Achtung!
Yesterday, after a pleasant time with my friends Bob & Feyma Martin, I wrapped up some loose ends for the day and proceeded to one of my favorite cafés to unwind. Basti’s is usually a bustling place at that time of day, and this foreigner didn’t have a table, so he asked if he could sit with me. Well, why not, I thought, share a table and win a friend! And so I did.
I hadn’t realized that he didn’t speak English, because he was only kind of mumbling and gesturing when he asked to join me. So when I chatted him up, he replied, "Kein Englisch." Triggered by his heavy brogue, a sudden flash of memories sailed through my mind. Not unpleasant memories, but actually rather funny. See, I had studied German when I was in high school.
Back then, it was the height of the mail-order-bride phenomenon, and for some reason a significant number of the grooms were German. I remember, back in Hotel Maguindanao, where some of these matrimonial tourists stayed, I was asked to interpret for a couple. I was only 14 or 15 then, still only beginning to grasp the rudiments of Hoch Deutsch… but I had a pretty good idea what was going on.
German guy: "Erklärst du bitte ihr, daß ich sie liebe."
Me: Mahal ka daw niya, miss.
Filipino girl: "Mao ba? Pangutan-a daw kung naa sya’y kwarta?"
If the Internet had already been there that time, I would have been ROFLMAO! 
I actually taught basic German back then, too. It was all the rage among the early wave of OFWs. I had no idea in that tender age (I was a late bloomer) that the emigration of Filipinos was getting to be a social problem. But, even when I came to understand it, nobody really talked about it as a social problem. Heck, it seemed everyone wanted to get a piece of that action. And since those early years, a swell of people have gone away. Many of them, to work below their potential.
The Internet could be a saving grace vis-à-vis our society’s proverbial brain drain problem. It could stave off the exodus of talented and skilled manpower. Well, maybe it won’t be for everybody… but then again, why not?? I taught my father how to use e-mail and search engines and, who knows, I just might be able to teach him how to blog!
There are many opportunities being offered through this electronic medium — all it takes is for people to grab them. With our cheap Internet cafés, it’s certainly not impossible for anyone to take advantage of the Internet’s potentials. I’ve talked about pro-blogging a couple of posts back. And there’s e-commerce, which sounds daunting but is basically nothing more than entrepreneurship done online. Take, for example, a virtual store where you could create an online gift registry. Such a business could operate locally but sell globally.
Well, everybody knows that already by now. But what most people don’t realize is, there’s almost nobody doing it here!
Back to my new German friend. I could only understand half of what he was trying to tell me, but I got the gist of it. He’d been to Davao many times in the distant past, he said, and he hasn’t really seen much improvement. And saying that he indicated his heart. He meant that we still haven’t changed inside. We may see our city much developed compared to 10 years ago, but many of us still want to leave.
