If you’ve been following me on my social media channels like Instagram, you prolly already know that I started a column with The Manila Bulletin. It’s one of the major broadsheets in the country and I’m so happy to have space in their Lifestyle Section every Saturday. So if I haven’t been writing here much, you know where to find me. 😉 Here’s an excerpt from the first column I wrote for the paper – an introduction to Almost Diplomatic and how I ended up here.
A diplomat’s wife and her stories from this world of envoys and their spouses or their dogs
“This fork is for your salad course, this one’s for dessert,” I found myself telling a woman not much younger than I was at one of Kuala Lumpur’s swanky restaurants. We were invited to have afternoon tea and the waitstaff were kind enough to bring out more cutlery than necessary when we asked for them. Their sole purpose was to enrich our discussion. It was 2016 and I’d been abroad for two years as a diplomat’s wife. My companion, a fellow freelance journalist, was interested in things that I should know for my said role. It’s how our conversation on proper dining started. She looked at me inquisitively. “How do you know all these? Do you eat like this at home? Do they teach you these in school?”
At home in Berlin with Juancho (@juanchothecorgi)
I admitted that I merely picked them up along the way, that I only brought out all manner of cutlery when we would host people at home and that no–they didn’t teach you these things in journ school.
While protocol and etiquette have always been interesting, they’re things you have to either learn extensively or pick up along the way. Goodness knows I only learned the difference between wine glasses three years prior to that conversation. I studied to be a journalist and while learning the difference between writing for print and broadcast, cutlery for formal dinners was never mentioned. Not all students end up in the diplomatic beat, after all.
Having a beer in one of Prague’s monasteries.
I grew up middle class and attended university to become a journalist. It’s all I ever wanted to be while growing up, watching TV with a hairbrush in my hand as my microphone, imitating Christiane Amanpour. “I’ll be her but with better hair,” eight-year-old me once said. I wasn’t brought up to be overly polite, you see. I was brought up to be competitive and do well in the career I would eventually choose. Classic Asian-tiger parenting.
I’ve been lucky to meet people from all walks of life and learn from them as a journalist, as a diplomat’s wife, and even as just a woman with her dog, waiting for the train from Charlottenburg to Prenzlauer Berg in Berlin.
A year after graduating, I found myself covering foreign affairs for a local English news channel. I’d interview diplomats about their time and work here as well as senior foreign ministry officials, usually about our country’s maritime and territorial disputes—hot topics during that time. At night, I attended diplomatic events with my fellow reporters where I learned through observation. Things like the difference between appetizers and hors d’oeuvres, why I shouldn’t have offered my hand to the Iranian ambassador, and the acceptable volume of one’s laugh. Spoiler alert: Mine went way over than what was pleasant to the ears.
There are fun events but that’s NOT the ONLY thing we do.
A former foreign minister loved to tell me to take the Foreign Service Officers’ (FSO) exam and his deputies often echoed his sentiments. I did toy with the idea but never got around to it, knowing that leaving journalism would be rather heartbreaking for me. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t. Goodness knows how much trouble I’d cause as I had this terrible habit of not knowing when to stop talking. Thank goodness that’s under control now.
