It's hard work being famous
19th July 2006
I've been wanting to write this piece for a while now, but it is
only recently that all the pieces have come together.
This is all about being famous while I was in the Philippines.
An Article About Me
Nooshin was a volunteer in the Philippines as well. She is
currently working for the Global
Volunteer Network - the organisation I volunteer through.
She wrote an article all about me, the work
I did in the Philippines and the education sector itself. It can
be found here.
Television Interviews
I had two television interviews in the Philippines. The
interviews were more due to the fact that I was a whiteman than the work
I was doing. The first was at the Ati-Atihan festival. Read
all about it here.
While in the Philippines, I become quite good friends with a guy
called Onal Golez.
Onal is - among other things - one of the anchors for the entertainment
section of the local news show. He was doing a piece on the
Chinese New Year festival that was being held in Iloilo city.
Emma,
Eden and I were at the festival
and we bumped into Onal. Onal thought it would be interesting to
interview us about the Chinese New Year. So
he did.
Signing Autographs
I attended the launch of the ALP (Alternative Learning Program)
in the Philippines. The ALP is designed so that anyone can
get an education if they wanted to. It is primarily designed to
target out of school youth, but anyone is welcomed to participate.
When the launch finished I was just sitting
around chillin' with some of the other volunteers. All of a
sudden, a kid put a pen and piece of paper in my hand and asked for my
autograph. Weird.
Before I knew it, all the other volunteers and
I were surrounded by kids and being asked for autographs.
We later learnt that Lorenza
- a volunteer from Italy - had randomly given a kid her autograph.
The other kids obviously thought it was a good idea.
It was one of my more surreal experiences in
the Philippines. I mean, I am only Malcolm Trevena for
fab's sake.
I think it highlights how much the average
Filipino reveres the whiteman. My good mate Raymund
pointed out to me that the average Filipino believes that the whiteman
is necessarily superior to them. This autograph story and me
winning the best center award in the basketball tournament despite
being the worst player there, are good examples of this.
One more...
I can't help but include this link
as well, even though I have mentioned it before.
Questions? Comments? Try contacting
me.
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(c)
2005 and 2006 Malcolm Trevena.
All the stuff on this site is written by me, Malcolm Trevena. Feel free to
link to this page. Heck, you can even copy stuff from here if you
want. Just make sure you sight me as a reference.
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