Makati IP Addresses

This blog is part and parcel of Greenport, NY's website (http://www.greenportvillage.com/) and it pretty much seeks to be that "neutral observer" one reads about but never can find.  As such, we try not to be either vain nor self-deprecating; just stay strictly middle of the road so to speak. When setting out on that course, we decided to admit total ignorance when we found it in our part and observe it for what it is and was.

The website receives a substantial number of visitors from the Philippines, almost as many as Canada and that catches our attention as almost all of our visitors from the Philippines have an "IP" in the Manila suburb of Makati, a city of roughly half a million souls. Now our ignorance and provincialism as Ben Franklin once said "springs forth fully growed".

One of our readers wrote to us from the Makati "IP"  address and we fairly assume that he is responsible to some extent for spreading the word about this blog and the village website.  When he wrote, he identified himself as having spent summers here in Greenport and retired to a suburb some distance from Manila - a good drive away - and our minds, void of any knowledge whatsoever, immediately assumed things.  We thought that this was a case of one rural area simply exploring another rural area - one set of country bumpkins gazing at another across about 8500 air miles.  Our ignorance rested in our (mis-)conception of the Philippines and Makati specifically and it really showed up here.

So what brought all this up?  We were reading back through our blog to an early post about Plum Island and the Spanish-American War (http://greenportvillage.blogspot.com/2011/12/over-edge-of-earth.html)  and that brought us to the Philippines and our "war" with them that came under our sphere as a result.  So what history we have of that Island Nation is a result - for many in our generation - of school books that still looked at it as a colonial "republic", which is was until after WWII.  As such, we had some blurred conception of the place - something between a National Geographic documentary and Douglas MacArthur vowing to return.

When Makati started turning up in our Google Analytics we knew that some of the hits were a result of the above mentioned former summer resident and we had visions of his surrounding area that were clearly erroneous and here we were in this idyllic seaside village to which they "must be looking at in wonderment and awe".  We apologize for our ignorance.

To be clear, Makati is a "big cheese" town in Asia, the financial capital of the 13th most populated country on the planet, highly cosmopolitan and decidedly "some pumpkins".  Tim Tebow, the NFL whiz, was born there by the way.  He wasn't born here - he was born there - to parents who were on religious mission in the 1980s. Hmmm let's see. Let's do missionary work in this Philippines version of Wall Street. But we are a neutral blog and won't go there - rampant colonial stereotyping and all that.

We do invite our Makati IP address readers to keep in contact and drop us a line now and then.  Just don't poke fun at our colonial mindsets and we promise to think some before we reach any more conclusions.