Sunday is precious. In Taipei’s Little Philippines, peopled, as it is with guest workers that put in six-day-weeks, Sunday is priceless. Sunday’s little diversions, its simple pleasures, perk up wilting ambition and rejuvenate flagging aspiration. Migrant labor aspiration, fuel, the global economy burns, owes much to Sunday’s particular charms. The discovery of an abandoned couch, this particular Sunday, sets this story in motion.

Filipino guest workers, Manuel and Dado, hoist the couch and head back to their dormitory in the industrial fringes of the Taipei hinterland. This absurdist road movie is driven forward by the conflict between their irrational hopes and the lurking personal demons of cold, hard rationale. Pinoy Sunday walks rural-third-world protagonists through traffic heavy, fast-paced, modern city streets and freeways; till ‘irrational hope’ and ‘the demons of cold, hard rationale’ mutate, and one is soon indistinguishable from the other.

The promise held out by globalization set large swathes of humanity in motion. Every last person that moves some place else, goes seeking the same thing - a better life. They go seeking the means and the inspiration to conjure up and construct the ideal of home - a better life - if you will! Away from the familiar; adaption must become second nature, challenge; reward in itself, and change the only constant. As an expatriate artist the common aspiration of home, that I share with migrant labor, intrigues me. This nebulous, though tenuous, ideal is at the heart of Pinoy Sunday.