World, Rod Fleming's World

27/03/2024

Baklas and Beer in the Afternoon: A Tale of Manila

Originally posted 2022-04-14 15:32:15.

I have just been to the Bureau of Immigration Visa Extension Office in Makati. I have to do this once every two months, for the economy of the Philippines.

My papers are in and my money has been paid, but for unknown reasons, they’re not handing the passports with the new visas out yet. I have plans for the afternoon so will have to come back on Tuesday. I sigh and decide to get a beer and some food. I had no plans, then, to meet baklas.

Baklas, to let you know, are the local ersion of the ubiquitous ladyboy, the transwomen found all over southeast Asia, under different names. They are highly feminised males who live as women and seek straight men for partners. They are often as beautiful as natal women — or more so.

I head for Market! Market! in Taguig. It’s my favourite mall in Manila by far, partly because half of it is actually outside. Unlike some malls, there are plenty of beer-bars and small restos too, serving a myriad array of meals in price bands to suit any bakla’s pocket, as they say. So I indulge in a taxi — 105 pesos — and, once I’m there, head for the bars at the back, near the van depot. I know from experience that these are good and cheap and so, attract locals — including baklas.

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27/03/2024

Angel: Women in the Philippines

Originally posted 2022-04-08 11:15:29.

I remember Angel well. I was walking along a backstreet in Cubao on my way to the Baliwag Transport depot. As I approach it I hear the familiar call: ‘Hey Joe!’

Usually I just wave my hand and smile but this time it’s a girl standing in a doorway across the street. She’s pretty, fake blonde, so I cross over. The reaction of teenage Filipinas to an approaching foreigner — even one they have just saluted — is too delicious to miss and, as predicted, the girl collapses into hysterical giggles.

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27/03/2024

Philippines Diary: Jeepneys

Originally posted 2015-01-28 14:52:34.

Most people have at least heard about jeepneys, the ubiquitous, colourful and incredibly noisy backbone of the Philippines public transport system. For those who have not, you’ll catch up.

The first jeepneys were in fact modified Willys Jeeps that the Americans left behind. The enterprising pinoys lengthened the chassis and fitted seats. Now they are custom built with stainless steel, all-enclosed bodywork and diesel engines.

Most jeepneys are 20-seaters; 18 in the back and 2 in the front, guv. This makes them unquestionably the friendliest form on transport on the planet, because actually there’s only enough room for 16 in the back and we are talking kitten-hipped pinoys here.

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27/03/2024

The Goddess in The Philippines

Originally posted 2014-03-10 13:59:50.

The Goddess is a big deal in the Philippines and goddesses are out in strength there this week. The occasion is the closing rounds of the Universities Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP) women’s volleyball tournament, held at Smart Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City. Teams with names like De La Salle Lady Spikers and Ateneo de Manila Lady Eagles, the Tigresses, the Lady Warriors and the Lady Bulldogs battle it out in front of huge, enthusiastic and thoroughly partisan crowds. And these girls aren’t kidding; this is serious stuff.

The audience is mainly young – but everywhere in the Phils is mainly young. That’s only to be expected in a country where the population has increased by a factor of ten in fifty years. And there are as many men here as women. Filipinos are as passionate about volleyball as Scots are about football.

This is hard sport, and women are seen as true warriors.

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27/03/2024

Archaic Humans Discovered in Scotland

Originally posted 2014-02-26 19:41:18.

Scientists all over the world are turning their attention to Scotland in the wake of a shock discovery that ‘archaic’ humans may be alive and well and living there.

The discovery came when one of them was filmed saying that they ‘were not evolved to make political decisions’.

Professor of Anthropology Farquhar Mc Farquharson of the University of Aberdeen explained: ‘All modern humans – Homo sapiens – have evolved highly sophisticated social behaviour including the ability to arrive at complex decisions within a formal political framework. The discovery of a population that lacks this ability, apparently living alongside more developed hominids, is very exciting.’

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27/03/2024

Wot? No Rabbits? – The Brither

Originally posted 2014-01-17 22:11:42.

Wot no Rabbits?

Now my brother was a bit of a character. I’m not talking about my wee brother, here, or the big one I suddenly discovered I had in 2004 that no bugger ever told me about before (aye, we’ll get to that.) I mean my other big brother Sandy, AKA Sye.

Now Sandy did things his own way. He ran a car breaking yard—and trust me, there is no more joyous place to spend your school hols than in a place like that—and he lived in a wee cottage in Arbroath, one of those sandstone ones. Sandy’s wife was called Toos and she was Dutch.

Sandy was always coming up with schemes and one of these was inspired by Toos, who told him that people in Holland raised rabbits for the pot.

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27/03/2024

Sticks, Ice-Creams and Specks of Dust

Originally posted 2014-01-09 22:58:50.

A long time ago, when I lived in Arbroath in Scotland, my role before opening up the old Fleming Partners office was to do the school run. Our kids went to a small village school just outside the town itself and there was no bus.

On these runs I always tried to entertain the boys by talking about whatever came into my mind (and would not take more than 10 minutes.) So one day I explained why humans can see in colour and many animals can’t. This is because, I said, there are two types of vision receptor cells, rods and cones. Cones see colour and rods see brightness—monochrome, in other words. (I do know it’s a bit more complex than that, but these were primary kids.) Humans have both rods and cones, and many animals, like dogs, only have rods. So we see colour and they don’t.

This went fine and was met with all the usual approval that could be mustered from a 5-year old and an 8-year old.

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27/03/2024

Bakla: explaining the transwoman of the Philippines

Originally posted 2022-03-28 19:50:38.

All humans, with the exceptions of a tiny minority with disorders of sexual development (DSDs) or Intersex, are either male or female. So there are two sexes.

We are not tilapia, frogs or molluscs, and these sexes are fixed for life. Sex can never be changed. The nonsense that biological sex has no basis in reality and can be changed from male to female is just that, nonsense. It derives from Post-Modernism; a rotten, toxic ideology. But that means we must explain the phenomenon of transsexualism, and to do that we’ll focus on the form found in Luzon in the Philippines, the bakla.

The explanation hinges on the critical difference between sex and gender. These are not the same.

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27/03/2024

Pork, Secularism, and Anarchy

Originally posted 2013-07-12 16:34:09.

Pork. It’s such a mainstay of French cuisine, that it’s frankly impossible to conceive of French food culture without it.

Every thing from saucisson to saucisses, fried, grilled, cured, dried, you name it, the French have a way of eating pork like that.

anti-halal-pro-pork-poster — The growing French anti-halal movement has seized on a blatant attempt to destroy French culture

It goes back to the time of the Gauls, you know, Asterix and his lads, roasting wild boar on spits.

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27/03/2024

Summer at Last

Originally posted 2013-07-26 17:19:10.

summer-rainstorm001 — Torrential rainstorms are a feature of life in France Pic: Rod Fleming

Well, summer did finally arrive here in P’tit Moulin and the warm balmy days are back. I must say they are very welcome, and could have been here sooner. The girls are all out in their skimpiest dresses, to show off their golden-tanned skin and the boys…well, who cares about the boys anyway?