Bisaya si Kumpari

July 15, 2009

Ang aming anak ay bisaya…

He loves to eat at McDunalds. 

One of this favourite characters in Cars is Mcqueen’s love interest, Salleh (Sally). 

He says that he is Power Rangers Red, I am Power Rangers Green and his Mommy is Power Rangers Penk. 

He’s very curious about crawling animals in our small backyard, especially with the slimy snil (snail). 

He loves going to the beach, so he can play with the sand.  He always brings his play shovel so he can dig up a hul.

Whenever we’re at the shopping centre, we always drop by Krispy Kreme to buy Lean dunat. 

He still calls his undies panteh.

There’s lots more of these, but I keep forgetting to write them down.  I will update this post as soon as I rimimber. 

Route-in

May 24, 2009

*** ALARM ****

snooze…

*** ALARM ****

snooze…

*** ALARM ****

snooze…

About 5 more of these before I drag myself out of the bed.  Sigh.  I hope we win the lottery tonight.  I’ll remind myself to start buying tickets first!  Who the hell came up with office hours starting at 9am?!  I wanna kill him to death!  Oh well, on with my exciting daily routine. 

After I’ve decided to go to work and not take a sickie, I drag myself to the bathroom.  Once I’ve finished with the infamous “wisik wisik” grooming technique, I’ll dress myself up and proceed to the kitchen for a quick breakfast.  While munching on something I can prepare in less than a minute, I may kill time by checking if my movie downloads has finished, I have to stop the uploads or my monthly quota will get stuffed.  I am a parasite, I know!  I promise I will seed once I switch to TPG.  After this fast breakfast, I give my sleeping family my flying kisses and step out of the house - into the 6 degrees melbourne weather.  After I’ve shut the door behind me, I realise that I forgot something…I did not wear a second jacket!  Holy Moley!  But there’s no turning back now, I only have a few minutes before the train arrives.  Better to freeze my nipples to death than run like crazy to catch the train!  And in the few times I do run like hell, other people I pass by, who are literally talking a stroll, catch up once I get caught beneath a traffic light.  I hate you so much you stupid contraption. 

Transportation here in Australia is pretty good, and timing is everything.  Don’t arrive too early as the trains are always 2-3 mins late, but NEVER assume they will be late because those psychic trains will sense this and just to piss you off they arrive a minute early!  They have time tables here anyway so you can plan your trips.  They are available online as well so you can just type in origin, destination and the time you need to arrive.  The results will show a map, type of transport to catch (either bus, train or tram) and the time they will depart and arrive the stations.  If you do not plan your trip at all, you will end up waiting for 20 mins for your ride.  So, once I arrive at the station at just the right time, I board the 8:24am express train. 

It’s a good 20 mins ride and I need some form of entertainment while travelling.  There are times that I read a book which our Tita Ming continuously supply Trini with, and sometimes I just listen to music on my mobile phone.  I am not surprised when people sometimes stare because I have the worst mannerisms when I listen to music.  There’s the mouthing of the lyrics, which I try really hard to be subtle.  But sometimes when I’m “in the zone” I unconciously immitate John Mayer’s distorting face and it does not look good at all. 

There’s also the playing the air intruments mannerism.  I don’t think the air guitar looks too bad, so I try not to listen to any Jimi Hendrix solos.  The air drums on the other hand looks a bit strange I must admit.  I do the entire lot, the high hat on my right hand, the snare on the left and the bass on my right foot.  To make it subtle I just tap my fingers or put my hands on my pocket.  But again, when I am “in the zone”, working the drums with my hands in my pockets looks like I’m scratching things, or worse, playing with my bird.  Combine that with the John Mayer faces and it looks like I am having a very good time!

When I am not in the mood for these media, I just sit back and relax…and watch people.  I’ve been travelling in these trains for more than a year now and so I’ve decided to put names on faces I usually see.  There’s Fernando, the mexican looking guy with a moustache and curly hair.  There’s Amanda (from The Biggest Loser Australia), the festively plump woman who almost always eats either chocolate cupcakes or dimsum.  There’s Ernie and Berta, a late-thirties couple all sweet and cuddled up in their seat.  We, meaning all of the people on the carriage, can’t help but overhear the guy (who looks like Ernie) keep yammering about his fishing trips while Berta (the name just stuck and not related at all) attentively listens to her sweetheart.  There’s also Korina (Sanchez, Filipina news caster) the lady who has tourettes.  I called her this because the words “Obama”, “Global Financial Crisis”, ”France Prime Minister” often comes out when she has her episodes.  The last time I saw her, she has a mobile phone prop that she uses when she has her ticks, a pretty neat idea so people will stop staring and just think that she’s probably talking to Hillary Clinton or something.  There’s also Emo, the emo dude, there’s Jeremy who looks like my friend Jeremy Chua, Lolo Frankie, an old guy who looks and smells like Frankenstein and then there’s Mike, the guy with the hair as round and as spongy as a microphone’s.  These people I do not mind at all, but there’s the dynamic duo Bastos and Baho.  Bastos is an idiot who NEVER let’s the ladies get in the carriages first and NEVER gives his seat to those in need.  I wanna shave his mono brows with my fist.  And there’s Baho who is an angry elderly woman who always carries bags and bags of I think dirty stinky clothes.  Sigh.  The joys of watching people.  If people would also give me a name I guess it would be John-Mayer-wanna-be-with-fungi-on-his-bird-weirdo. 

2 things similar to commuters here and in the Philippines:  Everybody is crammed near the train door and high school students are the noisiest bunch of people.

2 things different?  I guess the pushing and shoving to get inside the train isn’t as bad here.  It’s probably because trains here come more frequent than the MRTs in Manila.  It’s either that or people here aren’t as ”excited” to go to work as Manilenos do.  Second thing would probably be, I dunno, people are taller?

So, the trip home would be very similar, except for one thing…the highlight of my entire day…the very reason why I get up in the morning…and soldier on with my day at work…POTATO CAKES at the station…mmmm (drool).  I just buy one piece so I won’t spoil my appetite, and it’s just enough to get me excited again for my piece tomorrow.  I’m a bit surprised the store owner still asks me what I want.  I buy almost everyday and never get anything besides those beautiful crispy mouthwatering gifts from spud heaven.  Oh potato cakes…you make my daaayaayyy…

SINO KA?! AT ANONG GINAWA MO SA ANAK KO?!

I have no idea why I took this kids photo…and what is he doing on my son’s shirt?

Polite

Since I’ve already delved into the communication practices in Australia, let me show examples on how people use politeness in communication and how an idiot foreigner like me would respond to it.

Most of the time, a simple conversation will start with greetings and then asking about one’s situation.

“Hi Rex, how are you?”

The polite thing to say is “Good, thanks. Yourself?” or in some situations a “Good, thanks” is fine.

The idiot response would be: A nod and smile. Or always asking them back.  It sounds a bit kindergarten when you respond “I’m-fine-thank-you-how-about-you?”

“How’s it going?” This is almost the same with the “How are you?” question. So the polite thing to do is reply back with “Not too bad” or “Am alright, thanks”

The idiot response would be: Again, nod and smile. Or saying “How’s what going?” or “I’m not going”.

When people are telling a good story or something, it is perfectly acceptable to become LA Lopezes as discussed on the previous post.  Use words like, “That’s amazing!”, “That sounds terrific!”, “Oh my goodness gracious, what a wonderful stupendous, lovely and marvellous comment on the weather!” Only Jimmy Santos can pull off the last example.

Finally at the end of the conversation, the following might come up when you are about to part from each other.

“Have a nice day”, “Have a good one”, “Enjoy the rest of the week” or “Have a great weekend”.

The polite response would be “You too.” Or sometimes, “Will do!” is good response.

The idiot response would be “And also with you”. We’re not in church.

Sometimes, like on phone conversations it usually ends up with “Catch you later.”, “See you soon” or “Speak to you soon”

The polite response would be “Yeah, see you later.” or if you’re comfortable you can already add “mate” at the end. I do this sometimes, but I’m still shy about it. Hihi.

The idiot response in this telephone conversation would be:  “Nice to see you!”

I must admit that because this sort of communication is all new to me my responses are a bit programmed based on a situation, I have to be very careful how I react. Another idiot response to the example above would be, as I am programmed to answer in most cases is “You too!”.  I am just so used to giving that response that even at a fast food joint when they say “Enjoy your meal” I can’t help but respond with a very excited ”You too!”.

So anyway, I am still doing a lot of practice, talking to random people and excitedly giving them my polite answers.  I will update you with any progress in my quest to become the polite communicator from the pilipins! 

Thanks so much for reading this post!  Um…you too?

L-A-O-A

If you’re a child of the 90s in the Philippines, you probably know who LA Lopez is.  You’d also know how people reacted on his “OA-ness” which I think clearly says that Filipinos do not like or tolerate overacting people and would label them for the rest of their lives with this “condition” and probably use their name as an adjective to describe people who are OA.

I’m not happy to say that there are a lot of LA Lopezes just about everywhere in Australia.  I think most of them are.  I guess it’s an accepted way of communicating in any place or in any situation.  It’s a bit of a culture shock when I first experienced this and it blew me out of my mind (LA attempt no.1).

One example would be in the groceries.  I paid via eftpos and the girl cashier said “Fantastic!”  I thought to myself, key-ing in a PIN is not that hard really.  Or maybe she’s just being racist and saying that I am Asian and it’s “fantastic” how I figured out how to use automatic payment.  Another example is at work.  I always get the “great job” or a “amazing work rex!” reply on an email where I just changed two words on a document!  This is just very new to me, I never ever get this kind of email in my work in the Philippines…or maybe because I was not productive at all back then….hmmm….

People here just love superlatives, for example:  “Everyone, (with wave of the hand across the room) EEEEVERYONE (repeated for emphasis) was watching the TV”.  I wasn’t looking at the TV.  People also like to emphasise with the word “ever”.  Like “This is the fastest train EVER” or “That’s the greatest pancakes EVER”.  It is perfectly acceptable to assume these things even though they do not have a stop watch at that time and have not been to Megamall to eat at Pancake House.  When people see something interesting, they usually react complete with eyes wide open and LA Lopez mouthing of words technique: OH. (2 seconds gap) MY. (gap) GOD.  I try to speak like them. But it’s not for me. I just can’t get this “L-A-O-A” chant out of my head. It’s hard for me to blend in and LA Lopez, it’s all your fault.