Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Filipinas! Astig!

i recently had the opportunity of watching TV again the whole night (after weeks of not seeing a single idiot box). saw this teaser from the local professional basketball league drumming up public support for the national team which competed last month in the 2005 global hoops summit in las vegas and the jones cup in taipei. have no idea how the las vegas stint went, but the pinoys finished third in the latter tournament, behind USA and host Taiwan (for more updates about the philippine team, visit the PBA site: www.pba.com.ph). anyway, back to this teaser which caught my attention: there was this audio clip of the team's huddle wherein one of the player was shouting "filipinas!!!", to which the other team members responded with "astig!!!".

just thought it was a great cheer to perk up pinoys everywhere in these troubled times. well, i certainly got a spirit boost from it, and i was running the whole chant in my mind almost the entire night. "astig" by the way is a tagalog slang which comes from the word "tigas" meaning "hard" or "firm". some folks would use "astig" to refer to people who are "siga" or bullies. in some quarters, the term may even connote callousness (as in "astig/tigas ng panga", "panga" being the local term for "jaw"). but of course i like it better the way our national basketball team used it to refer to pinoys as being "tough" and not easily intimidated, as a people who would not easily give in to pressures or difficulties. with world prices of oil going up, some people in government set on implementing new tax measures, and the prospect of another impeachment proceedings hanging in the air, we'll need a lot of this toughness in the coming months.

2 comments:

Daisy said...

Astig! kapatid!

I was feeling low today and I got a boost from that great thought!

Roberto Iza Valdés said...

Compliments. Best wishes.