Nail and Hammer
If one told me a year ago that I would be in Scotland, paint brush in hand, painting a kitchen wall.. I wouldn't have second thoughts calling the person a nutter. But here I am, indeed, with a paint brush in hand for the past two weekends, doing my bit of DIY in the land I now refer to as home.
DIY was never a strong point of mine because, to be honest, there never was a need to develop it in Manila. Loose nail head? you ask your brother to do it. If he wasn’t around, the manong karpintero along your street knows someone would do it for a modest fee. Paint job? my, there’s a plethora of painters - real and pseudo - who’d do it for you . Leaking pipe? if the make-shift signs posted on the telephone poles were to be the gauge, the Philippines absolutely reeks of tuberos!
So, who needed to learn these skills, when there were so many other people willing, able and definitely available to do the work for you?
Things are different here though.
Firstly, you never get manual labour for a song here. On the contrary, manual labour is quite expensive! A plumber in Scotland charges an average of £50-£70/visit for a simple feat of plumbing. People who sand your floorboards for you ... argh.. that’d cost you at least £1,000 depending on the floor area. do the math here.. that’s P100,000 for someone who just so happens to have a few sanding engagements tucked under his/her (sand) belt.
Secondly, there aren’t that many tradesmen/craftsmen here. I’ve been told that since Labour went into power, the irony is, there hasn’t been much emphasis on the importance of manual labour. Programmes have been implemented encouraging kids to go to university, dedicate one’s skills to academic pursuits, et al… to the detriment of technical or even vocational skills. So now, in a country with a thrust towards university education, the question is: - who amongst you white collar people can handle a spanner?
My third reason and the logical consequence of Labour’s thrust on white collar education is, people here have the impression that manual labour is not as glamorous as white collar jobs. Or maybe is not a source of bragging rights for parents?
Before someone throws a scathing retort to this entry of mine, note that i do say ‘maybe’… i’d welcome some hard fast facts.
As a consequence, therefore, people take on tasks they perceive they can do by themselves. Painting, sanding, paint stripping, installing kitchen units, carpet laying, and similar activities are all done by DIY buffs. (Nota Bene: we personally know one guy who re-piped his own flat!) People with the DIY bug pay homage to stores such as Homebase, B&Q (which, btw, does not stand for ‘barbeque’) , Argos, etc. Our own closets at home are full of paint brushes and rollers, three different types of sanding machines, cans of paint and varnish, a power drill (and all the tips that go with it), a set of screwdrivers, several spanners, and a folding work table.
I do not consider myself a DIY buff though. I simply took on the job of stripping the paint off some beams in the kitchen and repainting it because I absolutely could not bear the sight of the canary yellow paint the previous owners chose to paint the poor room in (oh, and the beams? they were painted lime green! I rest my case.) . The glaring yellow clashing with lime green gnawed at my patience, until I finally decided that come Easter weekend and before I turn 33, i would have remedied this.
... and I have!
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