Diary Peek: Funandfearless and the Tactless

(In which I let you in a page in my diary.)

***

Three days ago, I and BF gave her student, Ricky, a “guided” tour around Manila. Little did he know that we’re actually aliens in our own capital – we don’t go out to travel! When in Intramuros, he kept on asking if we’ve been there, probably surprised to see us enjoying the place as if we’re no different from the American tourists around. We went from the Walled City to Rizal Park in search for The Orchidarium. We walked in the park (was it Orosa Street or Finance Drive? See? I’m an alien in my own country! How embarrassing!) and found out that we were walking the wrong direction (as if one embarrassment wasn’t enough).

Walking was made more terrible by the heat. It seems like summer is here to stay. So we decided to drop by the Chinese Garden for shade. Ricky thought that it was better than Intramuros. I did, too. But it’s not because the Chinese Garden is greener or shadier. It’s because the entrance fee is seventy-peso cheaper!

We continued our journey to The Orchidarium and passed by the Japanese Garden. No, we didn’t enter. Instead, he asked why there wasn’t any Korean Garden.

We finally reached The Orchidarium only to find out that it was under renovation. So we headed to the Mall of Asia on our empty stomachs regardless if we’re just twenty strides always from a Vegan restaurant. Anyway, I don’t entertain my vegetarian side when I’m starving.

After walking the incredibly spacious mall, we went to Star City to check out Snow World. Oh, isn’t it wonderful to be embraced by an icy air after the summer heat has tormented you? But when we arrived there, we’ve got the most surprising poster of the day saying that Snow World will be closed until August. But we chose to enter anyway. Besides, roaming around that theme park though missing the only attraction we looked forward to was more interesting than sulk on the way home and miss the chance of getting into the next best thing to Enchanted Kingdom.

The trip wasn’t very cool, literally and figuratively. We marched and were barbecued, were victimized by taxi meters which malfunctioned and were deprecated by a fellow Filipino (a taxi driver) by thinking that we were Ricky’s escort girls. (That’s long enough to deserve a separate post.) But the most memorable thing about this Manila tour took place at the Mall of Asia.

We were sitting in a coffee shop after we had lunch. Ricky asked me if I’d like something to drink. I declined the offer. So he and BF had hot chocolate and coffee, respectively. We talked about his business plans and his wife. Then out of the blue he asked a question totally irrelevant to his business plans and his wife.

“So, whose house is bigger?” he asked while doing eeny meeny mini mo.

“Her [BF’s] house is bigger.” I was quick with my reply.

“I’ve never been to her house,” BF responded.

“Oh, really?” he asked, his wide eyes on me.

“Well, yeah. I’m not really comfortable inviting people over.” Then I regretted not ordering anything. It would be great to have a cool drink while someone is scrutinizing you. (Don’t worry. I won’t waste the beverage on his pores.)

I understood his surprise after hearing that I’ve never invited my best friend to my house. However, whatever my reason/s is/are, that’s none of his business. What I didn’t understand was the need to ask the kind of question we normally ask students during a lesson on opposites, adjectives and pronouns. I’ve heard of ranking businessmen and/or politicians by their net worth. But measuring ordinary people in terms of lot and floor area? That’s downright impolite!

Okay. Perhaps he’s already classified me as a social climbing lower-middle class or an heiress trying to keep a low profile and he just needed a confirmation to be able to sleep that night. I wonder if it will satisfy him if I told him that I live in a provincial compound notorious for thieves and prostitutes. That my complicated family owns a renovated two-story wooden house which was originally inhabited by termites. That we just stuff the old couch with foam to prevent the wooden foundation from becoming palpable. That the wooden post in the toilet was too old it looks like a stalactite formation. That flying cockroaches (Students said Korean cockroaches were small and wingless) and rats as big as cats roam around the first floor at night. That the wooden floorboards in the second floor give out dusts that make the house dirty no matter how often we clean. That my wooden bed creaks and that I sleep without a mattress. That the mold-infested ceiling of my bedroom already has a creepy image on it. And that all those were reasons enough to scare visitors away and thus the same reasons why I don’t invite my best friend as well as other friends who live in subdivisions over. Oh, you wouldn’t want me to enumerate everything!

I was glad he stopped the impolite interrogation there. I was actually thinking that he would ask who has bigger money in the bank but I’ve already decided that I would tell him I don’t even have a bank account. Then I’d ask him who uses bigger condoms – he or his best friend.

“Poverty” by Martial

(In which the ones who grumble more are the ones who work less.)

***

The ubiquitous complaint regarding assignments and school tasks in a teacher-student conflict is starting to get into my nerves lately. I feel my frustration getting the better of me, slowly but deeply. I still wonder why students still marvel at the amount of homework their teachers give them. When will they accept the fact that it is eternally included in their roles as learners and stop bargaining?

I wasn’t able to contain my impatience any longer when Crystal suppressed a shriek after I gave her a twenty-item assignment on grammar.

“Aaahh! So many homework! Teacher Jean – “ she stopped speaking and started flipping the pages of her huge notebook to show how many words she has to define for her vocabulary class the next day. “And you – “she looked at me deprecatingly and sighed a disappointed sigh.

“So what?” I asked, raising my eyebrows.

“It’s so many!” she once again flipped pages to prove her point.

“But you have your dictionary. You use that to get the meaning, right? Just do it. Teachers give homework so you can study and practice what you learned.”

“But I’m tired,” she whined. I tried my best to stop myself from wrapping my hands around her neck.

“Who isn’t?” I smiled instead.

“I read many many!”

“I also read.”

“I slept 11 last night,” she reasoned out.

“I’m still working when you’re already asleep.”

“Sometimes I sleep twelve,” she uttered one more irrelevant argument.

“I sleep at past one o’clock in the morning everyday,” I retorted.

“But I wake up eight o’clock,” she sighed.

“I also wake up at eight. Travel for at least an hour. Work more than half the day and go home exhausted,” I enumerated to emphasize that no student’s hardship is greater than the teacher’s.

She sighed. I didn’t know if that’s to show understanding or she thought I talked nonsense, as if she was the one who’s in the more reasonable end of the argument.

I wanted to ask her what worries her. I wanted to reprimand her for thinking that her life as a foreign student is the hardest she’ll ever have. Did she really think that sleeping late and waking up early is a burden? Doesn’t she know that there are students who patiently walk along mountain trails, cross rivers barefooted and swim the sea for hours to get to school and endure the same sufferings to get home? That these same students read the dog eared, yellow pages of their textbooks which are at least four years old using a kerosene lamp? And she complains about reading her new, imported textbooks; writing her homework using her Dong-A mechanical pencil; defining words with the help of her touch-screen electronic dictionary and sleeping late and waking up early in a comfortable dormitory situated in a sophisticated city?

It’s becoming a common trait among them and it’s depressing. It’s depressing to hear them grouse about how hard it is to study when they don’t sweat much for their tuition fee and take their studies seriously. Do they even understand how much their parents have to work to send them abroad? Forget that they’re studying in a Third World nation. Some people in this country never even had the chance to sit in a crowded, dilapidated classroom in the distant provinces let alone before a private instructor. And these less fortunate ones would give anything to have a taste of the full-of-hardships student life that our lucky students scowl at. I bet they don’t even know what real hardship is.

***

Poverty
by Martial

When your landlord would not hold your goods
In lieu of rent,
I saw you moving –
Your scrawny red-haired wife was loaded down,
Your gentle white-haired mother, loaded down,
And last, yourself as loaded –
Withered with cold and hunger –
Carrying your household treasures:

A three-legged bed,
A two-folded table,
A broken lamp,
A horn cup,
A rusty stove,
A jar which, surely, once held herrings –
Faugh! – it smells like a dry fish-pond,
A square of strong smelling cheese,
A four-year-old crown of herbs,
A rope of onions,
The resin to restore your mother’s hair
In an old cracked jar. . .
Which corner of the bridge open to beggars,
I wonder, will hold you now?

Photo source:
Walk to school and Crowded Classroom

When My Student Meets Richard Cory

(In which my storybook eyes are not enough.)

***

One thing I like about conversation classes is that the topics may come from anywhere and anyone can say something about it. Depending on the language proficiency of the student, a single topic can last for an hour or two, even days. In one of our classes, Judah and I talked about suicide, the reasons and effects. And because (I think) he’s dead serious about improving his writing skills, I gave a reaction paper about “Richard Cory” as his assignment.

Richard Cory
by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich, richer than a king,

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Though I know it wasn’t right, I expected him to criticize Richard Cory’s actions, write about how wrong his choice was. (And I thought I am not very puritan!) But after providing a brief summary of the poem, he wrote:

But I don’t think we should question Richard Cory’s decision. Why would I condemn him? I do not know his sufferings. No one knows my real sufferings, too. His pain might be too much. So I think if he killed himself, he has enough reason and right.

I didn’t mind the part where he advises people to stop caring much about others – they’re old enough. But what struck me very powerfully was his trust in a person’s decision making and his understanding of other’s pain which was (ironically) manifested by his acknowledgement of his own ignorance regarding how others suffer.

“Judah, you mean he did the right thing by killing himself to escape pain?” I probed after I handed him his essay.

He examined the purple ink on his work and sighed. Then he started and peered over the top of his notebook.

“Right thing? I don’t know,” he sighed again and put his notebook on his lap. “But for me, maybe he just thinks the pain is not tolerable anymore so he just wanted to die. People will think, ‘Oh, he’s crazy! He’s rich and all that then he did this? Crazy!’ But what do they know? It’s his life.”

Right then, after I ignored the fact that he evaded my question, I was convinced that our difference does not only lie in our religion or our language. It’s in the difference of our perspective as well. His insouciance was a perfect façade for a soul sensitive to human sorrow.

To question others why they did something – left, broke someone’s heart, ended their own lives – means questioning ourselves about what we know and how much we understand beyond the surface. Besides, pain – real pain – isn’t always skin deep. It doesn’t always show in the contour of one’s face. And reasons, what are they? When are they enough? When are they valid?

Wealth. Education. Fame. Richard Cory had them all. But if he chose to end his life despite all these, then Judah must be right – his reasons shouldn’t be questioned.

My True Colors and the Constant Reminder

(In which I am advised to unleash my “true nature”)

***

I wore a black skirt, a black halter tank top with a white bolero matched with white flip flops adorned with flowers to office today. (I know it’s quite feminine but everyone has to acknowledge his/her own gender sometimes, right?) When the bell rang, I went to my room and found that BF and her student, Ricky, were still there. I excused myself and pulled up my most cheerful “Hi” to greet them and walked in. (It’s time for my class and they’re leaving and they said it’s ok anyway.) BF went out first but Ricky lingered a bit, just enough for him to make my day.

“You don’t have to pretend to be lady-like. I don’t mind you using your true natures,” he said matter-of-factly, with a smile.

“What do you mean?”

“We [BF and Ricky] have talked about your personality. I think you’re kind of a fighter,” he said more but all the rest of his words just faded into obscurity. I owe my inattentiveness to lack of sleep and interest. Besides, I already knew about him thinking I’m a fighter (because he told me and BF told me).

“Uhmm. So I heard. Well, it’s still me,” I responded. (What am I supposed to say anyway?) I excused myself and we headed to the door and he was still talking – to which I just nodded in response. I was about seven strides away from him when I caught some of his words: “You . . . like . . . you’re the boss.” I looked back and saw him talking to one of the academy staff.

And he just gave me two songs for the day – one from Ne-Yo and another from Cristina Aguilera. Though I want to think that he doesn’t really intend to offend me, I wonder what’s with the invariable frequency of telling me I’m not feminine!

He said I’m pretending to be lady-like? If wearing a skirt and saying a gleeful “Hi” makes me fake, does that mean that I should always wear baggy pants and approach people with a gangster nod? And talk about my true nature! I could be a serial killer and/or a nymphomaniac for all he knows and he wants me to show my real self?

Wait. There’s more.

After the first half of the two-hour class, I went to the computer room to visit a site and saw a box saying there’s a new program installed. I was checking all programs to see what it was and heard someone spoke from behind me.

“What are you doing?” I looked up and saw Ricky looking at the monitor.

“I was looking for the newly installed program,” I responded.

“What program are you looking for?”

“There was a box here that says there was a new program installed so I’m looking for it to see what it is. Well, perhaps it’s just WordWeb,” I answered, glancing at him. “Didn’t you notice we have the fastest internet in the planet?”

Then he talked of him using a 1mbps internet speed and that he had to pay for it and followed it up with “I have told her [BF] about your personality and she says you’re . . . but I really think you are very boyish.” He even mimicked Manny Pacquiao’s boxing moves to make his point. Or perhaps it’s Tyson he’s emulating. Whatever.

“Well, you’re right. She’s wrong about me. Or maybe she’s just trying to defend or protect me. You’re right. Between your idea and hers, I’ll buy yours.”

He spoke more nodded, smiled and left.

Photo Sources:
Tomboy