dialogues

scene 1 (sa klase kagabi)

teacher: so, is it really possible to have an autonomous history?

classmate 1; yada yada yada ....

teacher: if smail would you ask you to write history, what would you write, pre-colonial, colonial or post-colonial?

classmate 1: blah blah blah

teacher: he wouldnt be too happy if you write history that way

epal me: if i read it right, i think what smail is saying is its possible to write an autonomous history, you just have to focus on the locals. he is not saying though that we should discount our Eurocentric or Americo-centric histories. histories written in those perspectives are helpful in understanding our colonial histories. theyre important in understanding our overall history as a region. but he would want us to write a history of the region in itself, something which does not focus on foreign relations.

teacher: so what kind of history would you write, pre-colonial, colonial, post-colonial?

epal me: i think he would want me to write a post-colonial history blah blah blah

classmate 2: i think blah blah blah

classmate 3: blah blah blah

teacher: he would want you to write history say from 1940 onwards, something that is NOT CENTERED ON THE COLONIAL because if you write history that is centered on that, you are giving very high importance on the colonial and not on southeadt asia as a region.

epal me: (aaahhh...yun pala yun!)

=====

scene 2

(nasa booth ng nus student union, titingin ng planner)

me: you still have copies of the planner?

tao sa booth: yes, we still have a few stocks left

me: can i borrow one, il jst browse through it

tao sa booth: sure. (binigay sa kin ang planner)

me: (hmm...mukha namang ok. pero dapat hindi sya lalampas ng $10) how much is this?

tao sa booth; oh, its free. do you have your matric card?

me: yeah, here. (biruin mo yun, pinapamigay ng libre ang planner!)

====

scene 3 (sa klase kanina)

teacher: (discussing about dispute settlement mechanisms in wto) there's a joke that asian's dont complain or have few complains because they dont speak english well. so instead of writing, they just dont complain. thats why the asean agreement (or treaty, i forgot) has only a few pages

epal me: maybe there's some degree of truth to that because as mentioned in the readings, developing countries have fewer complaints because they dont have enough capability to gather information that would support their claim

classmates: yeah, yeah