Down the Rabbit Hole

Lola Bats used to say that she and Lolo Bats did not reach the highest levels of education during their youth. It was quite understandable... back in their time, anyone who finished grade school in the Philippines could already get a good job. Lola Bats did not finish grade school but Lolo Bats probably did.  Lola Bats used to tell us that Lolo Bats was a skilled mechanic. He used to work at the well-respected Batangas Transportation Company (BTCo.) during the Commonwealth era. It's one of the most prominent bus companies... it's known as the red bus. More than 50 years later, I (a pre-school student) became a regular passenger of this bus company, typically catching the bus plying the Laguna-Tayabas route (hence the new abbreviation, BLTBCo.) Anyway... Lola Bats had fond stories about Lolo Bats going to work wearing a white uniform. He used to be assigned to fix stalled engines. People in the barrio had a high regard for him because he'd tinker with the problem...

"Are you Indian?" That's the latest among a long list of ethnicity questions I've received over time. Previously, I've been mistaken (outside the Philippines) as Canadian, Korean , Chinese , and Vietnamese . I think that in cases in which I was mistaken as East Asian, the people who made mistakes were not exposed enough to Southeast Asians. Those who thought I was Vietnamese found it difficult to differentiate among Southeast Asians (yes, that group includes me because I'm also stumped at times). And that one time I was mistaken as Canadian was the most surprising yet... because the man who insisted that I was Canadian said that my accent sounded Canadian (not stereotypical Filipino). In school (UC Berkeley Data Analytics and Visualisation boot camp), a classmate asked if I'm Indian. When I said no, he then asked if I had relatives or ancestors who were Indian. Still replying in the negative, I was then asked if I understood Hindi. I said that I wa...