What does FILIPINO TIME really mean?

Photo Credits: www.topten.ph

You often hear people interpret “Filipino Time” as "always being late". But is it true? Personally, I don’t agree with this. It is unacceptable because even at a young age, i was already taught at school to always be mindful of TIME. Life for instance, I remember receiving punishment every time i come late to class when I was a kid. Having seen the way Filipinos live, how students go to school early in the morning and the way the Filipino working class start their day as early as 4:00 in the morning, I am 100% convinced that the true “Filipino Time”is not “always being late”.

For the longest time, we accepted this idea and eventually conformed to it. We thought there is nothing much we can do about it since everybody is guilty. Being late is no longer a bad thing but rather a normal instance.

To accept and to say that “Filipino Time” is equivalent to “being late always” is an insult to all young students waking up early in the morning to get to school and to the millions of working Filipinos beating the clock every morning in order to get to work on time.

Filipino students are disciplined to get up early for school

Majority of elementary, secondary and tertiary school in the country start classes as early as 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning. This means that students get up so early in the morning to finish breakfast, take a bath, brush teeth and etc. Furthermore, they also have to allot time for the travel going to school places due to either heavy traffic or long walk.

Even a 6 year old student is taught to wake up as early as 6:00 in the morning so he can arrive to school on time. This is a discipline that young Filipinos carry with them until they are grown up.

Majority of working Filipinos get to workplace on or before 8:00 in the morning

Just the same as schools, offices, factories, stores and different workplaces in the country generally open by 8:00 in the morning and even earlier. This has been going on for a very long time and working Filipinos already learned the discipline to get up as early as they could in order to get to their destination on time no matter how far from home it may be. Rushing is an everyday routine for Filipinos. Not because we procrastinate but because we value arriving to the workplace on time. A working mom for example has no choice but work on all her motherly tasks before starting to prepare herself before work, this results to being on the rush most of the time.

I once tried to go to “palengke”, to buy something i need before jumping into my early bus trip going back to my home province for vacation. I was absolutely surprised to see how people there start working by as early as 3:00 in the morning. By that time, the whole place is already alive and noisy. I soon found out that they do this so they could get the most fresh fruits, vegetables, fish, meat and other goods from the “bagsakan”. This is only possible if they are at the market place very early in the morning.

These are only a few things to mention. There are more of them if you look around and truly observe. We Filipinos value our time and the time of other people around us. We arrive to our destinations on time. Filipino Time is On time!

Now, if Filipinos are actually on time, how come we are accused of being late always?

A Spanish blame that was passed on to us Filipinos

During the Spanish Colonization, Spaniards always thought that they are special. They always wanted to be noticed, served and appreciated. In most of the occasions, they would intentionally arrive late to grab the attention of the people who arrived earlier. This will really make their presence felt by the crowd. In Jose Rizal’s novels Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, he mentioned seveal times about how the Spaniards love to arrive late to gather people’s attention. He then warned the Filipinos to get rid of imitating these doings of the colonizers.

When the Americans arrived, they planned of educating the Filipinos because they thought we were illiterate and pagans. When they called for people who will help them advance this purpose, most of the people that came were the ones who were wealthy and working in the government who absorbed the traits of the Spaniards being always late in gatherings and not giving value to schedules. Because of this, Americans saw an opportunity to accuse and humiliate the Filipinos. They created the concept that “American Time is On Time” while “Filipino Time is always late”. This is one of the humiliating things that was planted into the Filipino identity for the half century of American Colonization.

The true Filipino Time is On time. We prove this to be true every time we go to our destinations on time. If there are people who come late, they are not the majority. It is about time for us to get rid of this erroneous belief because first of all, it is not true. Let us help one another to paint a much better identity for our own race. Let us refrain from accepting the bad comments being thrown to us but rather do our best to change it for the better.