I know very little about the Philippines. My impression, I guess, is that it’s a country that more or less goes about its own business without antagonizing anyone, though the country is very protective of its citizens. A person who wants to work in a nearby country needs to secure some sort of payment from their foreign employer, as I recall, and the country is very populous with a lot of people employed elsewhere in this way.

I only know one person from the Philippines, and she is just about the nicest person I’ve ever met. She also seems very passive about the various natural disasters that seem to occur, by which I mean she doesn’t worry about them as much as I worry about them on her behalf. I have no idea if she is representative of the population at large, though.

My paternal grandfater was pinoy. I’ve never been, but I’ve been strengthening my knowledge of the islands for a while now. Coming specifically from the framework of an anti-authoritarian and indigenist activist, I’m really saddened at the continued neo-colonialism there, and the struggle of the Palawan people against destructive and illegal mining operations in their homes. But I’ve been inspired lately at the small cultural rennaissance that seems centered around re-establishing traditional tattoo practices, which seems tied to some great “revolutionary” elements, though those seem mostly to be in the diaspora.

It seems to me that the Philippines export some really smart technical folks.
I have a large number of colleagues who are originally from the Philippines and they fantastic computer software programmers – hard working and fun to work with. Many of my customers outsource their IT departments to Manila-based tech firms as well.

It also seems to me that a large number of folks from the Philippines go abroad to work.. when I was in Dubai every waiter or waitress was from there (which was handy for me because I was traveling with two colleagues who spoke Tagalog and we got the BEST meals!)...and same thing with the people running the hotels in UAE…and they represent a large segment of the workforce in Japan, too.

I was surprised to learn how much ethnic diversity there is in the Philippines—I was unaware of this until my dear friend explained to me why she had a Chinese last (family) name and was ethnically Chinese but her family had been in the Philippines for 3 generations…and then she sent me on a web search to learn about the other indigenous groups.

Because of people I know from the Philippines, I think of it as a tropical place with very kind and helpful people . The politics of the place don’t change the basic humanness of the people. And I love pancit and lumpia!

The Nestly Boycott campaign and baby milk action focus a lot of their time in the phillipines.

Not much. My info suggests that it’s been pretty quiet (comparatively) over there since the 1940s. Not a terribly wealthy nation, but I haven’t seen it featured in those “for the cost of a cup of coffee you could change Person X’s life” ads, so it doesn’t seem too terribly poor, either. News (or, rather, the general lack of it) suggests that things are fairly stable in terms of government and society. There seem to be faint traces of either Portuguese or else Spanish influence in my data. Personal experience says that a lot of housekeeping positions in Italy are filled by Filipinos, to the point that “Filipino” is nearly synonymous with the more official “collaboratore familiare.”
I am curious as to whether or not being situated on a number of islands has affected the structure of the government. Is each island its own administrative subdivision, akin to cities/counties/states/regions?