Chilipino blues

Chilipino n Someone whose father is Chinese and whose mother is Filipino (the opposite would, rather less pleasing to the ear, be known as a Finese...) [Thanks to Daniel Vai for coining the term - while discussing Chindians and the like we realised that 'Chilipino' is possible too...]
In any case, whenever yours truly happens to come into prolonged contact with Filipinos a sudden regret suddenly blossoms over the 'Mother Tongue' policy. I certainly recognise its benefits, but still will always grouse over the fact that it denied me of a chance to learn my actual mother tongue... [In fact no close relative of mine - let alone my mother or father, speaks mandarin to a sufficient degree to be deemed even vaguely fluent (we are, after all, mostly from the AC family of schools...), so the term 'mother tongue' really is not an apt term to use in our whole family's case - but that's another story...]
To cut a long story short, due to the fear that i would muddle up the language with Mandarin, which he knew i would eventually have to learn, my father asked my mother from birth not to teach me (and my elder brother too) Tagalog. So, i never learnt it - and proceeded to instead not get even a pinky's grip on Mandarin. Subsequently that grip came loose, and i switched my 'Mother Tongue' yet again, to French. In the end, i am today sorely lacking any skills in Tagalog, Mandarin, and French, and am quite monolingual as a result...
Sometimes, i can't help but be annoyed by this, especially in certain occasions such as recently when i was in the States, and we spent two days staying with a Filipino family friend. She introduced us to a large portion of her extended family, and of course, everyone conversed in Tagalog. I probably only vaguely understood 5% of all that they were saying... Which was needless to say, quite frustrating. And then they'd ask why don't i speak the language - especially when our family friend's children are Indipino (Indian dad, Filipino mum), yet still can speak and understand the language, whereas i can't... I get so frustrated that i can't communicate... And at my age, it becomes even harder to pick up a new language, especially when i have failed at two others when i was younger...
It gets even worse whenever i visit the Philippines, in fact, i won't even begin... Sigh... [I would write a sigh expression in Tagalog, save for the fact that i don't know how to transcribe it...]