Christmas Party

It's our first Christmas Party at school and we were all excited about it. Funny I WAS more into it than my son. Early on, I bought him a new shirt and I bought myself a new shirt too! Nothing fancy really, just something new to wear for the occasion. In my family, Christmas is one occasion that calls for new wardrobe and I am carrying that tradition to my growing family.

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Little Women

I had the time of my life sitting by the registration table during our recently concluded Christmas party. I sat with two women who served with me and entertained me with their little stories of home.

Nellie's been entertaining plans of going to the US after being taunted by her brother to take the long overdue vacation she's planned many years ago. After giving it a thought, she finally mustered the courage to tell her mom about it, to which she got an unexpected nod! And then hours later, while they were preparing to eat lunch, she said, "Kung magpa-America ka, kung mapatay ako mapuli ka man ha?" (pag nasa America ka na at mamatay ako, uuwi ka ha?) Ay te?

Janna's not getting enough sleep these days because of her teenage boy who choose to give her more problems than she can handle. The hubby's abroad so the boy must be yearning for the father-image that's why. One time when she was very very angry she threatened to send his son away to his father's folk in Luzon, "Sige, kay malayas ako di, mayo man na nga wala ka na bata!" (Sige, at lalayas ako, mabuti na yun para wala ka nang anak!. Amo na gid na ya ang mga kabataan subong?

'Tis the Reason to be Angry, tra la la la la la la la la

Two things ticked me off today. The first one is the office making me explain why I had to avail of an emergency leave. Hwat? Bago yan ah! Even the lady who's computing our leave credits was surprised of this new policy from upstairs. To spite them, I took my leave application form from HR and wrote an explanation about it.

My househelp went home because her grandmother was hospitalized hence I had to be absent from work because no one was left to take care of my son and my husband's two aunts left at home.

There! Happy?

The second one would have to be my encounter with the counter-lady at the fast craft ticketing office. There was a frantic mood in the ticket booth, everybody wanted something: refund a ticket, rebook a ticket, buy a ticket. It was already getting dark and everybody was getting more impatient as the time went by. And then, when it was my turn to be served, the counter-lady stood up and announce that she's closing her window already because she's tired and she's not even getting any additional pay for the overtime. What the...... Tama ba yun? I raised my voice and pointed out that I was the last person in line and how come nobody ever said anything about closing down, why just now? I insisted that I should be served. She never did... but she was kind enough to pass me on to the lady on the next counter who was finishing up. Dang! that was close!

Of the two, the second ticked me off more, from the exhaustion for the most part. I couldn't really blame the counter-lady for being tired and underpaid but when you are in the service sector, there is this thing they call courtesy, you know, and you should live by it!

As for the office, well, I'm not surprised about how these new policies crop up from time to time. Some fickle-minded whimsy's mind is just being tickled again. Hopeless case.

There, I got it off my chest! Now I can go to sleep! Ciao!

Emo Check #1

I wonder what's behind this heavy feeling I am feeling right now. It all started with the thought of going back to work (Dec. 18 is an island holiday here). Then there was the thought of what wrong could happen today. Bothers me still...must be the residual feeling from last Monday's misdeeds. I'm so pathetic... and paranoid!

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An officemate owed me a little over a hundred worth of cellphone load (income degenerating project ko man ang magpautang load). The last account was made in August, after which she stopped, out of prudence perhaps, considering that she told me she would pay me when she sees me in the office. Well, I've been seeing her every working day since then, placed notes on her desk a couple of times but the payment never came. When we got our year-end bonus, I wrote her another note in bold red, placed it on her desk in the hope that I'd be able to collect from her. Never happened. All I got was silence.
Today, however, I got the shock of my life when she came right to me and handed over crumpled pieces of bills amounting to the worth of the load that she owed me. Finally!
Money is not the issue for me here, but the ill-feeling that I have each time I see her squander the meager resources that she has on non-essentials and still go about her dealings with me as if she owes me nothing. I'm just glad that it's in the past now.

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Missing my son. Savoring the company of the hubby. We banished our son to my mom in Bacolod to get a head start on the holidays. The parting is not as painful as it had been the first time, but when I entered our bedroom all spic and span, I kind of missed all the clutter and the strange noises coming from my squeaky little rascal.

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On the lighter side, the hubby and I was able to enjoy our movie viewing night without interruption. Watched Startdust. Enjoyed watching De Niro don a woman's dress and a heart-shaped faux mole, much so see him in a whoopsie role. I wonder what life would be like if we were like stars; we glow whenever we are encumbered by powerful repressed emotion such as unrequited love. Damo gid mabuking sa aton sini!

Facing your Fears

I ABHOR accounting! It's one of the things that I never grew to like in my years of formal schooling, much so now that I am already working. To my misfortune, accounting finds its way into all the aspects of my life. I remember running away from accounting courses in college. I made sure that my cognate didn't require me to take any. But then I enrolled in graduate school and I was made to take a crash course in accounting and yes, I would have flunked the subject had I not been the good and diligent student that I was. I tell you though, I committed all the common errors in accounting in all the tests that I took! I aced my statistics subjects but couldn't even get my journal entries right. What's wrong with me?

I just remembered all that today after I, again, committed another accounting blunder. This time, it involved lots of cash. Turns out the Excel file containing the funding requirement that I need for my program up to the end of the year was missing some links! The amount I submitted was short of 78k. As in! I grew numb, almost fainting! Shwet! Head Office will kill me. I was already hyperventilating, not knowing what to do. Last year, we caused them some shortage problem, now we're doing it again. I wanted to evaporate right there and then.

It's a good thing I came to my senses! I gathered my thoughts and made sense out of the figures in front of me. Either I bring the matter to their attention now or I just quit my job and let them deal with it. Good thing I chose the first option.

So there I was, hands clammy, heading towards the admin office straight to our budget officer's desk. Nang, daw may problema gid ako mo.... (Ate, may problema po ako).

Then I explained how I could have missed the links. I was bracing myself for the first brew of anger, but I didn't get it. Our budget officer was more intent on finding a solution to the problem rather than dwelling on my mistake.

We called the head office and explained to them what happened. Again, I readied myself for the curses and frustrated remarks, but there was none. Like the former, the efforts were into the solution not the cause of the problem.

Shwet! As in! Amo gid to ya? Feeling ko gatihin ako. Kalaw-ay gali sang feeling na the whole day ga hulat ka sang akig nga kadugay gd mag tupa. Nagpuli na lang ako wala gd nag abot ang ginahulat ko nga pangla-it, just the kindest words from head office, telling me not to do it again and to be more careful the next time around. Hay.... salamat gd! kay basi nagwawaw na ko kung naakigan pa ako! Man silingan na indi ko ya magkapyot sang numbers pro! Gina-challenge niyo gid ko! Hehehehhe....Mayo lang lakas pa ko kay Lord!

Alopecia

Chikoy's classmate was diagnosed with alopecia. According to wikipedia:

Alopecia is the loss of hair on the body. It should be distinguished from baldness, which is the lack of hair, including contexts where that absence is intentional.

Her pedia said that she's losing hair due primarily to stress because of the impact of recent events at home - her dad's not coming home for Christmas, her grandma who's been her psuedo-nanny, migrated to the US and her siblings, given the wide age gap are not giving her the companionship that she needs. The little girl's been eating scantly and has developed violent tendencies at play. Her mom's been trying to double up on the love and affection, showering her with gifts to make her feel special. Must have been very difficult being the center of attention and losing all the people that you love all at the same time.

Which makes me rethink my plans of working abroad. Should I stay of should I go?

City of Friendship - Tagbilaran City, Bohol

Finally, Bohol! glad the office picked this venue for our national convention. The team is pretty organized this time, even integrated a tour of the island into our itinerary.

What I enjoyed most:

The serenity of the place, sunset at Bohol Tropics, this wooden bridge at the Tarsier viewing area, the port fronting Baclayon Church and the Tagbilaran Pier at dusk.

Bohol's finest.

Loboc Children's Choir. We were fortunate to have been serenaded by the famous Loboc Children's Choir. It was like listening to angels sing. They recently bagged awards during their stint in Spain and even the Vienna Boy's Choir gaped in awe with their performance. Cesar Montano once commissioned them to "harana" his then girlfriend Sunshine Cruz when he proposed marriage to her. I bet she got carried away with the background music, hence she said yes!

The Tarsiers! History books tell us a lot about them. I'm glad the trip set a few things straight and factual. For one, they are not monkeys and they are not the smallest of their kind. They're not endemic to Bohol alone but they are territorial and afraid of cats.

Loboc River. Until today, I've never seen a river so deep in color and so clean even with the commercial activities in the area. As in, wow! and it's really so placid! I haven't watched Panaghoy sa Suba but I bet it's immortalization is as good as the real thing!

The Chocolate Hills. Now here's another fact I learned during my trip. The soil in these hills are salty hence no trees would grow in them. The hills are at their glorious during summer months when they look like mounds of chocolate kisses. There are two viewing areas, one in Carmen, which is really accessible to tourists and the other in Sakbayan which is still about 45 mins away (please don't trust my estimate, I was asleep during the transfer, hehehehehhe).

Things I Brought Home with Me

Loads of Pasalubong. Like any other trip, I was prepared to buy stuff for the folks back home. Of course I bought some tarsier key chains, ref. magnets, Bohol shirts for the hubby, mother and the two chuwariwaps, chunkie nuts instead of the usual peanut kisses which are readily available almost everywhere . I also bought baked polvoron, some cookies, ubi polvoron and ubi jam.

The Ubi Story. We learned from our tour guide that Boholanos take the planting of ubi rather seriously with a ritual which involve women with naturally big "bumpers". The planters hire these women (preferrably married) to do the planting in July during the full moon. Bare naked, they chant "mu daku ka ing ani, mu crack ka ing ani" or something like that while planting. The guys in our bus had a few laughs about it, "wala bang demo?"

How do tarsiers mate? During the mating season, female tarsierspee on a tree branch or something to advertise that she is "searching" for a mate. The male tarsiers then search for the pee scent that they like and they leave their saliva on them. The female then surveys her pees for her perfect match and then the mating. The actual mating thing happens in just a few seconds. (Daw si Flash ba!)

Some quips from HIM:

• Never ASSUME, for it will make an ASS out of U and ME
• Murphy's Law. If something goes wrong, it will.

Mixed Feelings.
Bohol brought those who were close, closer and rifters far more apart. It brought me sad news about the hubby's friend taking his own life and my son almost sticking a pencil through the househelp's eye. It brought me feelings of frustration for the lack of affirmation from HIM about our work and the hubby not happy about my buying him the wrong sandals. The negative feelings lingered quit a while but when I look back, I can't help but laugh at all those jumpshots and hilarious photo ops we brought ourselves to do. After all the hardwork and low morale that we've put ourselves into, we deserved all the fun. Thanks to our ever humble servant-leader who never fails to look after our best interests, life is still a beautiful thing!

Consider it Sold!

"... so lovely to hold, but when you break it, consider it sold!" waaaaaaaaa! and it wasn't even my fault! I was standing next to a bracelet stand in one of my favorite thrift shops holding this black bangle with multi-colored dots when someone bumped into me and bham! it slipped through my hand and down to the floor. My eyes were on this violet polka dot bangle when I leaned over to pick it up. I got the shock of my life seeing the item actually broken into four jagged pieces. Unlucky for me, a saleslady was nearby. She took a good look at the broken bangle still inside a plastic wrapper and demanded that I pay for it. I was in an arguing mood so I told her I won't.

In the first place, I did not, out of my own carelessness, drop the item, I was bumped into. And whoever did, (I was too busy then so I didn't notice who) should be made liable for it. But that whoever was nowhere to be found and I was the last person in the scene of the crime, which makes me the murderer of the polka dot bangle. So unfair!

"Ma'am, bayran mo gd ni, kay kung indi ibuhin gid ni ya sa akon sweldo." (Ma'am, you have to pay for this, otherwise it will be charged against my pay) ~ already teary-eyed

"Indi ko gani. Kaya ko man na bayran a, galing indi man ako ya ang rason nga-a nabuka ina, nabunggu-an man lang ko, daw indi man na guro tsakto nga pabayran mo na sa akon?" (I can afford to but I won't pay for that. It's not my fault that it's broken, I was bumped into. Don't you think it's unfair of you to make me pay for it under the circumstances?) ~ tskato man ininglish ko hehehehhe? At this point I was already giving her my mataray/ taas-kilay look.

She went to her supervisor, told her that I wasn't paying. The supervisor came to see our situation. She listened to my plight and I knew by the look of things, I was winning her over to my side. Saleslady was already stressed and I can see that she was already looking at a payslip less the breakage caused by the incident. At that moment, I decided to concede. My getting-off the hook might serve my interest but in this kind of situation, I would put to misery a minimum wage earner. But before I verbalized my thoughts, I made one lengthy speech:

Kasarang ko na magbayad, mabakal pa ko gani dugang, and indi ko lang gid ya gusto kay indi man akon sala na nahulog na siya kag nabuka. Wala ko man na ginpangayo na amo na ang matabo. Sa dason, kung amo ni gani nga mga breakable ang mga items niyo, indi niyo pagbutang sa alagyan sang damo na tawo kay pirme ka lang gid makakita ingkwentro kung mabuk-an ikaw sang imo na items....(dramatic pause... pa-epek ba!) Te, indi gid ko tani ya magbayad galing daw mahibi ka na ho, Christmas ko na lang na sa imo.

At that moment, she was relieved. And since, in my arrogance, I told her that I will buy an additional bangle, I picked out the violet polka dot item which was already in my hand. I could see her eyes follow me from the stand to the counter, making sure that I really paid for the broken item. The counter lady looked surprised to see the broken item, more surprised that I was paying for it. Might I have been the first to do that? Damn! Pero sige lang a, sa kadamo sang nabuka/guba ko nga mga items sa mga istante sa bilog ko nga kabuhi, subong pa man lang ako ginpabayad. My bad deeds has caught up with me after all! Hehehe.


Here's a picture of the broken bangle after it received the superglue treatment (thanks to hubby). Of course it's back in shape and it will stay that way unless I try to fit my big hand into it. LOL!