Caustic Thoughts

Random funny thoughts with a taste of Pinoy and a hint of acid.

Idle Mind

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Someone once told me that idle minds breed idle thoughts. Despite rotting underneath a lot of work, my mind has been pretty idle lately. Apparently though, the evilest my mind could get was to get itself lost in the aging Asian videos and novellas in Youtube.

Do you remember those days when Filipinos of all ages and orientations swooned over those beardless, monotoned, emotionally challenged pretty flower boys from Taipei? I never really got into the craze because logic and two decades in a library filled to the brim with stuffy, constipated ancient Western philosophy forbade the enjoyment of pop culture. Now that my library in Alexandria has sunk 20,000 leagues under the sea and has been replaced by the endless struggle for survival in a paradise for capitalists, I have finally realized that pop media and culture truly are balms for folks under tedious yolks.

Having been detached for so long from this reality, I needed hours to catch up with whatever was hip 4 or 5 years ago. What did I learn? I found out that one of the F4 was a former waiter while another one was an engineering student. They probably feel that trading highlights and footlights for a tray or a T-square just isn’t cool because after so many years, they’re still alive and doing the same thing.

Obviously though, these boys are on the brink of showbiz middle age. Although they still show no signs of receding hairlines hidden under ball caps like Donnie Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block, the fact that they now have hairier armpits and locks that no longer look like they were treated on their mothers’ ironing boards (and secretly carry high class sophisticated million dollar lice) show that they are nearly old enough to release a “Best Of” album and to carry silver tipped canes on a reunion concert.

I also found out that Meteor Garden was not an original concept. It was borrowed from a Japanese manga whose creator had probably writhed in agony over the fact that no one cared that it was his idea. Japan now has its own version of the story but apparently, their leads are less smooth, hairless and metrosexual than the original F4 because very few are swooning.

Filipino Spaghetti

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I need my spaghetti fix. Unfortunately, I can’t prepare my own. It’s not that my culinary aptitude is so close to nonexistent that I do not know how to cook noodles in boiling water for five minutes and to heat a pack of Hunts sauce. It’s just that someone I live with doesn’t seem to like my spaghetti.

I tried serving my kind of spaghetti on several occasions and on every one of those times, my father-in-law, who is a true cook extraordinaire and whose word is law in the kitchen, glared at my pots of sauce. Each time the itch got the better of him, out came the hotdogs and free flowing ketchup from the fridge and into my sauce. Twice I insisted on MY sauce. He didn’t say anything but the ever so slightly perceptible depression at the sides of his mouth and the way he kept his bottle of ketchup beside him like a six shooter made me feel like my spaghetti had suddenly grown an aquiline nose, brown hair, a foreign accent and an unpatriotic air.
If there is such a thing as American pizza, then there is nothing wrong with having Filipino spaghetti but there is nothing wrong with me either. My spaghetti is just the way I like it. It’s just the way Pugad Baboy’s Dagul likes it. It’s just the way a weird Filipina lost in her own country likes it. I suspect though that to avoid further tension in the kitchen and the inconvenience of preparing two platters of differently flavored spaghetti, I shall have to go to that restaurant that smacks of stiff aquiline noses where the pasta I like will cost me a day’s wages. Huhuhu.

CDO Bloggers

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I’ve always had people problems. Let me rephrase that. I have a problem with people. I don’t exactly run away screaming at the sight of people— YET, but I do prefer to go solo most of the time. That’s why friends usually get offended when I decline invitations for communal binging and I get wide-eyed stares of surprise from acquaintances when they catch me plying my air conditioned primary residence that is the mall.

But I live in the Philippines where the desire to congregate is many times stronger than other people’s. This is the country where every event that distracts even slightly from routine becomes an excuse to call friends and family for endless rounds of merrymaking. If most people in my circle socialize with painful regularity, I figured that there must be something wrong with me.
It was therefore with tremendous effort fueled by a small desire at achieving normalcy, that I purposefully accepted an invitation to meet fellow bloggers in the city. That was even as I quaked in my shoes at the prospect of meeting real people. But the meeting appealed to me because it had ends other than getting drunk on absurdly expensive buckets of beer. I was told that city groups of bloggers were all the rage in Manila and Davao and that it was about time that Cagayan de Oro had its own.
I arrived early because I did not want to have to stare stupidly at restaurant patrons looking for people who looked like online avatars. So I sat there, every nerve in my body in tiny involuntary seizures either because of the endless cups of coffee I had consumed while waiting or because of the fear that people were coming.
The people who looked nothing like their creepy, cute or abstract avatars eventually came. The most surprising thing about them was that they were all accomplished techno-savvy professionals who had every right to scoff at my newbieness BUT (gasp) they did not bite! By virtue of some invisible force, I blurted some gibberish, succeeded at convincing them that I was amiable and became a part of a group.
I wonder if this makes me normal now.

The Watcher

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A friend who lives in another island is in need of a watcher, not the type whose job is to make sure that his boss’ vote buying really pays off. I mean the type whose job is: (1) to ring for the nurse in case the one being watched inexplicably turns blue, and (2) to satisfy the billing department’s demand for another down payment before the hospital is confronted with the dilemma of whether or not to take hostages.

I had a similar problem when I gave birth but it was more because of my ignorance than the actual lack of a watcher. I didn’t know until past my second decade of existence that patient watchers in Philippine hospitals are a must. Otherwise, patients will discover the true definition of death by neglect. So I went to the hospital by myself in all my pregnant glory to the distress of the staff who told me I needed a watcher immediately unless of course I were capable of lying in the delivery table, paying the bills, buying medicine and checking for spare blood from Red Cross all at the same time. Fortunately for me, I had in-laws who were so grandchild hungry that they didn’t mind watching over the source of what would become the joy of their twilight years.

My sister had pals who were equally as ignorant as I but they had an excuse because they were Europeans on a vacation in the Philippines. One of them had to unexpectedly be admitted to the hospital so the other one drives her to a public hospital and leaves her there. A nurse comes along and asks her for her watcher. The European blinks and her expression transforms into a question mark. So does that mean that European hospitals do not require watchers?

This begs the question: Are close Filipino family ties partly the result of hospital systems or are hospital systems the result of close family ties? Moreover, is the poverty of the Filipino condition yet again to blame for our need for watchers? What if every member of the family had to work to pay for the hospital bills? Should one volunteer to be unemployed to watch over the hospitalized?

If only my friend’s hospital allows online watchers in the same way that one funeral parlor now allows online wakes, there’d be no problem. Hehe.

Mag Chat at Bumuo ng Mail

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I’ve been told that Yahoo Mail is so last decade and that the sosy ones have migrated to Gmail. I’m not exactly the sosy type but @gmail does sound nicer than @yahoo at least until Gmail becomes the next big stale thing five years from now.

So I signed up for a Gmail account and was a little surprised. Apparently my default mode is in Filipino and even if I try to shift to English, I still get the Filipino translation of everything when I check my mail.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the Filipino language. To me, it is one of the softest and most romantic of languages but it feels weird when you attempt to use it in a technical manner and on an online platform. It seems slightly out of place and incomplete. I still can’t get the hang of Mga Bituin and Kahon ng paghahanap and then there’s Mga Chat and Mga Setting. Don’t we have translations for chat, settings, sign-out, inbox, contacts and spam (ano yun, Karne Norte)? Is there no place in our noble tongue for tech talk?

My little trip into Pinoy Gmail just reminded me of how we still haven’t kept up with the virtual trend. While much of the world has completed its online migration, BIR still doesn’t have a more appropriate system for taxing online netizens, schools are still teaching Word and Power Point and small companies still haven’t realized that the future of businesses is in virtual reality.

I can’t blame the structure of our language for being what it is and for not allowing some local versions of foreign words. But I can’t seem to reconcile myself with the idea that there are other aspects of online life that our social systems also do not accommodate.

Maybe I’m just really looking for a genuine Pinoy online experience that doesn’t feel like I left half of my body in some foreign land.

Job Wet Market

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It was reasonable to assume that the day started out on a positive note. The rows of neat tables and boards were laid out in anticipation of an orderly flow of people. They would go in for short chats and go out joyously expectant.

By the middle of the morning, I was told that the line had gone on into infinity. But at least the tables were still in order and although the level of human noise pollution had risen incredibly, no one had yet dropped dead of exhaustion. 
It was a different story as the clock struck three. By then, the line of people that had snaked beyond sight had inexplicably found its way into the bowel of the large unpaved room and the orderly flow broke in one swoop. The tables resisted displacement but the aisles in between had people going in eight directions. An instant at the doorway would tell you that everyone in the room had developed over active sebaceous glands and that venturing in would most likely give you a whiff of what humans really smell like without chemical masking. You’d have fonder memories of your face rubbed on a table of fresh fish.
If it weren’t for the obvious signs of life, I’d say we were all inside a giant canister filled with sweat and carbon dioxide. People stood so close to each other that each would have to breathe whatever the others exhaled. At least the taller ones had dibs on whatever fresh air was still available. The poor ones in polo shirts and slacks who sat on either side of the rows of tables had no choice but to inhale who knew what. 
At the end of the day though, staying in the canister proved to be more appealing than moving out. They all had to go home at the same time and it seemed that there were so many humans on that single spot of earth that there were no public rides left. Both sides of the street had clumps of people waiting to attack empty jeepneys on the way down to the city. Others simply opted to walk. 
I had no idea that this was the extent of unemployment in our city, in our country actually.

Silence No More

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It is a common belief that writers need silence OR order to make sense out of the strands of thought that constantly threaten to twist into dreadlocks. There are a couple of writers I know who must damage their biological clocks so they can sleep in the morning and compose in the dead of the night when everything is— well, seemingly dead. 
I used to need silence too because I was used to it. I lived with a mom who had a house that was almost a monastery (or was that a cemetery). Circumstances have changed though. I now live with true Pinoys who thrive in minefields of constantly exploding sound. If it isn’t Martin Nievera dripping goo on the CD player it’s some neighbor on the videoke exercising strangled cords in a key that has yet to be invented. I cannot afford to take a break to rant, rave and demand a stop to the madness. Time ticks for the writing slave who must produce or else suffer the absence of tomorrow’s pandesal and instant noodles. In a way, I beam with pride over my new hybrid ability. I am invincible.
Deep inside, I also don’t seem to mind the daily ruckus anymore. It seems to me as if Filipinos are happier when there is noise. My father-in-law says his radio is always turned on to drive the evil spirits away but it might as well include bad memories and psychological disorders. 
My mother-in-law was extremely noisy and extremely happy even when she knew that her disease would rob her equally noisy clan of a day’s worth of laughter. But even as they prepared to let her go, it was the constant noise on nightly vigils, 9th days and 40 days that ensured that those she left behind would go on living.
Huh.

For the Love of Booze

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There is only one thing I hate more than fiestas and booze— special occasions and booze. I am not an alcohol drinker but that is not the reason why I have a special aversion for the act of intoxication. I should know better than to discriminate against yellow or brown bloods. I have excellent friends, including my husband, who are fine people who frequently undergo alcohol transfusions.

My husband in particular isn’t someone to complain over. He spends his own money, tiptoes back home in the quiet of the night, prepares his own calming potions, cleans himself up and then sleeps without having to bother me over anything or wake me up for an irrational conversation. If he takes particularly long interpreting the muddled internal map for home, I get a special cholesterol treat from McDonald’s when he does get his map straightened out. It’s an entirely different story though with others who, by virtue of fate and not of choice, I share close ties with.

The first few bottles usually present no problems. If anything else, they seem more jovial and attractive, with their red-tinged cheeks and toothy grins. The third case of six grandes however facilitates the dreaded transformation and because you are related by blood or association, you have no choice but to suffer their perceived heaven or hell, depending on their levels of self-esteem. Those who have life issues from infinity and beyond bombard you with the same sob story you’ve been hearing twelve times a year for ten years. If they are in a particularly good mood, they will engage you in an argument that defies the rules of basic logic. Arguing back, as in my case, would prove that you are truly an even greater fool.

The non-drinker’s saving grace is the omnipresent gem of Philippine entertainment— the videoke. The secret to getting away from a flammable companion is to secretly key in the code to My Way and you will have succeeded in creating a riot over the microphone at which point you can secretly retreat to a darker corner of the room.

But the sigh of relief is short-lived. As soon as the cock starts to crow, they will realize that it is time to retire to their crypts where they must play dead for most of the day or else suffer the pangs of wifely discontent. They drive home at the height of their induced insanity with you in the back seat. You will soon find out that homing pigeons know their way better than the guy on the wheel. It is only by some miracle that you live to see another day.

At noon or in the afternoon, they wake up as if nothing happened. You are left with the strange feeling that the joke was on you.

I am Not a Princess

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My daughter placed a large Rubik’s Cube underneath my pillow last night. Perhaps she’d been thinking that the tooth fairy would be amenable to a substitute. Not only did I not feel it, I also slept straight for seven hours and woke up without a stiff neck. That simply proves that I am definitely not a princess and that I had not been accidentally placed in the wrong crib after birth.

It is quite possible though that I really am secretly a princess but I was unable to feel the large lump underneath my emaciated pillow because too much writing had robbed me of my energy, wit and sensitivity. I have therefore resolved to take a one week break from blogging until I can collect my scattered wits, refill my fat-deprives cells and feel the Rubik’s Cube underneath my pillow.
I shall be back next week, alive, alert, awake, enthusiastic… really!

Breeding Thieves

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Take advantage of [the] misfortune of this country if you want to survive.
-Alleged advice from one bigwig in office to another
Do you remember the goody-goody two shoes apprentice nerd everyone made fun of in high school because he wouldn’t let anyone copy his assignments or peek at his coded notes? I wasn’t exactly that kid but I almost fit his shoes. Of course, I didn’t make a fuss about lending my notes or swapping minor assignments. Quizzes and tests were different matters though. The veiled nun in my head kept visiting me at night giving me sermons on the evils of cheating. I also resented the fact that I had to study for hours only to drag my feet groggily to a row of expectant fresh-faced classmates who did not need cucumber slices or coffee. But I let them copy anyway because the torture of ostracism was more painful than the permanence of eye bags or the imaginary monologue of a woman in a penguin suit. 
There was one thing I couldn’t stand though and that was me copying from them on major exams. I cheated rarely in high school and when I did, it was only because the cryptic symbols of math looked the same as chicken scratches to me except that algebraic gibberish threatened to give me a heart attack. But it was when I was the one copying that the nun in my dreams brought me a whip.
Eight years after my last year in high school, I held authority over a high school social studies class of my own. For two years, I threw periodic fits over identical schoolwork. In my time, we had the sense to rephrase and change the context of assignments that we copied. Today, kids rip off pages from Wikipedia, photocopy them ten times, write different names on each copy and submit to the teacher. What makes them do this? Is it laziness, opportunism, stress or the culture of dependence?
I got so tired of reading perfectly written paragraphs that I made sure none of them would ever copy again. I made the skill of analysis a requirement for all my assignments, quizzes and tests. I stopped asking what and when and started asking my students how and why. Even if they opened their books in class they never found the answers until they learned to analyze by themselves. That cured cheating in my class.
Many of the non-teaching individuals I know never could understand my zero tolerance for cheating. They say it’s always been a part of school life and no student these days will survive without using each other. That’s just the kind of attitude that breeds the kind of future scoundrels rallies are organized against. Of course, I had many classmates who were chronic cheaters who grew up to be upstanding citizens of some other country, but would you rather take the chance hoping your kids won’t grow up into thieves in office? Tell them it’s ok to cheat a little to survive and they have a 50% chance of growing up into those thieves.
Do you want to clean up this country? Start with the kids. Tell them it is never acceptable to compromise and that cheating in any form is never right. If they’ve never had nightmares of nuns, you’re the only one who can help.