Lost in enunciation

Like I mentioned two blog entries ago, I was thrilled to have found the perfect pair of winter shoes at the Rockport store in Ayala Cebu. They were high-cut, insulated, waterproof, chocolate brown to match my coat, much more stylish than any of the pairs I had started to consider in Manila, and at 30% off.

My only worry was that they were suede. I had not had good experiences with suede shoes.

“Medyo mahirap itong linisin, ‘no?” I asked the saleslady.

“Hindi po sir. Meron naman pong suede cleaner. Kaso wala kami rito. Meron doon sa kabilang boutique, sa BUS.”

Bus?

I had never heard of a brand, or a mall, named BUS. And there weren’t any bus stations in Cebu City. There weren’t even any buses in Cebu City.

“BUS…?” I asked, carefully.

“Yes sir. Sa BUS.”

I was thinking very very hard.

“Sa BUS. Doon sa kabila…” she said again, slowly, in response to my puzzled look. I could see a huge thought balloon inflating above her head, with moron in big bold letters.

I gave up. “Sige miss, hanapin ko na lang.”

Exactly two seconds later, I realized what bus in the mall sold suede cleaner. By that time, I was already on my way out the door.

* * *

If you haven’t figured out what “bus” is, text me and I’ll tell you. I bet you’ll want to kick yourself—just as I wanted to when I figured it out mere seconds too late.

As much as I am a grammar nazi, I am also an enunciation nazi. And this is also thanks to my parents, who correct me to this day (“It’s conTRIBute, not CONtribute, though you say CONtriBUtion, you say conTRIBute…”), and are even subjecting my seven-year-old niece to the same formation (“Audrey, did you learn to say ‘DIS IS A DOG’ and ‘OLREHDY’ in Assumption?? Say ‘THIS’, and ‘ALREADY’…“).

Having grown up that way, these days, I get huge kicks out of push-girls selling ULEH RIGINERESS, a LESSERLESS option to reduce lines and wrinkles, or HIDDEN SOULDERS, the best way to fight dandruff; lectors who read from the first letter of St Paul to the ROMANCE, and choirmates who ask if the word in the song is pronounced ANTICIPATE or ANTICIPITT; and Vietnamese Finance managers talking about HUH-KEE TRAH COMFAHH diapers costing TW’ DOWHLAH.

Strangely enough, my favorite moments of enunciation nazism are the ones which have dealt me my healthy share of stupid.

Here are just a few.

* * *

Around ten years ago, when VCDs were the latest thing in home entertainment, I lent a friend one of the most valuable discs in my collection: The Red Violin.

Weeks later, I asked for it back—and he said he had lost it.

Unwilling to wait for him to replace it, I headed for one of the audio and video stores in Shangri-La. While fingering through the clutter of VCDs, a saleslady approached and asked if she could help.

“Meron ba kayong VCD ng The Red Violin?” I asked.

“Wala po,” she said. “Beaches lang.”

Eh?

“Hindi Beaches, miss. The Red Violin.”

“Oo nga po,” she said, bewilderingly sure of herself. “Merong Beaches.”

WTF, I thought. I wanted an epic art film with a fantastic score played by Joshua Bell. Not some Bette Midler sob story.

I spoke very slowly, in order that she might understand. “Miss, hindi Beaches. Gusto ko, The Red Violin.”

She, too, spoke very slowly, in order that I might understand. “Oo nga sir. Meron kaming Beeeaaaacccchhhhheeesssss.” And with that, she walked over to the shelf full of VHS’s—and handed me one of The Red Violin.

“Aaah, Beaches,” I said, smiling sheepishly as she smirked at me. I hurriedly handed back the tape and said, “Sige, thank you na lang miss. VCD na kasi ako e.”

* * *

When I was based in Cebu nine years ago, someone from the Cebu Sun Star was instructing me over the phone to send her a fax.

Whom should I “ATTN” it to? I asked.

Her response was: “Attention to JOVIE.”

Now anyone who’s spoken to a full-fledged Cebuano will know that what sounds like “JOVIE” could actually be a multitude of different letter combinations.

Not wanting to offend anyone with a misspelled ATTN, I asked, “Ah. Okay. JOVIE. How do you spell that?”

The answer came, quite rapidly: “Jugguwar, Uneform, Vektory, Eeeko, Yunkee.”

It hit me like a hurricane wind. She was already through with “Yunkee”, and I had only just figured out “Uneform”.

“I’m sorry?” I stammered.

She repeated it, testily. “JUGGUWAR, UNEFORM, VEKTORY, EEEKO, YUNKEE.”

“Aaah, okay. Thank you,” was all I could say.

I sent the fax to Juvey a few minutes later.

* * *

I have nothing against Visayans. My dad is Bisaya (though I’ve never heard him say “UNEFORM”). My ex, who is Cebuano, always had and continues to have my utmost respect (despite his endearing occasional lapses).

So, no, it’s not a Bisaya thing.

To illustrate: my final interview for P&G in late 2005 was with an Indian named Anoop. He would later become my boss (and one of my best bosses ever, at that).

This was the first conversation I had ever had with an Indian. Take note, I pride myself on being able to decipher strange accents more quickly than most others. (In Bangkok, for instance, when a touts call out, “Eeh yeewwww, yer wan’ watch fa-hkee sherrr?”, I have no problem figuring out that he’s inviting us to a fucking show.) But early on in the interview, even before the questions came, Anoop presented me with a pretty tough puzzle.

“Before I came to the Philippines,” Anoop said, introducing himself, “I was handling Wix for Indonesia...”

Handling what? In a panic, I jogged my memory for the existence of any P&G brand named Wix. It was only when I was pretty sure there was none that I spoke.

“Sorry? Wix?” I don’t think I had ever mustered so humble and apologetic a tone.

“Yes. Wix.”

I continued to look at him, slack-jawed and questioning.

“Wix,” he said again. “Wix. You know. Cough drops.”

A 1,000-watt light bulb flicked on in my mind: “Oh. Vicks!”

Unfortunately, my automatic mouth was attached: “OH! VICKS!”

Most of my bosses tell me that my face is as easy to read as the first line of an eye chart, so I can imagine how my look must have shifted from befuddled, to suddenly enlightened, to so-embarrassed-I-want-to-die, within a matter of seconds.

I guess the rest of the interview went pretty well, because Anoop still hired me.

And if there’s one good thing that came out of this—it’s that, speaking with another Indian four years later, I had no problem at all understanding what he meant when he talked about advertising in “WOGUE.”

* * *

The list goes on. Not just my own experiences, but even colleagues in meetings. For instance, big boss talking about through-the-roof objectives, and saying, This is not a HYPERBOWL. A what? asked a colleague. Not a HYPERBOWL, not a HYPERBOWL, the big boss says again and again. Oh, HYPERBO-LEE, the colleague says out loud.

But once in a while, the tables turn.

In Psychology class in third year college, our teacher gave the class a set of mazes to work on. I finished each maze ahead of the rest of the class.

The teacher came up to me and said, “Wow, you’re so speysyal.”

Trying to be clever, I answered, in a cheeky, mocking tone: “Ah talaga? Napaka-ispesyal ko ba?”

“Sira,” she said. “I meant, you’re very spatial. Magaling ka with space.”

Incidentally, this teacher was Cebuana. This time, Cebu got the last laugh.

This ordinary day

It’s nearly midnight on a Friday, and I’m writing from my room at the Cebu City Marriott Hotel.

I’m exhausted from visiting six supermarkets, from the southernmost to the northernmost ends of the city, in four hours.

I’m trying not to hate the fact that I’m working tomorrow—a Saturday, two weekends to my Berklee audition—when I could be practicing. Or working out. Or resting.

An hour ago, I was sitting in the UCC Café next to the hotel, trying to blog—but a playlist that totally went against my musical aesthetic, with highlights such as “Heaven Knows”, “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” and “Love Will Lead You Back” made it impossible to write anything.

A while ago, I watched my latest video of me performing my Berklee audition piece, which I shot this morning just before I left the house for the airport. I spotted two glaring mistakes.

Next door, a Korean couple—or are they Japanese?—is arguing loudly in heavily accented English.

Despite all this, I’m happy. And it’s not just a “la la la, yeah, I’m kinda happy” happy that I’m feeling; rather, it’s a “deep down inside I feel peaceful, agreeable, happy” happy. And it's a happy I've been feeling all afternoon.

The day started out with me being my typical bitchy, one-eyebrow-raised, eyeballs-all-set-to-roll-at-slightest-provocation self.

At the first security check at the airport, a middle-aged guy shamelessly plopped his bag into the small space ahead of mine on the conveyor belt, and just laughed sheepishly when he saw me glaring up at him (he was at least half a foot taller). “Yeah, go ahead. GO AHEAD,” I said, loudly and crisply enough for the whole queue to hear.

At the second security check, another middle-aged guy inadvertently shoved me through the metal detector with his forty-six inch beer belly. No amount of glaring elicited any response from this one.

After the final security check, I realized my boarding pass said boarding time was 10 AM, when my flight was supposed to be 9 AM—and I hadn’t been told at check-in that the flight was delayed. I walked from one end of the waiting area to the other, looking for an information counter I could clarify with. There was none. And please, these lousy packed lunches that serve as consuelo de bobo for delayed flights do not make the delays forgiveable. (I resolved to ask my well-traveled friends if I was right in assuming that Manila had the world’s crappiest airports.)

And to cap it off, I couldn’t find any decent food in the airport. I ended up with a chicken sandwich and a latte from Tinder Box—not without suffering through Tinder Box's dark, overcrowded gas chamber, with its fog of second-hand smoke.

Strangely enough, once I had had my sandwich and my latte, and had sat down at one of those Laptop Stations considerately placed in the Centennial Terminal (one thing the airport people actually did right, I thought)—the happiness began. And it just kept coming.

Within the 1.5 hour flight delay, I was able to finish transcribing my audition piece—something I had been stressing over, with too many parts of the piece still ambiguous in my mind, and with the audition only two weekends away. It was marvelously productive; and the process of transcribing not just the melody, but also the harmonic nuances and the bass line, proved to be excellent ear training too.

During the flight, I was able to start my next “grand blog entry” (not this one, something more thought through, hahaha). And I was hugely thankful that I had brought my Mac. Coming from years of using a PC during flights to Cebu—i.e., booting up for 10 minutes and actually laptopping for only 20 minutes between take-off and landing—my Mac's super-fast boot-up and shutdown times were unbelievably refreshing.

At the Cebu airport, I was lucky enough to get a cab that smelled good (for some reason, many Cebu cabs don’t) and a driver who didn’t try to talk me into checking into another hotel which had promised him commissions. He and his cab were so pleasant that I asked him to be my driver for the afternoon’s visits to six stores. (And later in the afternoon, I became even more thankful for him when I saw the monstrous queues for cabs at the stores I visited.)

Checking in at the hotel, I was told by a Jolina-looking front desk officer that she was giving me a room with two single beds on the smoking floor. I was more than ready to freak out when she told me that “my request for a king-size bed on a non-smoking floor” had been rejected—my next line would have been “how come I wasn’t informed, I would have booked a room someplace else”—but somehow, she found a way to get me a room I wanted even before I could get in an ill-tempered word.

On my way to lunch in Ayala Center, I dropped by the Rockport store, on the off-chance that they would have winter shoes. Chances were slim, I knew—the Rockports in Trinoma, and Shangri-La had nothing, and given the options I had found in Manila, I had begun to ruefully accept that I would be walking around snowy Boston in expensive, manly shoes that would make me look like I was about to climb a mountain. But lo and behold, Rockport Cebu had not one, but TWO pairs that fit all my specifications—waterproof, high- to mid-cut, insulated, and most importantly, chocolate-colored to match my new winter coat. And at 30% off, they were cheaper than any of my Manila options. I told the salespeople there, I would have lunch, and come right back.

I had lunch at Idea Italia, and my tomato soup and penne campagniole were so good that when the waitress asked, almost apologetically, if I would mind transferring to the table in the corner so that a large group coming in could take my table and the table beside it; and an elderly woman in this incoming large group invited me to join their “Christian group activities” later that day; and one of the waitresses was gushing over a chubby blond baby one of the foreign diners had let her carry--my eyebrows stayed unraised and my nasty thought balloons remained defated. Instead, it was a “you’re welcome, no problem at all” when I was asked to move tables; “thank you, but sorry, I need to work today” when I was invited to join the Christian group; and a smiling “kala ko hindi mo na ibabalik” to the waitress with the baby.

Over lunch, James and I actually started texting. It had begun with me asking if there were new places to eat, and it evolved into how nice Ayala Center Cebu now was, how James should try Idea Italia next time he’s home in Cebu, and how many new chihuahuas James’ dad now had at home. It was our first extensive conversation since the start of the year, and it was surprisingly pleasant, enjoyably light, and genuinely friendly.

When I went back to Rockport to try on the shoes, I was lucky to have an Aussie-English co-shopper, who affirmed that, yes, these shoes would be good for winter. And I was luckier still that there was exactly one pair in the style I liked better left in my size.

After that came all the crap I started this piece with: the exhaustion and the stress of the six-supermarket fieldwork; the cheesy soundtrack at UCC; and the ugly realization that TGIF isn’t quite TGIF when you’re working on a Saturday.

Nevertheless, I’m happy. Light, agreeable, pleasant, at peace. I would even go so far as to use the word joyful. And I can't believe I'm saying this (and maybe my friends won't believe I'm saying this either, haha): it feels nice to be happy. It feels nice to be agreeable.

At first, I thought maybe this happiness sprang from starting the day with things I loved doing: shooting myself performing my audition piece, transcribing a piece of music, and writing for my blog. Or maybe from acquisitions, like the new shoes.

But I realize it’s much more fundamental than that. I could have been as bitchy with the waitress at Idea Italia as I was with those rude people at the airport. I could have taken out my annoyance with PAL on the Jolina-esque receptionist at Marriott. I could have stopped texting James right after he said he hadn't tried any new restos. But in each case, I didn't--and instead, let the happy energy from my music transciption, from my blogging on my Mac in the flight, and from my lucky taxi driver, carry me through the day.

Happiness simply springs from noticing, acknowledging, being grateful for, and being energized by life’s little gems. And this piece--long as it is--is about just one ordinary day's worth of these gems.

I think it's just a matter of whether we're letting ourselves look hard enough. In just one day, there’s really so much to see.

Let there be lightening up

When I got to my car the other day and started the engine—raring to head home after an uber-stressful day during which I blew my top, and which left me with a splitting headache and an annoying twitch over my right eye—I realized my parking card wasn't in my wallet, where I usually stick it.

I emptied out my wallet, emptied out my bag, emptied out my pockets, emptied out my trash, and searched every compartment and corner of my car—TWICE—and still I couldn’t find it. Just when I thought my day couldn’t get any worse.

When I came to terms that the card was gone, I went to the guard and reported my loss, prepared to pay the fine and be on my way.

But it turned out it wasn't going to be that easy. Naku, he said, as part of the new process, apart from paying the “lost card fee”, I would now have to go to the police station and fill out a report.

OMFG. Kill me now.

One of the car wash boys--the ones whose help finding parking slots you accept, but whose offer to wash your car you decline--was standing nearby. He had been standing there for some time, watching me turn my car inside out, and I had been doing my best not to get annoyed.

But at this point, he muttered to the guard that a card had been found on the ground near my car hours earlier.

The guard radioed one of his buddies, and within minutes, the card was returned to me. No payment, no police blotter.

I thanked the guard, thanked his buddy, especially thanked the car wash guy (not without a lot of embarrassment); and I heaved a huge sigh, and mouthed a brief prayer with eyes skyward: You’ve got one crazy sense of humor, God. Gotta love you.

And next time things get too serious, or too intense -- I'll be sure to revisit this post. :p

Remembering the third glass

I've been drunk a few times in front of officemates. Office outings and parties are always overflowing with alcohol, and my friends know how easy it is to get me drunk.

Being drunk in front of officemates includes being drunk in front of the boss, and the boss's boss -- which is usually okay, because everyone's drunk anyway. Including the boss, and the boss's boss.

But it's different when you're in a small group and a small venue, and you're the only one who's inebriated-- as my teammate Ice reminded me just now. My boss hosted Christmas dinner for the team last December in a deli owned by his wife (the same deli this blog was born in, incidentally). Naturally, the boss and his wife were there -- and so were the boss' boss, and his wife.

I'm not a big fan of wine, but this deli has some of the best wines I've tasted. And somewhere through my third glass -- red-faced and glassy-eyed and a little too spontaneous for my own good -- my boss pulled out a wine bottle stopper out from behind the bar.

My boss's boss noticed and exclaimed in his loud voice: "THAT'S A NICE CORK!"

Being Indian and British-educated, the "O" came out rounder than usual, and the "R" came out pretty much silent.

It happened I was seated right beside him -- and I instantly turned towards him, looked at him with huge, incredulous eyes, and said: "THAT'S A NICE WHAT!?!" And laughed a red-faced, glassy-eyed, too-spontaneous, third-glass-of-wine laugh.

OMFG.

For the rest of the evening, my boss' boss referred used the word "bottle stopper" instead.

My last memory was a few minutes later, when the boss and the boss' boss had gotten up to check out the wine collection. I was wailing in front of the boss' wife and boss' boss' wife, who had stayed at the table. "Oh my God. I've made a fool of myself in front of my boss... my boss' wife... my boss' boss... and my boss' boss' wife..."

Thank God it was a short drive home that evening.

And thank God too for cool bosses, and bosses' wives.