Tokens

Ever since I became an administrator at UP way back in the last century (okay, so it was 1998), one of my biggest “problems” has been dealing with tokens.

UP, like many government institutions, just does not have a tradition of giving tokens, and that can be a problem because we live in Asia, which has strong gift-giving traditions. It’s really not just a problem of gifts but of giving something, anything, to visitors. The situation is so bad that in UP Diliman, we didn’t even have a map, or an information brochure to give out. With some prodding, and struggles with government bidding and procurement, my team finally produced an information packet that just came out last month, complete with map and booklets.

My point is that when UP officials visit other Asian universities, or when we have visitors from such institutions, we get loads of information materials accompanied by some of the most impressive tokens. Let me describe them in a general way before getting to what UP gives in return.

Impressive does not mean expensive. I’ve gotten sets of postcards with stunning photographs of the universities’ campuses. Well-designed calendars. Well-researched books, and I don’t mean vanity books with boring facts and figures or biographies of officials. The ones I appreciate most are compilations of the best work of their own faculty and students.

The East Asian universities are the most gracious when it comes to these gifts. Xiamen University, UP’s partner institution for a Confucius Institute, favors porcelain used to produce pen caddies and tea containers. When they hosted an international meeting of the Confucius Institute, they gave each delegate—there were about 2,000 of us—a porcelain plate, hand-painted by their fine arts students.

The gifts all have the university’s name imprinted, but in a tasteful way, sometimes even hidden in a corner.

The Chinese tend to give bulky gifts, all the way up to big boxes of tea, which can be a problem if all you brought was a backpack. (Fortunately, the low-cost luggage we see in Divisoria is even lower-costing in China, where the bags are produced.)

The Japanese are more practical, in a class of their own with minimalist elegance. Earlier this week I had a delegation of students and faculty from Ehime University, and their gifts were a wooden lacquered bowl and a piece of embroidered cloth made out of the obi, the belt used for a kimono. Both gifts came wrapped in paper, folded like origami. Sometimes, the Japanese gifts come wrapped in cloth, furoshiki.  Paper or cloth wrappers send an ecological message, too.

So, what does UP give in return?

Usually it’s a packet of our books and back issues of journals, but there’s a tendency to keep giving the same titles. One frequent visitor winked at me during a recent ceremony as she received a packet, and I knew why: She already had seven sets of the same books and journals from previous visits.

I usually end up buying some books on the Philippines, not even from our own university press because I’m afraid we might have given the same title before. Or look for other gifts that are unique: civet coffee (aromatic Pupu coffee I tell them, before explaining), woven cloth, anything Filipino, but not something that comes through as a tacky souvenir item. Hand-crafted tokens are the best, but with creativity, even a USB stick can be tastefully transformed into a token.

I’ve been using the word “gifts” to emphasize that these are not mass produced corporate giveaways. We boast of Filipino hospitality, and this should be reflected in giving something that reflects some effort on our part: thinking of what would be good to give, and choosing something that will remind the visitors about the Philippines, and UP, after they get back.

From the heart

The word “token” is used to convey the idea that it symbolizes or represents something from the heart. It can be gratitude for the visit. It can be, as I just mentioned, something memorable. Or it can be a token of friendship.

I’ve sometimes been reluctant to use the word “token” because it’s the same term for the stuff used in casinos and carnivals, and “token” does sometimes mean something small. But it’s still a better term than “giveaway,” reminding us that it represents something from the heart.

Which means, too, tokens are not just for visitors. At UP Diliman, the faculty traditionally used to get calendars at the end of the year which weren’t particularly exciting.  In my first year managing Diliman, I mobilized our artists to produce planners with some of the best works of art in UP.  The second year, I suggested a UP coloring book. This year it’s a journal, again with artwork incorporated.

The faculty responded well, even sending in “thank you” e-mails and texts. Which is why I thought I should do a column explaining that those are not just giveaways but tokens, a way of saying: “Thank you for staying on in UP and caring for our students.”

The tokens, too, represent our pride in UP, in the work we do. Which is why for our deans, there was an additional token: a cloth fold-up where you can insert several pens (including red ones for grading?). The pen holders are tokens of UP pride, designed by an interior design class that first produced them to sell and raise funds so they could renovate a center for deaf youth in Payatas.

Giveaways

Mass produced, corporate giveaways can come through as cold and distant. I even have reservations sometimes because some are cheap Chinese goods, and I worry—with mugs especially—that they have high lead content.

In contrast, when I get tokens from other universities, the Japanese ones especially, I bring them home and have the children open them up so they, too, can appreciate the gift, all the way up to the way it was wrapped.

Tokens must be warm, something to cherish and to use.   (I was tempted to write “to love and to cherish.”) Those UP coloring books from last year have been recycled for party parlor games and, for several faculty, for therapy.  I thought the journals we gave out last year might be therapeutic, too, sometimes, jotting down moments of disappointment, frustration, sorrow. I hope though they will fill up, more often, with thoughts that come with getting a difficult task done, of new insights into solving problems, of collective joys from varsity victories, the launching of a microsatellite, or of a student finally defending a thesis or dissertation.

Received, rather than bought, a token journal becomes treasured, so, weeks, months or years ahead, when you return to read one of the passages, you can smile and think of the people involved in those good and not-so-good times.  Maybe you might want to call that person, treat them out or pick something special for them—another token.

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