A Night with the International Relations Students

This took place on the 9th of June 2007

I should have written about this a long time ago but I ran out of time. Too much pressure at work, in the flat, even out of the flat. Just too much pressure..

I was out with International Relations students at Havana Cafe near the breakwater, near the Marina Mall. These IR students come from various parts of the world and if not for the Swedish bloke Jonas, I would never meet one or know of them. They hail from different universities and they come to the different embassies of their countries in different parts of the world. This night, these students chose the UAE culture to be the focal point of their studies. They are taking masters already.

Okay, let me tell you a brief history, back in my college days, an IR student cannot collect his or her diploma if he/she does not serve like a whole lot of hours duty in the DFA(Department of Foreign Affairs) in Manila. Thus, all the graduating IR students had to shell out money, sell their cows or mortgage their houses in order to afford the cost of the so-called-practicum.

The practicum is where we, the IR students get to become slaves of the DFA staff in Roxas Boulevard, Manila. The students from Mindanao SU-Marawi, has to stay in some chosen quarters or hostel or apartments in Manila in order to serve this duty.

I was lucky enough during our practicum, my teachers actually have this love-hate relationship toward me that they decided to put me away from the rest of the batch because they always think I was up to mischief and that the students would normally just follow my lead whether it is for their own good or not. So, I was indeed separated. Their misjudgment towards me was actually a blessing in disguise, or so it seems to me. I was assigned in the Honorary Consuls and Service Attaches Department. There were only four of us in that department, one was the Head, who was a former ambassador, one was an aspiring attache and another one was a veteran in the DFA who has travelled all over the world in various embassies of the Phils for different assistant and secretarial positions. And I was the trainee.

The thing I learned there were plenty. There were things I was glad to know and there were some that I would rather forget. I remember one time I was in the lift, I was holding a document that says "TOP SECRET" on top of it. There were students from De Lasalle, Ateneo and other richyrich universities in Manila. I heard one complain, 'what kind of practicum is this, we are just asked to recopy documents and bring reams of papers from the stockroom. This was not what I imagined!' I felt lucky holding that top secret document, I saw some of them peering at what I was holding.

So, back to the present times, these IR students are by far more privileged in their chosen courses. Well, also because they came from far richer countries. One was from Sweden, two were from Italy.

They were all trying to learn Arabic and taking in the Arabic culture although, they pretty learn little considering they mostly hang out together so they just end up speaking either Italian or English. But, all of them speak at least three different languages including English, excluding their native language. Isn't that amazing? It makes me just want to smack myself for being too lazy in not trying to learn more languages. Yo hablo espanol on poco. Yeah yeah, I am just a loca nina. Who doesn't know how to speak Spanish in the Philippines? I then get so excited in thinking I will learn to speak Arabic tonight, after all, I have four tapes....

So, the night was filled with different stories of their escapades in various places of the world where they have been trying to immerse different culture and learning languages.

Isabella (name changed to protect identity) :-), the pretty Italian, she has been in France and stayed there for three months. She could not afford rent, (brace yourself, I have never heard of this before too) so she advertised that she was renting out half of her bed, so she could afford to stay in it. Luckily, or unluckily, there was someone who responded. That someone turned out to be a French guy. And since there was no one else who responded to the ad, she took him in. She said for three months that guy was trying so hard to get into her pants. That was of course not an unforeseen event right? We were all laughing at her story.

Maura (name also changed), has been in the UAE for quite sometime and she said she is studying German, so she was seeing a German dude who was trying to learn Italian. However, the German dude has not enriched her German knowledge, other than those in bed (I must have confused it, so what!) but he has in turn made his Italian better.

Isabella is currently learning Arabic, thus she is seeing an Arab guy. She is a perfectionist who would not speak Arabic unless she was fluent in it. Oh, I heard the guy she was seeing was good in bed. Is there anything better than this?

Anyways, Jonas is in Syria right now. He is trying to learn Arabic. He will be there for two months. He left three days ago. We miss him already.