Slip of the Pen

I’ve finally clamped my hungry mandibles on my own USB Flash Drive. Two thousand plus pesos for this sleek thing of beauty jampacked with 256 MB. Of course, the money came from my meager salary as a Student Assistant. The days of pilfering from my dad’s wallet are over.

I guess it’s about time I treated myself to a gadget which I have long considered to be a ‘luxury’, though being a CompSci student and editor of two publications makes it a ‘near-necessity’, if such a term is allowed. On one occassion too many, I needed a file presto, but it simply wasn’t there; it was tucked away in the hard drive of my home PC.

I wouldn’t have bought a Flash Drive if I already had a CD writer, but because my money’s just enough for a USB drive and I’m afraid of installing new hardware on my undependable, years-old wreck of a computer, my dreams of having a vast library of CD-RWs went pffft.

Which brings me to a question. Where would you opt to spend your bucks more (okay, just assume you had any), a USB Flash Drive or a CD writer? A silly and altogether useless question, but if you have the time it won’t hurt to drop a comment.

Sorry, but the Apple iPod isn’t one of the choices. (Argh! iPod! Gotta get one..gotta bet in the lottery..)

I’ve always enjoyed riding the red tricycles plying the streets of my barangay*. And no, it’s not the exhilarating speed which makes me feel like Schumacher in his equally-crimson Ferrari. Rather, it’s the unique scenery whizzing past my eyes, which — weirdly enough — provokes deep, ‘socially-relevant’ thoughts.

You see, there’s this road called Calle** Street. Obviously a repetitive name, but that’s where the redundancy ends. The two sides of the street are not replicas of each other; the houses, parked vehicles, and even the pet dogs of each side are strikingly different.

When I ride a tricycle and pass through Calle Street, I can’t stop comparing the old, ramshackle, wooden houses of the left side of the road to the palatial, concrete mansions of the right. Parked on the left side are several FX taxis, a jeepney, and a dented Volkswagen Beetle on its last wheels. On the right, Ford Expeditions and top-of-the-line sedans charge forth from the mansions’ gates. The left sidewalks are home to emaciated mongrels, while the right-side Dalmatians and Rottweilers chase them away when the latter’s masters take them out for a walk.

In this little swath of our barangay, a famous expression is given new meaning.

Two sides of the coin, two sides of the street.


*In the Philippines, some sort of ‘community within a city’; an administrative subdivision. Visit this link for more.
**Spanish for ‘Street’. Spanish ceased to be an official Philippine language in 1973.

In front of the Santo Domingo Church along Quezon Avenue, I was quite surprised at a familiar sight so unfamiliar.

A pair of young boys was braving the noontime sun on a crowded, open footbridge which spanned the road. Unmindful of the traffic below, they intently tugged at the sky with invisible strings, pulling this way and that. Even as a hurrying adult crashed into their frail bodies clothed in tattered sandos and shorts, their eyes remained glued to the heavens and their hands steadfastly gripped and yanked the unseen strings.

Squinting my eyes against the glaring light, I finally saw two small kites soaring above the road, casting their measly, dancing shadows on the vehicles below. Grey gusts from countless exhaust pipes powered the kites’ flight. Again and again the paper birds darted left to Sto. Domingo’s direction, right to an abandoned building fronting the great church, then upwards to the sun. Left, right, up. But never downwards.

I fancied seeing some words scrawled on the flimsy kites. One prayed: “God gimme a jeepney*, and I’ll earn many coins to buy a red, shiny car.” The other kite simply pleaded: “Let some coins drop from a pocket’s hole so I could eat kikiam** today.”

Suddenly, one kite crossed its partner’s path, then wavered in flight. The other kite followed suit and lost altitude, its diamond frame faltering. Finally, both spiraled downwards like birds shot from the air.

The kites’ unseen strings had caught each other.


[recently published in INQ7.net's Expressions]

*jeepney - the Philippines’ King of the Road. Public utility vehicle wherein 18 people can be jampacked. Ultimate polluter of the skies. Visit this link for more.
**kikiam - cheap but sumptuous cuisine (at least for me) sold by mini-food stalls dotting the Philippines’ streets. Spend a few coins, and your tummy’s pleased.

Inkless for five days.

I must apologize for failing to publish even a single bit of rant these past days. Illness, school work, job hours, and applying for a summer OJT have all taken a toll on my young blog-life.

And the next week looks grimmer than the last. Four exams spread over five days. A new organization to join. A database to be designed. A problem set to be demystified. And above all, a dozen blogs to be visited regularly! (Drop by the Links sidebar.)

Needless to say, I must post something before Monday swallows me up again and threatens not to belch me out until Friday. Maybe later in the evening, or tomorrow, I’ll be squeezing out some juice from my brain. Or what’s left of it.

But not now. My eyes are drooping, the lids as heavy as lead. My head throbs with a dull ache. It’s one in the morning, and I’ve got to heed the alarm clock at 6:30 AM. Wish me luck.

See you later.

Silence.

This is what she perceives.

For the nth time this month, the phone line is a battlefield. All she’s been doing for the past hour is to preach. Preach about my shortcomings. Preach on how she’s been working her ass to save our relationship. Preach on how my Silence is hurting us both.

She says she’s been doing all the talking.

What are you, mute or something?

Sure.

Why can’t you talk about it?

Talk?

You’re not helping me. Can’t you even defend yourself?

The agony goes on.

…

After a while, I give up on her. It’s then I stop talking.

I realize that Silence isn’t in the absence of speech, but in the absence of hearing.


[inspired by a true event which happened months ago]

First Cent:

There’s no way I can describe the utter shock which swept over me when I received the word.

I’ve been writing my name wrong for 19 years.

It’s actually trivial. On the thousands of pieces of paper that I’ve been submitting to school and hundreds of article bylines, I am “Phillip Kimpo, Jr.”

But according to Strunk’s The Elements of Style, it should be “Phillip Kimpo Jr.” See it?

Yes. There should be no comma.

I have been rendered incomplete.

**************

Second Cent:

If you’ve been watching non-primetime TV shows here in the Philippines, maybe you’ve chanced upon those second-rate advertisements about pig vitamins and stuff. Well, it happens that I did come across one, an ad with talking pigs rendered ala Squaresoft/Pixar (albeit a lot lot uglier).

One pig was being fed the ‘ordinary’ brand of vitamins, while another was pigging out (pun intended) on the ’superior’ brand of supplements. Here’s a snippet of the conversation between them, with the oinks discarded (they had female voice-overs):

Forsaken Pig: You’re nothing but a trying hard pig. No one will even think of buying you and your piglets! [munches on dirty food]

Blessed Pig: With the [insert brand name here] vitamins our owner has been giving us, I’ll be fatter than ever and they’ll buy me, not you. [smiles ridiculously]

Forsaken Pig: Tse!

Next scene: the Blessed Pig is aboard a truck, jeering at her less fortunate rival, who is understandably upset. The advertisement ends here, but we can presume that the truck will deliver the Blessed Pig to the vicious, unregulated slaughterhouses dotting the Philippines’ animal-rights-violations map.*

And she’s blessed. How’s that!

Will someone please knock some sense into the ad designer’s noggin?

*in this country, dogs are eaten and pigs are mercilessly, inhumanely whacked on the head until they die. Hm. Let me post my pro-animal rights essay in the future.

**************

The Two Cents Poem:

[It's in Tagalog. You can also find it in the Expressions section of the respected INQ7.net website. It's dear to me -- it's the first poem I've submitted to a reputable institution, and also the first to be published (on the said site, a week after I turned it in).]

Barya
ni Phillip Kimpo Jr.

Habulin,
habulin!

ang baryang gumugulong
patungo sa kanal
na kanina’y nadulas
mula sa munting palad,
ang baryang limos
ng mga nagdaraang tao
na sana’y iaabot
sa mamang fishball sa kanto.
Kalam ng sikmura’y
sasagutin ng gumugulong na barya,
habulin…

at panooring mahulog sa estero.

02:46 NH
Agosto 26, 2004
Lungsod Quezon

**************

It’s three in the morning, and I’m taking a break. Tune in next time for more of this incoherent talk.

No, this isn’t a tech-savvy article about artificial intelligence and robotics. This isn’t a rant about me being a cold-hearted, thick-skinned disguise of a human male. Er, although the description below may indicate otherwise:

Courtesy of the cyborg-name generator at http://www.cyborgname.com. And yes, you can customize the iconic avatar in the above image to suit your ‘cyborg alter ego’.