little brown man

Little brown man 
This is the song that I quoted in the dedication part
of my dissertation about labor migration...
I first heard this from Joey Ayala
and it has haunted me since then.
I have her sidekick/pretty friend/fellow musician
Tapati to thank for for  this lyrics and chords :)


Intro: D-C-Bm-C-D-Am-G-D-C-Bm-E-G-D-A

I

D             C                                 Bm       C
glad to know you’re feeling better
D                Am                                       G
happy to hear you’ve found your mind
D            C                                    Bm  E
it’s no joke to be living in america
                     G                              D  A
she ain’t friendly to our kind

II

D                       C                                Bm     C
you’ll always be a second-class citizen
D                   Am                      G
even if you pay your taxes right on time
D                              C                           Bm     E
you struggled so hard to get that green card
                 G
working under the table
               Em                                      A   D
calling home when you’re able to

Refrain

G                      C                                       A        D
little brown man in the land of the giants
G                      C                                         A      D
little brown woman on the white prairie
G                            D                                        C    
hold on to your dollars don’t go on no shopping spree
                     G              Em                 A  
you got to save it all for the family

III = I
everything’s disposable in the first world
nothing’s indispensable - you can throw it all away
good food in the garbage good people in the welfare line
it happens all the time

IV = II

peaches and apples and grapes don’t make it all that easy
bacon and eggs everyday can get to be a drag
these fancy slums get cold when the winter comes
chills you right to the bone
and you wish you were home

Refrain x 2

D               G   /F#      Em    /D  C A      
you got to save your soul
                   D-C-Bm-C-D
for the family

life...is what we make it II

There were many times that my father was ‘absentee’ because of his work,
and then he was ‘deceased’ and it somehow didn’t matter to me anymore.
I knew that as the eldest, I have to be my mother’s assistant,
even a partner in taking care of my siblings and make sure our house is a home-
be it an extension of someone’s garage, a shanty by the ‘riles’ or
a room of a house of a relative. There were happy times, yes.
And we are truly a family, my mother and I made sure of that.
Despite the hardships, we excelled in school.
We were popular because we didn’t allow others to look down on us
and we proved that we didn’t have to be rich to be so.

As a family, we were a strange band of characters-- in the 80’s,
my mother and the three of us, in the 90’s ‘minus’ my sister
who died of leukaemia and another sister who was away from us for 10 years
but then it’s also ‘plus’ a new sister and two brothers
from my mother’s second marriage. We went through life sharing a lot- ideas,
school supplies, socks, toothpaste (even bath towels at times),
coveting one another's desserts, borrowing money, reading each other’s diaries,
inflicting pain and kissing to heal it in the same instant, loving, laughing, defending,
and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together…
and that common thread is my mother or the love for her.

Family (of origin) shaped my life in one way or another- who I am now
(and I have my own family), how I act, and how I keep my values,
and especially how I formed my identity. I have to form my own identity
besides the pre-wired identity that my family built because I realized that
I cannot depend on that (there were times I do not know what I want to be,
but I am quite sure of what I don’t want to be so I take it from there).

I remember some seven years ago, a girl called and told me that her dying father
is my father too, and that I have to give my forgiveness so that he would die in peace.
Fast forward, no one knows yet if this was true but I had another family added on my list.
Here, I was exposed to stories of how ‘this father’ was and how I came to observe
that we share a lot of commonalities and this made me wish I have met them
(he and his family) before he died. My choices and priorities now
are based on what I wanted my new family to be – less complicated, intact and
ever-present for each other. This wouldn’t be difficult (I hope)
because we’re a family of three.

But then I asked myself once:
would I be this strong-willed, patient, and passionate and
beautifully disturbed enough to try to help the least-favoured if we haven’t gone
through all those life’s struggles and complexities?
That is a question I wouldn’t risk answering by application now.

a reminder...

for miyako

Noise from empty drums
Nothing but polluted air
Play deaf if you must.

rhetoric is a poor substitute for action (throwback 2009)

bored at work? been there, been that (throwback 2010)

we all get our share of those days when we feel oh-so-bored at work...sometimes there's a cause for it (stressor-boss, dead-end job and the like), sometimes, it just happens, as if it's a part of an unending cycle. here are 5 of the things i did before to boot me out of the feeling, might (fingerscrossed) work for you too:

1. following the advise of a plurkfriend, i tried getting enough sunlight, fresh air, and exercise before work. i also did brisk-walking (pretending i'm about to miss someone or something if i don't rush) in-between work and people-watching (best place to do this is a university park) after work.

2. 'coz it cured my boredom in the past, i tried helping a friend's organization- planning learning sessions and activities for out-of-school youth. i also did encoding for a citizens group, and packing of relief goods (among others) after-work time til after midnight. yeah, it's selfishness(and selflessness altogether). you may also want to go out and pick up trash in your community (did this with my playmates when i was 10)- and get fun not from picking trash but from the look on the people's faces wondering what you're up to. that gave me something to think about (other than work) while at work, and something to look forward to too.

3. oh this one's a sure hit- visit the library (or if you can't go out during work hours, surf surf surf) and check out some weird books (i read witchcraft).

4. i did something new! i tried learning japanese (used a book) then french (used an audio-book) then mandarin (used a book again) then spanish (this i did online) then german (attended saturday classes). didn't succeed at all of it but it sure did steal some of those boring moments (hopelessly trying to translate curses in my head). i tried learning the sign language (something to do with my fingers during dull moments) - i ended up to only learning words that are in two songs used by my teacher...i also tried to learn how to dance the way bollywood stars do just with a compilation of music videos from india (spent a lot of time imagining and laughing at myself while working)- whew! fun!

5. i re-decorated my fugly room (again, something to occupy mind and look forward to)! with magazines and newspaper first then old CDs and post-its. but if you don't want to or afraid you might feel depressed instead of just bored afterwards, just exercise-pushing furniture this way and that.

yeah, those are my top 5 attempts...as i stated in the beginning, some worked (for most, only for a while) some didn't but hey, nothing's not worth trying :) if one of these works for you, tell me about it...but if none, you can tell me about it too, let's share a good laugh and go back to spending/stealing some time of boredom at work searching for a new job. (lol)

how much?

If you were 

to put a price tag to yourself 

(hypothetical question, still NO TO SLAVERY :) ), 

what would it be? 

If you were 

to put a price tag of your hour, 

how much would it cost?