Caustic Thoughts

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

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.

Free Writer to Go

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My parents raised me to be so independent that I rarely ask for help for anything even when College Algebra nearly killed me. I mostly get by on my own steam which explains why I’m still lost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on an antique steam boat. My independent streak is the reason why I’ve never gotten used to people asking me for help especially when they define help as, “do everything for me for free.” Since I got married though, I found out that I also married a set of protocols including the requirement to put arms, legs and soul at the disposal of kin and connections.

Because I have only one obvious skill (my other skills are hidden behind a veneer of sarcasm), there is only one kind of help people ask from me. They ask me to write. I’ve written reports, assignments, love letters, resignation letters and fake excuses all in the name of kinship. People apparently think that, just because I know my letters better than my numbers, I can sit in front of a keyboard blindfolded and write a thousand page philosophical exposition on mice and men.

As every writer would know though, writing is never easy. Since I’ve had to write so much lately, every extra piece I have to do is as appealing as a pail of vomit. Every time I write it feels like a brain cell just expanded and went “pop.” If I had to lose my brain cells with such certainty, I’d really rather get paid in cash or in ego credits.

Do you want to know how to write so you can spare that poor crippled bastard whose been doing your reports for you for free? I have one piece of advice: READ like a rabid reader and then you will learn how to write and then maybe you’ll understand too what it feels like to be asked to die slowly for free.

By the way, I’m not as unfriendly and as unaccommodating as I sound. I happily help people who can help themselves to some extent first.

Take Me to Your Leader

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I am a Star Trek fan but will never really talk about being one simply because very few can relate to me. While my classmates talked about the latest foreign prancing units of testosterone and romantic literature of the popular and forbidden kind, I sat across my imaginary friend and talked about traveling at the speed of light, life in other planets and how William Shatner’s hairline got abducted by aliens. I was so enamored with the show that my invisible friend soon convinced me that I would one day navigate the stars too even if my mathematical abilities never went beyond addition and subtraction and my physics teacher came close to certifying me an idiot.

When the local T.V. station, that had more static snow than clear broadcasts, dropped the show because it was earning them the equivalent of a black hole, I had to settle for more popular science fiction fare on the big screen. You know, the type where the earth either always gets swamped in catastrophic floods and you can almost hear Noah whispering “I told you so” over your shoulder or always gets invaded by aliens with issues and America always saves the day. 
If the earth really got invaded I wonder what the rest of the world would be doing. While America sends off its baldest bad ass former/wannabe NASA astronaut into outer space to incapacitate the mother ship and save the world once more would we Filipinos be:
a. smiling and laughing as if the end of the world was the most natural thing?
b. showing those menacing aliens the way to the Batasang Pambansa or to Malacanang?
c. drafting a memorandum of understanding for the aliens to consider?
d. drinking San Miguel beer to dull the pain?
e. watching Wowowee because Angel and Piolo will be lip synching on stage off key? 
I would probably be on a rooftop with a placard screaming, “Take me with you.”
P.S. Incidentally, would anyone know if there is any truth to the War of the Worlds story? I was told that when H.G. Wells’ classic was first adapted for the radio over a century ago, the people of London were said to have believed that there really was an invasion and began to panic. Fortunately, nuclear technology wasn’t invented yet and no half crazed balding scientist ever thought of nuking the earth to get rid of those long-limbed bastards.

She’s So Very Piang

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Would somebody tell me what in blue blazes is piang?

Why oh why among all the nations of the world have we Filipinos been cruelly selected to suffer this medically incomprehensible condition? Piang clearly does not refer to a full bone fracture or a strained muscle. Otherwise, the poor victim would be unable to manage even the faintest glimmer of the famed Filipino jollity in the worst of adversities. I have been repeatedly told though that if a piang is left untreated by a manghihilot (quack doctor + masseuse of sorts?) the afflicted individual will suffer from innumerable aches and pains for the rest of his miserable existence, whereby he will wonder if he had been chosen by a gang of invisible magical dwarves to play tricks on.
My parents must have been from an alternate dimension where the Philippines is the dominant world power and where Filipinos sit in garden cafes drinking tea, discussing Plato’s Republic and plotting total world domination. They don’t believe in piang and the manghihilot. By virtue of association, neither do I. But my in-laws do and dinner conversations occasionally take a bad turn whenever my daughter is ill for unknown reasons. 
* There’s no question about it. She has piang.
** [staring down at my MSG laced dish; no comment]
* We must bring her immediately to the manghihilot.
** [if my eyes had laser beams, there’d be a hole on my plate]
Of course, I do acknowledge that modern medicine cannot comprehend or solve everything. In a few hundred years when much will be understood, our current methods of healing by cutting, stitching and chemical bombardment will be met with no small measure of shock by the people of the future. While little is understood today, the traditions of old must be referred to for additional wisdom. There must be some truth to piang and hilot but I just wish there was at least some sort of explanation for them. Even the most obscure of eastern medical methods hazard some explanation behind their curative claims no matter how improbably mystical. No one however has ever explained what piang is. 
I’m going to go crazy if I have to bear another dinner conversation about this unknown condition that the old ones say plagues my daughter every time she has fever or an upset stomach. Somebody save me.
*Photo Credit: Webweaver

Cut and Paste

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I once got into trouble with a coworker because I made the mistake of wearing my brains on my sleeve and announcing my undying aversion to Filipino romantic melodrama. She declared me unpatriotic (oh, and I can almost hear someone from a mile away accusing me of just being pa-sosyal right about now). In the interest of promoting corporate peace and harmony (I was in charge of employee relations), I offered my apologies, shut my mouth and went on hating Piolo and company in the comfort and privacy of my other secret self. What I should have told her was that watching the polar ice caps melting from Sharon Cuneta’s eyes does not constitute patriotism. There is no excuse to love your own when it’s only capital is its appeal to the tear ducts.

Besides, how can I be unpatriotic when I stayed glued every afternoon to my grandmother’s TV set marveling at the beauty that was Tita Duran and Pancho Magallona in black and white? I loved FPJ’s smacks and kapows too far better than those by the dynamic duo in colored tights. Heck, I even went so far as to patronize the two hour song and dance movie numbers by German Moreno’s scholars in polka dots and ribbons because my yayas were my barkada and they told me Janno and Manilyn would make me a happy, psychologically balanced, socially agreeable girl. 
But that was it. I can’t offer the same love and dedication to the current stable of gooey weepers. The titles alone of today’s movies are discouraging enough. Is it just me or are almost all of today’s romantic movies prolonged cut and paste elaborations of pop songs? It’s as if all of the Filipino creative title makers had died in a nuclear explosion leaving the producers with no choice but to fish for movie titles in a vat of stale, radioactive lyrics from foreign top ten songs making the rest of the nation forever prone to the last chorus syndrome.
Did you notice too that foreign backdrops are becoming all the rage? When a story can’t carry itself with enough dignity, the prospect of seeing some actress’ breath freezing over in front of a European building is enough to justify parting with half your day’s wages at the cinema booth. So long as I retain some measure of sanity, I cannot follow John Lloyd, Bea, Angel, Piolo, KC, Richard, Sam and Toni to Milan, Paris, Venice, Santorini, Australia or even Mars. 
I’ve promised myself though to be more “patriotic.” I will watch Filipino romantic movies someday when they stop whatever they’re doing right now or when they make a movie out of Don’t Touch My Birdie.

Gunpoint

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This week there will be no brilliant displays of sarcastic wit. I woke up in the morning of August 18 to the sound of the radio blaring. The usually high-strung radio host of Bombo Radyo was screaming a couple of decibels louder. While I struggled to convince myself that the morning was my friend, I heard him mention a jumble of words that contained Kauswagan, MILF and gunshots. My blood turned cold and ran out of me. Did he mean Kauswagan that was right beside the barangay where I lived in?

After an hour or so of excruciating anxiety, I gathered that he meant another Kauswagan, one that was two hours away in Lanao del Norte, a province next to ours. I could almost touch my sense of relief but it would be short lived. A mere two hours away was a place where people were dying. If the MILF who had surrendered after the incident were telling the truth, they were apparently ordered to kill anyone and everyone in sight including children. I suspect that the kind of anxiety and grief that drove people insane would be with me forever.

When I lived in faraway Baguio and Cebu, there had already been similar reports from various provinces and regions in Mindanao. It was not odd that I felt detached. Miles of land and water separated me from the horrors and reality of a decades old liberation war. Now that I am really a neighbor to the conflict, the feeling has changed. For the first time I understood what it was to really grieve for the men, women and children who had died at gunpoint and to fear for my family’s life. A two year old child was chopped to death in a field by retreating rebels. If that had been my toddler, I would have volunteered to die.

Our city was in red alert for a day or two but people walked the streets like it was a normal sunny day. For Kagayanons, it really was a normal day. They had gotten used to this. It has happened many times before. The people of Cagayan de Oro are also certain that the city, by the power of Vice Mayor Emano or some other worldly protection, will never taste the bitterness of violence. They say I’d be a fool to worry. I hope they’re right.

The Culling

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Thanks to online writing I am fast becoming a Jill of all trades. I’ve learned nearly everything from achieving transcendence to convincing fellow females to go out with me. This week, my assignment has made me an unlikely expert of horse breeds, 75 of them to be exact. Most of these breeds are the result of human intervention. Human meddling in equine affairs has sometimes been so extreme that there have been horses as short as 17 inches and as tall as 6 feet.

Breeders decide which horses can give and deliver reproductive fluids to create horses with physical attributes, performance traits and temperaments that are ideal for whatever specific purpose the breed will be used for. Those that don’t make the cut are culled. That’s just a fancy way of saying Simon (or Wyngard) says they have no talent, earning them unlimited passes to the pastures of the afterlife. Of course, other breeders simply prefer castrating undesirable specimens or locking them away from the company of the opposite gender.

For some strange reason, that is probably the result of my own unusual breeding, horse breeding reminds me of the Olympics. I got the connection after standing on my head for a couple of hours. Try it. The truth is though is that the perceived connection is a hypothetical one. I was wondering if the Olympics could have been used as a “breed” tester of sorts if solid proof had been found to support racist theories. Would the Filipino race have been gradually culled because of the lack of desirable attributes that could lead to a gold medal? As matters stand, most of our champions have already bowed out in Beijing.

But there is no basis for racist beliefs. The Human Genome Project says we are all 99.9% similar. Although the small fraction that points to our differences may have critical implications in disease treatment, environmental adaptability and PERHAPS even specific task performance (which means slight genetic differences should not be taken lightly in the interest of political correctness), I would like to think that Filipino athletes could have an equal crack at collecting gold in events where we naturally excel in if we had the same opportunity for training as athletes in other countries do. Our failure to go for gold has nothing to do with our “breed.” I highly suspect that if culling had to be imposed, the ones who diverted the funds for sports training should be the first ones in line.

Note: For an interesting account on genetic mapping and the controversy of racial differences, check Race and the Human Genome

Photo Credit: Download-Free-Pictures.com

Career Shift Part 2

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Just when I was about to raise the white flag on my dream of becoming an industrial slave, a company noticed my desperate display of colorful feathers and invited me for an interview. Although the company is admittedly miles away from my preferred companies of milk and honey, I thought its aroma of artificial sweeteners is the closest I can ever get to what I want. So I charged into the thick of the city smog in my borrowed heels that cut deep into my sensitive, rubber shoe-pampered feet to be on time for my appointment with executive intimidation.

In the course of my interview, quite a number of hypothetical questions were thrown in that the executive and I may have hypothetically gotten into each others’ nerves. I’ve been through worse though and thanks to experience, I made sure I did not throw too many barbs at a potential employer. Unfortunately, I did not emerge completely unscathed. The truth, which both my interviewer and I arrived at, got to me.
I’m not referring to the obvious fact that no shoe made for female feet will ever fit mine. I am referring to the fact that 1) high paying HR jobs in Cagayan de Oro are rarer than white elephants; 2) numerous employers continue to flout the most basic labor laws including the rule on minimum wages; and 3) in many companies, the HR department is still viewed as either the department of perpetual help where petitions for better benefits are lodged or the ax committee where difficult and undesirable employees, that is, those that are not really 5’2 and with pleasing personalities, are deposited for elimination. 
The first two realizations are old facts of life in the Philippines but the third one still surprises me and gets my goat. It has already been a couple of decades since Personnel Departments have been renamed Human Resources Departments. That means they are no longer just the company police that are out to get delinquent slackers. The HR department however should not occupy the other end of the spectrum where they follow the general trend of complaining beyond reasonable demand, shying short of putting up pickets too. I still believe the role of HR is in the middle ground (no man’s land where anyone is shot to death?) between management and the work force. HR bears the role of promoting what is fair, right, reasonable and lawful. What is right and fair? The Labor Code and anything above it is fair. 
I can almost hear my old dragon of a boss breathing down my neck like an inebriated call center agent, “It’s all about the people.” It seems though that it all depends on whether you care more for the people above or below. If companies with a skewed perspective of HR management are all I can hope for in my little corner of the world, I seriously wonder if I truly belong in the field of industrial HR management. This might yet again be another sign that it is time for a different calling, unless of course a certain multi billion dollar shipyard investment pushes through in which case I shall risk life and limb for the chance to be enslaved.