THE last time Cebuana Fil-Am playwright Linda Faigao Hall came back for a short visit to her home city, as much as in the previous times, she couldn’t help but feel the changes of Cebu seen in the eyes of a Filipino immigrant in New York—growing population (and what happened to the trees along Osmeña Blvd.?), lack of breathing space free from carbon dioxide emissions, and the same old sense of time in a people always late.
But in her visit to Cebu this May, she said no one was late in appointments with her, it was she instead who couldn’t come to a meeting on time. Or is it that Cebuanos are moving out of the embarrassing habit of “Filipino time,” which means 30 minutes late, or 45 minutes, or an hour of unforgivable lack of punctuality?
To Linda’s surprise, she experienced a new sense of Filipino timeliness.
In the Dumaguete workshop she undertook last week for five days, not at any time in any of the seminar days was anyone late for the week-long training on playwriting which was daily from 8 to 11 a.m.
And she considers this incident “unforgettable.”
In New York where she has her residence for years, she lives right where the culture of timeliness runs life in Brooklyn. In the roadsides, everybody’s walking fast, to be on time.
In some European railway stations, “delay” is delay in 10 or 15 minutes. In Japan where its culture is run by time the way America is, passengers coming in on a single minute’s delay is considered “on time.”
Come to think of it, perhaps the sense of right time may be catching on among Filipinos especially in urban areas and tourist spots. Is it true, people in this country are a bit on time now, as what my friend Linda suspects.
The concept of time is cultural, like an in-grown societal aspect of life. But some people probably saw the need to hook up with each other, be on time. So there came about the idea of “standard time” in the country.
Still, it probably takes time for immigrants to adapt to a host country’s time culture. I remember a luncheon my sister held in Miami for me to meet her Cuban immigrant friends. Food was ready, the lunch set at 12 noon but no Cuban friend was there until mid-afternoon so that the luncheon almost looked like dinner at 4 p.m. My sister simply said her Cuban friends were the way they were, as new immigrants in Florida.
If we see our concept of time as part of our culture, some people could see it as an excuse, like we’re late “it’s our culture, kasi.” With tourists coming in, shouldn’t there be a stricter sense of time than what we have now?
There are cultures with no sense of time at all. In the first place, like the Brazilian tribe in the Amazon rainforest, some tribal communities don’t have a concept of numbers!
Back home here in the country, the President signed Republic Act No. 10535 which sets the Philippine Standard Time (PST). So there’s not much more difficulty between being on time and being late.
The Act, which says all government offices—including the school system and the broadcast media—should follow the PST It encourages punctuality and raises the value of time in our culture.
But we continue to keep Filipino time, it will not be obliterated from our life, although some villages in the country could use a culture run more efficiently by time, at a certain point in development, to update.
(ecuizon@gmail.com)