Guess who is this week's "Good Mexican of the Week"?

Dear Filipino,

Hey, have you read The Mexican's latest column in New York's The Village Voice, Kansas' The Pitch, or Salt Lake's City Weekly, et cetera, yet?

Ecstatic for you,
MuQ

Dear MuQ,

Yes, of course!  Ever since I learned about The Mexican's column, I've read it every week.  And every week, I also wonder how I can be as colorful, caustically witty, exciting and funny as my idol!  But you know, MuQ, I've long realized there's no way I can be like him -- the guy is just a genius at what he does!

And if you've forgotten, loyal readers of this blog will remind you that "Ask a Filipino!" got started because I was inspired by the men behind "Ask a Korean!" and "¡Ask a Mexican!", the "original."  But unlike The Korean and I who, aside from being lawyers, both blog anonymously, The Mexican is actually not anonymous.  In fact, not only is he not anonymous, he is quite famous.  His name is Gustavo Arellano, a syndicated professional columnist, who was featured in The New York Times in 2007 for unleashing "a torrent of criticism and attention, not to mention questions" about anything Mexican.

According to Wikipedia, Gustavo's column "now appears in 37 newspapers across the [United States] and has a weekly circulation of over 2 million."  Gustavo has also "won numerous awards for the column, including the 2006 and 2008 Best Non-Political Column in a large-circulation weekly from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, the 2007 Presidents Award from the Los Angeles Press Club and an Impacto Award from the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and a 2008 Latino Spirit award from the California Latino Legislative Caucus."

Every week, after answering a couple of questions from his readers, The Mexican has a section dedicated to praising the "Good Mexican(s) of the Week."  Well, as you've probably read, a week after I declared Ricardo Reyes (the Mexican "Pop-a-Shot King" who Philippine media mistook for a Fil-Am) as "Honorary Filipino" on this blog for beating NBA superstars at their game, my idol gave this blog his seal of approval and called me the "Good Mexican of the Week."  How cool is that!?!

(The Mexican's book.)

Here's his unbelievably generous shoutout: 

GOOD MEXICAN OF THE WEEK

Is actually a Filipino, but we all know that those chinitos are the Mexicans of Asia (consult page 248 of my libro for further details). "Ask a Filipino" answers questions about his raza, from why the armpits of those little island people are so dark to why Filipinas are beautiful but Filipinos ugly, in an informative, hilarious, scandalous manner. Good read, and Mexican-approved! Read more Pinoy pendejadas at askthepinoy.blogspot.com.

So to The Mexican my idol, if you're reading this: Muchos gracias!  Maraming salamat!  And if we bump into each other one of these days, the lumpia is on me!

Got a question for The Filipino?  Email him now at askthepinoy@gmail.com.

Poetic license: Can we have fun with some anagrams?

(Source: BrandInfection.com)

An anagram is a type of word play where the letters of a word or phrase are rearranged to produce a new word or phrase using all the original letters exactly once.  Some of the more famous examples are: evil = vile; evian = naive; a decimal point = I'm a dot in place; Madonna Louise Ciccone = One cool dance musician.  The original word or phrase (i.e., evil, evian, a decimal point, Madonna Louise Ciccone) is called the subject. 

An antigram is a type of anagram where the meaning of the anagram is considered opposite in some way to the subject. A classic example is: funeral = real fun.

An egroupmate, Ed de Guzman, sent me some fun anagrams last night which inspired me to come up with some of mine too for this blog.  I came up with enough anagrammatic lines to make the 5-stanza poem below, with each line linked to a post which somehow relates to the line.  (Okay, okay -- admittedly, some lines don't make as much sense as the others, and others probably don't make much sense at all, but that's why I'm invoking poetic license here.)  Are they simple anagrams or antigrams?  I just post, you decide! 

Ask ThePinoy

He kin post ya!
He kin stop ya!
He kin spot ya!
Key points, ha?

A ken so pithy -
Hip to sneaky!
Hot penis yak!
He nip yo task!

A stinky hope?
Ah, spiky tone!
Hates pink, yo!
Ape thinks, yo!

A shy poet kin?
The soapy kin!
Hypo? Takes in
The okay spin!

This okay pen
Okays hip ten!
Hey, ink a post -
Inky ape host!

Got a question for The Filipino?  Email him now at askthepinoy@gmail.com.

Guess what blog just got featured on Inquirer.net this Christmas?

Dear readers, occasional followers and most loyal supporters:

Guess what?  AAF! just got featured in the Global Networking column (by Telltale Signs of Filipinos in America author Rodel E. Rodis) found in the Global Nation section of Inquirer.net, the online version of the country's leading newspaper, the Philippine Daily Inquirer.  Check it out!

While I'm really very flattered by the article, I am also a bit concerned.  When I decided to start this blog, I just intended it as another "moodly" Q&A thing -- i.e., whenever I'm in the mood to write, as opposed to a "weekly" or a "daily" thing -- to help answer questions bugging everyone about the Philippines and the Filipino diaspora.  And now this article comes out, which is sure to only add to more pressure for me to write more.  Already, the inbox is filling up, adding to the backlog of questions still left to be answered.  What to do?

Well, what else but to do it the Filipino way: Just keep plowing ahead, make changes along the way if necessary, and hope that with the grace of The Big Guy Above, things will just turn out fine. ;-)

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Warm regards,
The Filipino

P.S.  Special shout-out to the first folks who asked me questions, as well as to The Mexican, The Korean, and The Frenchman -- all of whom have been especially supportive.  Most of all, of course, my biggest thanks to the love of my life, The Filipina.

Got a question for The Filipino?  Email him now at askthepinoy@gmail.com.

Welcome and ask away!

Why lie?  This site was inspired by "Ask a Mexican" and "Ask a Korean" -- two fine web sites that provide answers to questions that confound, baffle, puzzle, vex, bug, stump, or even annoy people about the Mexicans/Mexico and Koreans/Korea, respectively.  Hopefully, this site will also grow to become a robust site worthy of being called the go-to site for people who have questions about the Philippines and the Filipino diaspora.  Of course, the main aim of the site is to hopefully make other people understand the Filipino people better.  Not an ignoble aim, don't you think?

Please have patience as the Filipino tries his hand on maintaining a blog/website.  The Filipino is on a shoe-string budget so for now, he's using the free Blogger account to do this thing.  So if it's not very pleasing to the eye, have some pity, will you please?