By Joel B. Belinan
Last week I focused on the impact of the advances in information technology to our mass media in general. Let us however look at how simple things in our lives 30 or 50 years (and even beyond) ago and the way these are being done now. One of the most memorable stories that my elder brothers and most of those Igorots who grew up in the villages in Mtn. Province were about their lives in the “dap-ay”.
When young boys as early as seven years old slept in the village “da-ay” or boys dorm (for the lack of a better English term) where they were made to do simple tasks such as gathering fire wood and keeping the fire burning at night, or getting up to build one at dawn. It is in the “dap-ay” (as called in western Mtn. Prov. or Ator in Bontoc and Sadanga) where young Mtn. Province boys learn to do massage and “kulkulis or dagdagay” (foot massage using sticks) to the elder guys or men. They would also be hearing village elders discuss community-related matters or age-old stories that formed part of the history of the ili or village. Those early years of exposure to the elders surely shaped the character of these young boys who later grew up and became the elders of their respective communities.
I grew up in Tabuk Kalinga, a homestead area and thus I have not experienced life in the “dap-ay” because my parents migrated there in search of greener pasture. Having grown up in a farming town in Tabuk, I do not have much night life to remember except when the weather was good and the bright moon allowed us kids to play on the dirt roads before midnight. Early morning tasks were bringing the carabaos to a grassy area and tending to the family backyard animals before our breakfast, and then rushing to school. By the way, we had to walk a five kilometer distance to get to school. Yes, there were a few tricycles but we always didn’t have enough coins for fare.
Nowadays as people are now concentrated in the cities and urban centers, young boys as late as 10 years old still choose to sleep in their parents’ bed. And as simple as waking up (due to almost overnight playing with their gadgets) in time for their classes is always a daily argument with their elders. Instead of listening to stories from elders every night, children mostly spend their time before bed playing games, browsing the net, or just chatting with someone who is far away.
Compared to how kids go to school now who have to either use the school service to ferry them to and from school or, to the more affluent, being sent using their cars driven by their elders or family drivers. Most, however, utilize the public utility vehicles (taxi and jeepneys) accompanied by their guardians to and from their schools. I am referring here to the pre-pandemic times when classes were done face to face. I am hoping that we would go back to those normal times soon.
One of the biggest signs of change is in the field of transportation. Ppeople of my generation and those who came before us and who have experienced walking for hours to go to school and other destinations can better relate to this. Now, people seem to abhor walking even a short distance which might have been brought about by the overwhelming number of PUVs (public utility vehicles) and, to the more affluent families, having several private cars that can ferry them to their destinations.
To many, it’s for their lives convenience. Unknowingly this brought negative results such as the traffic congestion that every urban center and city is facing nowadays, air pollution and vehicular accidents not to mention health-related issues that have become a major problem. Note that we are not saying we should go back to the days when carts drawn by cows or horses were the means of transport.
The biggest leap in the transportation system now is air travel. Traveling by air since the advent of passenger planes has gone a long way. Even 30 years ago when I first started traveling to other countries as demanded by our duty as a social worker of a global organization. Those years, although supersonic jets were already in production, the cost of air tickets were very high. I remember my first air ticket for a Manila-Singapore (3hrs and 25 minutes flight) and back was US$ 385 which is at least more or less P18, 000 at the current rate (PAL economy class) and if you want the better Singapore airline or those European owned ones, you had to add more. In short, it was luxury to travel for pleasure at that time.
When the SARS Covid-1 came on the early part of this millennium (2003-2004), it paved the way for the so-called budget airlines that offered much cheaper fares than the major airlines. The SARs crisis discouraged people all over the world from travelling abroad and the airline industry thought that offering cheaper air tickets would hasten the people’s interest to travel again. The budget airlines are subsidiaries of the big airline companies. So that nowadays (before this pandemic), even ordinary folks could easily hop into a plane for a long weekend tour in other countries especially in our neighbors. This in a way has expanded our horizons and led to our appreciating our neighboring South East Asian people. Remember that while we are in South East Asia, Filipinos in the past were more aware of the events happening in faraway America or Europe than those in Thailand, Malaysia, or in our other neighboring countries. Our country is an island that has no land border with our neighbors and thus we had limited contacts with them, but our colonial mentality was the main culprit for our being alien with our brother SE Asians.
In the banking system, much have changed, and being a guy with no bank account to call my own, I am almost ignorant about banking processes and so let us discuss that among many other modern life changes in the future. **
