Dogbert’s Whip

"Theory: The filter algorithm operates in the frequency domain. You can specify one or more sets of bandpass filter freequencies, and a set of notch filter parameters. Filters are four-frequency Ormsby or Butterworth, and can be zero phase or minimum phase." — excerpt from a software manual that was probably written by hideous little men aboard unidentified flying objects (UFO’s)

After reading this paragraph a gazillion times over, I swear I could feel a warm gush of blood flowing out of my nostrils. Okay, it’s a lousy exagerration about my intellectual shortcomings. But I’m starting to panic since my new boss expects me to undertand the concepts behind two-dimensional seismic data processing. However, this imaginary nose bleed that I suffer makes a good reference to the movie Masikip sa Dibdib, a slapstick fare with the busty Rufa Mae Quinto at the helm.

In one particularly funny scene, Rufa’s character speaks to her Fil-American boyfriend/boss. Due to her limited grasp of English, Rufa is reduced to nodding and smiling as her boss spews out phrases left and right. Unable to handle the stress of comprehending English like any decent corporate secretary should, Rufa suffers from a torrential nose bleed.

That single scene in Masikip sa Dibdib is probably its most significant contribution to Pinoy pop culture. That’s why whenever friends of ours babble in straight English in an attempt to impress, or at times, as a result of excessive alcohol consumption, we usually mock them with begging words: "Parang awa mo na… tama na… dinudugo na ako."

Although I felt fatigued from my vain attempts to understand Ormsby and Butterworth frequency filters, I mustered enough strength to approach the refrigerator. Not long afterwards, I chomped on a Mars bar, hoping that the delectable caramel and chewy nougat encased in rich milk chocolate would provide me with the much-needed inspiration. One minute and 12 seconds later, the Mars bar swiveled with my gastric juices. But unlike Archimedes, I was not able to ran naked down the streets in a fit of jubilation shouting “Eureka!”

When desperation finally sinks in, I usually resort to an act that is often performed by giggling hyenas against the mighty lions of the African bush — I take pot shots at my tormentors. While hyenas swipe their smelly bottoms on the territorial marks of the mighty felines, I, on the other hand, imagine Ormsby and Butterworth as two stinky physicists with lice-infested hair and no social life. They lock themselves in their dungeons, err labs, and spend countless nights observing boring sound waves. "Oohhh, here comes an alpha lunar phase shift!" Ornsby elbows his buddy. "It’s beau–ti–ful…" Butterworth mutters, with actual tears welling in his puffy eyes. This is the part where I barge in their door, destroy all their equipment with my machine guns, and verbally abuse the moldy geniuses. "Oh sure you’re sooo smart," I snicker at them. "But your names suck! Ormsby? It sounds like it’s suited for a critter! Butterworth? Why the heck aren’t you in the bakery?! Bake me some cupcakes and blueberry muffins! Bwahahahahahaha!"

Feeling some satisfaction from the virtual abuse that I handed over the scientists, I decided to watch a movie with my workmates. It’s the last episode of Taken, they tell me, and everyone is quite excited about how Steven Spieldberg will conclude his alien-abduction saga. Soon, Dakota Fanning appears on screen with her little blonde head and her huge, freakishly blue eyes. "She’s part-alien and part-human, the product of a UFO-sponsored experiment… she’s capable of time manipulation and has amazing mental powers! You should’ve have seen what she’s capable of in the previous episodes," my colleage shares as he sensed my ignorance over the series.

While I sat there bored, I started to wonder if I’ll be able to finally understand Ornsby and Butterworth frequency filters if I was part-alien like Dakota Fanning. But that would be impossible; the aliens woudn’t probably choose me; I’m just not cute enough for the role. Just like that, I started getting annoyed with Dakota. Sure she made me cry with her brilliant performance in I Am Sam. But her role in Taken is just too perfect that it intensified my feelings of inadequacy. I even started to wonder if Ornsby and Butterworth are aliens themselves. Then verbally assualting them would do me no good. They would surely cut me up in ribbons with their hi-tech laser beams.

As the series Taken was coming to its climactic end, Dakota stood before dozens alien-abductees who have regalled her as their pint-sized Messiah. With an authoritative stance, she tells the crowd to not be afraid of being abducted by UFO’s anymore. Well, if you’ll believe Spielberg’s team of writers, aliens have lodged morsel-sized sensors on the brains of their human abductees. With the help of these mini-sensors, the little men from the flying saucer can keep track of their abductees’ whereabouts, and will aid them should they decide to abduct the same person again. With her sheer mental powers, Dakota explains to the eager crowd that she can remove the sensors out of their bodies. So that once and for all, they’ll never have to live in fear. It may feel unpleasant at first, she continues, but Dakota assures them that everything will be alright.

So in those closing moments, Dakota closes her eyes and, with sheer concentration only seen with vegans and yoga fanatics, successfully removes the metal sensors. So how did this little girl pass out the abductee’s alien sensors from brain to palm? Simple. Dakota drove them out with a nose bleed. Splendid, indeed. And with that, I walked out from the viewing room and embarked on a new mission: look for an aspirin to relieve me from this sudden blazing headache.

This little piggy went to the market

This little piggy went home

This little piggy had roast beef

This little piggy had none

This little piggy cried “wee, wee, wee” all the way home

– Per Google.com, this popular “Mother Goose” nursery rhyme was first published in 1728, but frankly, I really don’t care.

For days, I’ve been contemplating on conducting surgery on myself. But when the opportunity came, I failed due to my apparent cowardice. See, I’ve had this nagging pain on my right foot’s “little piggy who went to the market.” For those of you who were lucky enough not to waste their toddler years trying to memorize nursery rhymes, that part of my anatomy is also known as my big toe. Somehow, the nail on that digit has retaliated from weeks of not being trimmed nor cleaned, and has decided to nosedive on my calloused and possibly fungi-infected flesh.

This agonizing realization came to me one morning when I woke up and jerked my right foot. Naturally, the toe bumped into the bed’s wooden board, and the nerve endings zapped pain impulses into my brain faster than I could muster to say “Ouch!” As I cursed incentives under my muted breath, I swear I could hear he Nail Fairy announce mockingly: “Congratulations! It’s an impacted toe nail, you lazy bum!”

Whenever I walk now, I try not to apply pressure on my right big toe. And it does not help that my new job as a Geoscience Seaboy aboard a seismic ship requires me to wear steel-toed boots most of the time. I limp in pain silently since I don’t want to attract the attention of my co-workers. Two weeks ago, we had this unfortunate engine failure that led to the stand-off of our vessel. In this kind of industry, when the ship stops moving, it also means the termination of all seismic work, and the subsequent breakdown of all equipment.

For days on end, we spent our twelve-hour shifts hauling heavy equipment, repairing machinery, and basically, going down and dirty. We were prisoners in our orange coveralls and white helmets, virtual slaves for the heavy tasks ahead. We’re lucky to get fifteen minute reprieves for a cup of coffee before one of our superiors will eye us disgustingly for wasting precious time. That’s why I’m pretty sure that the long hours spent standing up and dragging my feet in those steel-encrusted boots contributed to my misery now. But I didn’t dare whimper about did. The other guys might think that I’m merely trying to bail out on the hard seaman labor.

I tried to surf the internet and browsed for some ways to relieve me from the searing pain that accompanies an impacted toe nail. Some of the lousy sites suggested pain killers, but that seems rather futile since the pain will definitely go back anyway once the meds lose their numbing effects. The better sites remarked that the best way to solve the problem is to let a doctor slice some bits of your skin and remove the nail that squeezes itself in your toe. It seems really easy if only I’m not currently floating in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles away from the nearest hospital or clinic.

That brings us now to that idiotic option that I had seriously considered but failed, and that is to extract the ingrown toe nail myself. I have rummaged through the many First Aid kits readily available in various parts of the ship. The only things that are probably useful in those boxes for self-mutilation are rolls of cotton gauze (to suck up the buckets of blood that you’re about to lose) and some packets of alcohol swabs (to add more pain, and yes, to prevent infection). For my slicing tool, I ingeniously snapped one of my disposable Gillette razors and fashioned a mini-scalpel out of it. Everything would have been perfect if there was wine to drink. That should serve as my anesthetic. Tragically, no potable form of alcohol is ever allowed on seismic vessels. 

After one particularly excruciating 12-hour shift, I felt my toe throb with wild abandon. That night had to be the big night when I’ll cut myself into ribbons with my improvised tools. I took a hot shower and soaped my toe so furiously. “Stupid ingrown toe nail,” I thought to myself. “I’ll show it who’s the boss in this neighborhood!” Toweling myself dry, I meticulously prepared myself for my own operation. With cotton gauzes and isopropyl alcohol swabs within reach, I clutched my Gillette scalpel with trembling hands.

Before the sharp edge of the blade could touch my skin, I had visions of a botched self-afflicted ingrown toe nail surgery that flooded my cabin with vampire juice. Whenever a diabolic nurse extracts blood from me for routine medical exams, I have to turn my head away since a syringe full of my own blood is enough to make me feel woozy. At that instant, I knew I didn’t have the guts to cut myself. I tried to convince myself that the pain of an impacted toe nail is not so bad. At least it’s not cancer or child birth, right? Right. It’s amazing how sheer cowardice can make unpleasant things so much more bearable.

As of this writing, the evil Nail Fairy still rests on my shoulder. She belches out some really evil screeching laughter whenever my mind is not distracted enough to forget about my toe pain. I console myself with the thought that it’s a matter of days before I fly back home. Although I’ll be surely limping all the way back to Manila, at least I’ll get a proper and decent surgery. On the contrary, I never had a pedicure in my life and it would be quite interesting to have a doctor as the first person to ever fiddle with my smelly toe nails.

My favorite tennis players, Martina Hingis and Tommy Robredo, won tier-1 clay court tune ups for the French Open on the same weekend! Both defeated their rivals in straight sets. The resurgent Hingis, who’s mounting a full-scale comeback after a three-year hiatus, claimed the Italian Open crown over Dinara Safina, 6-2/7-5. Robredo, on the other hand, demolished Hingis’ current boyfriend, Radek Stepanek (serves him right – bwahahahaha!!!), 6-1/6-3/6-3, to prevail in the finals of the Hamburg Masters.

Who wouldn’t be happy with that?

My favorite female cousin and I had an interesting discussion a few days back. She asked if I was familiar with the current roster of local artists and bands that are quite popular nowadays. Although I’ve heard of decent songs from Kitchie Nadal, Hale, and that cornball “truly, madly, crazy in love with you” band from Cebu (see, I can’t even remember the group’s name), I shrugged and admitted that I’ve been quite busy lately, and is obviously not attuned with the times. 

Back in high school, I used to sneak into my older brother’s collection of tapes and listen to such bands like Guns n’ Roses, Metallica, and Poison. In my sophomore year, my buddies and I were belting out “Ligaya” and “Toyang” from the Eraserheads months before our other classmates took our cue. Those were the days, the grand 90’s, when the measure of being cool was being familiar with the material of the dominant musical force: the Pinoy rock bands.

If you’re somewhere near my age, you probably dedicated Alamid’s “Your Love,” True Faith’s “Perfect,” or The Teeth’s “Prinsesa” to a puppy crush. You may have scratched your head why couples would consider Color It Red’s “Paglisan” as their song, and why Bamboo and his zombie eyes could score so many shrieking admirers when he belted out “Ulan” for Rivermaya. The more social conscious guys probably consider The Youth and Yano as their favorite bands, while the happy-go-lucky and the fun-loving types could count on Parokya ni Edgar and Grin Department. The list, as you see, goes on and on.

Our parents were typically concerned with our own brand of popular music back then. Why would Ely Buendia blurt out a cuss word in “Pare Ko?” Was that really necessary? The oldies didn’t approve that home-cooked meals should be called “putahe ng ina mo” or didn’t think that free “tooot-paste and tooot-brush” is a good bargain deal. Rumors about prevalent alcoholism and drug use among local bands also made our oldies lose sleep: “Are these musicians shaping our children’s minds?” That thought must have crossed their minds a thousand times.

Raging hormones made all of us a tad bit rebellious back then. We were forging our own identities, and we found it obtrusive that the oldies would have the gall to question our tastes in stuff. After all, what did they know? They were nothing but boring grown ups who are hopelessly out-of-date, baduy, and shamefully ignorant of popular culture. 

Zoom in a mere few years later and I find myself in the same position that I once resented. Somehow, watching the current hits on MTV and MYX is becoming a bit boring for me now. I really don’t get it why the songs featured in these channels are popular with the young crowd. However, after thoroughly enjoying an episode of “classic reruns” (or songs that were huge in the 90’s), I suddenly became scared. Am I really that old now?

Apparently, yes. I had this eerie realization just lately, and it took my 15-year old brother to whack me off my senses. One morning, I was awaken by my brother’s radio playing in full volume blast. Normally, I would’ve been annoyed and shake the bejeezus out of him (that’s one fringe benefit of being an older sibling). However, I heard a song that I really liked for the longest time, but still didn’t know the title of. Obviously, I also wasn’t aware of the band that played the song, and it gave salespeople from Tower Records and Music 1 a migraine when I inquired about the CD. Take this for example –

ME: Miss, may hinahanap akong CD pero di ko alam ang pangalan nila (ng banda)…

SALESLADY: May alam po ba kayong song nila, sir?

ME: Meron. Kaso di ko alam ang title…

SALESLADY: Naku, mahirap po yan…

ME (except for the begging part): Basta, sure ako na OPM band sila. Wait, alam ko yung isang stanza ng song nila… Pwede kong kantahin na lang? Pinakinggan ko na kasi ang buong CD ng Kamikazee at Sugarfree pero hindi sila yung nagkanta… Tulungan mo ako… PUH-LEEEZEEE!!!

SALESLADY (in her mind, but I’m just imagining this): WHAT THE HECK IS WRONG WITH THIS NUTJOB?

And so I’ve totally given up on ever finding out about the song’s identity. That is, until that same morning when I heard the song on my kid brother’s radio. And wait, he was actually singing the song! I wanted to jump out of bed that instant, and like a Scooby begging for a treat, ask him intently about the song. Not wanting to look too eager, however, I restrained myself and decided that it would be better if I just asked my brother casually over breakfast.

“I heard you singing a song this morning,” I told my brother while I ate some Hunt’s Pork and Beans. “Which song?” he asked back, sounding rather irritated that I’m disturbing him from watching the latest episode of “Naruto.”

“It’s sort of jologs but it has a great melody… the lyrics are quite intense, too,” I answered back. A look of confusion stretched his face, and I had no choice but to sing the only lines that I knew of the song: “Ngumiti kahit na napipilitan/ Kahit pa sinasadya/ Mo akong masaktan paminsan-minsan/ Bawat sandali na lang…”

If not for our age difference that spans a decade, my brother would certainly have given me an acerbic Simon Cowell-like comment for even bothering to use my pipes. But still, the smoke cleared and he gave me the answer that I’ve been vainly searching for weeks.

“The title of the song is Nobela,” he said. “Which band is that,” I inquired further. “Hmmm… let me see. I’m pretty sure it’s “Join The Club.”

“Join The Club?! That’s a lousy name for a band!” I mentioned, feeling heart broken that the band that I liked can be a bunch of geniuses with their music, only to falter with their choice of name. “Well yeah, it’s sort of lame,” my brother responded.

“I’ve been trying to look for their CD but I can’t find it anywhere. They’re probably a new act so their album is not yet available in the market, right?” I continued. “Well, no. That song is quite old. It’s been out since the end of last year. You probably didn’t get the CD since record bars are no longer selling it. Where have you been all this time?” My brother shot me a look of disbelief for the first time.

So where was I really? Well, I was probably in my den of uncoolness, slowly hibernating to become this hideous being of everything out-of-date, baduy, and shamefully ignorant of popular culture. 

I
downed an Oreo Mc Flurry a few minutes ago. Three hours before that,
I joined a couple of college friends catch the last full screening of
Tristan + Isolde in Gateway Mall. I’ve always been partial for period
love dramas with gory battle scenes. But like any tragedy, you leave
the theater feeling heavy and low. You curse at the main characters
for making their lives miserable, and eventually, yours. You may wipe
a tear or two, and even wonder if it was worth the money and time to
sit through the whole film and feel depressed afterwards.

 Strangely
enough, you still contend that the movie was great, but since you
still feel bad anyway, a cup of calorie-laden ice cream with cookie
bits will always come in handy to make you feel better. Yes, I know
what you’re thinking: “Dude, lactation can’t be far behind.” But
if you tell that to my face, I’ll be shopping for needless expensive
things and yammer to my pals how you offended me. I’ll whine: “It
wasn’t really what he accuses me that is demeaning… it’s the
condescending look in his eyes and the abusive manner on how he said
it.” So there.

***

Author’s Quite Lengthy Note: Aside
from cups of ice cream, another thing that tickles me pink is the
fact that this same post is officially my blog’s 40^th
entry. Originally, I wanted this entry to be of value to society,
something that would arouse the collective psyche and social
consciousness, and not something as inane as my bouts with Mc
Flurries after a sad movie. When a friend told me via text that he
wanted to post something very personal about his traumatic childhood,
I readily agreed. It would’ve been the perfect 40^th post
if not for my friend’s failure to provide me a copy of the article even after multiple inquiries.
It’s still in the works, he tells me, but I’m not about to have
grandkids before I post another entry in this angst-ridden blog. 

My new job requires me to sit in front of four computer monitors (three 29-inch flat screens and a laptop) for twelve straight hours. Well, almost. Minus the amount of time that I spend taking a leak (or sometimes, a crap), eating frequent snacks in the dining area, loading data tapes, and folding paper plots, I would say that my butt has gotten a bit flatter now than I spend so much time sitting and staring.

Human nature dictates that one is bound to get bored and exhausted from working long hours. While endless munching of anything junk and gulping of anything carbonated could provide temporary reprieve, there is one thing that can handily make or break the dreary work mood. And that, my friends, is music.

Our group’s server, which is hidden from view behind my laptop, is a repository of MP3 folders. Stashed within the server’s drive K are 21,000 songs that cover all musical genres. We actually have everything from “13^th Floor Elevators” to “ZZ Top.” Siggy, my boss, mentioned that the MP3’s were compiled from years ago; that’s why the collection has now grown to its present number.

While music has certainly helped I and my workmates cope with the long work hours, we have been persistently annoyed by one problem whenever we play our MP3’s. Since the files were copied to the hard drive by different sources at various times, the music is not uniformly amplified. Thus, every song sounds differently even if the volume settings remained the same. This bug has led to frequent volume adjustments by people seated near the server, which obviously happens to be me for the most part.

Fortunately, Siggy came up with a program that would normalize all our MP3’s. However, it would take at least two days to run over 21,000 songs. Anxious over the prospect of dead silence for the next 48 hours, we rummaged every audio CD that we could find and played them one after the other in a portable player.

One of the CD’s in rotation is a compilation of tunes from the 70’s. It quickly became my favorite since it has funky songs like “Dirty White Boy” by Foreigner and a couple of Bob Marley standards. But what really grabbed my attention is a song that I’ve been familiar with since I was a kid, and has heard over and over in a many karaoke bars and soundtracks: Desperado by The Eagles. 

It’s strange that I developed a sudden liking for Desperado. I’ve heard the song a countless times already in the past but never gave it much attention. It’s probably because Desperado has always struck me as a rather sad and depressing song (why, obviously). Even Karen Carpenter, who succumbed to complications from her mental demons, had a version of this song.

One plausible reason why I suddenly like this song is that I’ve grown older now, and I could probably relate to the message of the lyrics. After listening to Desperado for about a dozen times in my last shift, I found myself talking back to the song at one point. I only made mental notes, of course, but I still found it rather weird. But then again, I can’t really blame myself. It’s my first time to be this far away from home and I’m not exactly having a smooth transition here.

Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?
You been out ridin’ fences for so long now
Oh, you’re a hard one; I know that you got your reasons
These things that are pleasin’ you can hurt you somehow

I’m also probably in a phase they call the mid-20’s life crisis. People suffering from this phase may realize that hanging out for all-nighters will start losing its appeal, and somehow, overpriced coffee in paper cups and a good laugh with pals can pass off as a “gimmick.” They also begin panicking that their savings accounts only contain four digits, and actually think of otherwise alien words such as “future” and “security.”

Desperado, oh, you ain’t gettin’ no younger
Your pain and your hunger, they’re drivin’ you home
And freedom, oh freedom well, that’s just some people talkin’
Your prison is walking through this world all alone

The worst thing about the mid-20’s life crisis is that being single and alone is starting to become unbearably lonely. I guess it’s a normal thing since a considerable portion of your peers have started building their own families. It’s either that or they’re blissfully engaged. And it also doesn’t help if friends and kin keep pestering you with questions like: “So who are you with at the moment?” and “When do you intend to settle down?”

Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?
Come down from your fences, open the gate
It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you
You better let somebody love you, before it’s too late

Now that’s one great piece of advice if only life would just stop being too complicated.

Do you guys remember the Sprite™ commercial where an attractive girl was strolling around while sending SMS thru her cellular phone, unmindful of the possibility of tripping over (eventually dying from cerebral hemorrhage due to a fractured skull, and becoming fertilizer for cemetery lilies and Bermuda grass) from a few years back? Unless you’ve only recently heard about a gadget known as the television set, you’d probably agree that the same commercial has spawned the term “kitikitxt,” which is a word that describes a person who’s overly addicted to text messaging.

Text messaging has gone a long way indeed. Gone were the days when only a select breed of snooty Globe Telecom subscribers had access to this technology. Nowadays, Globe, together with rival companies Smart and the up-and-coming Sun Cellular, cater to the insatiable and voracious need of Filipinos to send text messages. Sending SMS used to be free in the late 90’s until telecom executives decided they wanted to get richer (Those fat bastards!) and government officials felt that taxing SMS would be an easy way to fund their *ahem!* various projects for national progress and development (Those cheeky crocs!).      

SMS has certainly revolutionized the lives of the average Pinoy. Before, college students from the provinces who went to Manila to study had to call their parents via long distance collect (assuming that the old folks have a landline back at home). Now, it only takes a few clicks of the cell phone keypad to reassure your parents that you go straight back to the dorm after class (right!), hear mass and pray regularly (hmmm…), shun barkada gimiks in favor of books and photocopied notes (baloney!), and has remained chaste and virginal despite the distance (nu-ni-nu-ni-nu). You can actually do all of these without having spend a fortune for actual voice calls.

With the Filipinos’ enthusiasm for mobile SMS communication, it’s no small wonder why the Philippines has become the unofficial “text capital of the world.” If you look around, everbody seems to own a cellular phone nowadays. While some are quick to complain about the rising cost of owning a phone, they’re also quick to fall in the rungs of sadness and depression when nobody sends them text messages. Take one of my friends, for example, who breathes out: “How sad… buong araw na wala pa rin nag-text sa akin… walang friend na nagmamahal sa akin…” Now since when did getting text messages get equated with the value of love, or friendship, for that matter? 

The truth is, SMS is here to stay since it’s an efficient and relatively cheap way to stay connected with family and friends. And since cellular phone companies make it cost prohibitive to make voice calls anyway, we can’t really blame people for relying too much on text messaging. And as an added bonus, SMS can actually empower people. Before a blind date even transpires, an SMS message swap happens between two potential lovebirds. Nowadays, you can win fabulous prizes and lots of moolah just by sending text messages to some contest. And how else did Sandara Park manage to win second place in a reality talent contest despite sucking in almost everything except for looking irresistibly cute whenever she belts out novelty tunes? It’s SMS, people!

As of this writing, I’m on board a floating ship some 80 miles off the US coast in the Gulf of Mexico. For the past three weeks, my phone has been relegated to serving as my alarm clock since the chances of attaining network coverage in this part of the world is probably similar to getting struck by lightning on a clear summer day. I sorely miss receiving text messages now, and I’ve gotten a couple of e-mail inquiries by friends demanding an explanation why I never text back and why the heck my phone is “unattended or out of coverage area.”

Before leaving the Philippines, I was cheerily informed by a Globe Telecom agent that my phone is on “auto roaming,” meaning I’ll be able to use my cell phone abroad. “Pero nasa barko ako,” I explained, “baka di ko rin magagamit ang phone ko?” “Try nyo na din po,” the agent answered back with a plastered smile, “baka malakas ang signal ng mga ka-tie up namin sa Louisiana.” The “kitikitxt” side of me cheered "Hurrah!" I mean, wouldn’t it be cool to keep receiving your txtm8’s daily greetings, jokes, and cute icons in the shape of teddy bears and hearts even if you’re about a couple of time zones away?

As I happily left the Globe Telecom Center, I saw an image of Sharon Cuneta in a poster with the latest model cell phone pressed against one of the ears of her enormous moon face. Printed near her dreamy gaze is a definitive word, cast in bold face, that attempts to convey that distance between people, may it be inter-island or inter-continental, can be easily bridged through state-of-the-art mobile phone technology (or in the poster’s case, a lousy pink ribbon), and soothe the sadness and longing from extended periods of isolation: Posible.

Yeah, right. Posible my a$$!

For about a week now, I have endured the treacherous waves of the Gulf of Mexico as I embark on my new career as a trainee geophysicist aboard a seismic ship. Yep, ladies and gentlemen; the whiny person formerly known as the Geoscience Hunk Wannabe (GHW) has decided to join the ranks of Popeye and Captain Hook: I am now officially a seaman, or as one of my close friends would have it, a Geoscience Seaboy (GSB)!

Life aboard the Research Vessel (R/V) Polar Search has forced me to endure severe lifestyle changes. First up, I find it excruciatingly hard to maintain my sanity and jolly spirits when the whole place is wobbly all the time. For a person whose only previous maritime experience was on board a WG&A Superferry ship, the choppy waves can really get up the head. It’s a good thing that three other Pinoys are in Polar Search to keep me company. One of them, Hans, has berated me for not being friendly and accommodating enough to the other mostly Caucasian crew members. Well, I’m normally a very amiable person, but it’s so hard to pull off a Sandra Bullock (read: Ms. Congeniality) when you’re seasick most of the time.   

Second up is the food. Scarcity will never be an issue for research seafarers when it comes to the rations department. Our mess hall in the ship is probably a carnivore’s paradise – you can have all the bacon, ham, turkey, beef, and chicken that you desire. A sweet tooth will never be disappointed with the complete suite of available cookies, brownies, cakes, bread, and get this: six types of jams! A salad bar is always filled with fresh greens, cheeses, and smoked seafood. To top it all off, unlimited cans of soda and cartons of juice are available 24/7. After exhausting and probably making yourself hungry from reading all that, what is one crucial thing that’s missing? The answer is quite easy and obvious: KANIN!!!

Although rice is served in the cafeteria, it’s not the usual type that Pinoys are accustomed to eat. For us, rice is meant to be steamed and sticky. The rice they serve here, on the other hand, is grainy and paltry. You can even sort out individual grains if you want to. The experience is just not the same.

The next and last issue has something to do with the work shift. Although I was warned that we’re going to serve 12-hour shifts, I never imagined that the long hours would have such a miserable effect on me. I’m on duty by 6PM and do not get off until 6AM of the next day. And here’s the clincher: we never get day offs. In some e-mails that I have sent to some friends, I remarked how domestic helpers are even happier than I am – at least they get Sunday offs, you know. And I also rarely see the sunshine anymore. So this must be how graveyard-shift call boys and call girls feel after a hard night’s work (I’m talking about customer support personnel, and not the ones who frequent QC Memorial Circle and Quezon Avenue, you dirty mind, you.). 

The morning after my first shift, I slept for ten hours straight! And I didn’t even remember dreaming – I was that exhausted. When I woke up, depression crept into me as I realized that this was going to be my life for the next five years since my job contract says so. When mealtime came, I barely picked food from the vast selection as I had no appetite to eat at all. Maybe it was the volatile combination of seasickness and homesickness, but for someone who’s known to devour a fiesta’s worth of viands, I surprised even myself.

Again, I counted on Hans to shake me back to my senses. He told me that since I’m stuck in the ship anyway, there’s no use sulking at what I believe is my misfortune. You chose this path, he explained, and that I had to be responsible for my decisions. That’s so true. You know, this guy is unbelievable. He’s full of energy; I’ve never seen him sulk once since we arrived here in Polar Search. Compared to him, I’m but a dismal drama king who’s both spoiled and whiney at the same time.

I’ve traded the quasi-glamorous yuppie routine to experience the adventurous life of a marine geophysicist. Although I have to admit that I sorely miss my cubicle in 6750 Makati Ave., my friends who provide precious company during weekends, and simply the laidback pace of home, my seaboy stint may just do me some good. Well, isolation sometimes brings the better out of people, and I’m hoping that my new job would do just that.

Have you noticed that no matter how cruel or galling a person is, he or she becomes a better individual in death? It’s not uncommon to hear audible whispers during wakes, espousing the alleged positive traits that the deceased has exhibited in the past. One good case in point is the philandering husband. He may have fathered dozens of children through his adulterous affairs with six different women, but in his death, he’s the best dad and husband in the world. Even his legal wife would agree: “At least di nya kami pinabayaan,” the wife, as you could imagine, would tell her consoling amigas in between hysterical sobs and gulps of tranquilizers. Why, even one of man’s illegitimate daughters would deliver a heart-rending eulogy from the stands, complete with quivering lips, smeared mascara, and an ending that would most probably involve an anti-climactic fainting spell.

The reason why I decided to write something about eulogies has something to do with a funeral service that I attended last weekend. The service was for the mom of a good friend from college. Only in this case, my friend’s eulogy for his dear departed mom was crisp, sincere, and clearly devoid of any superfluous declarations of praises that are so common in most eulogies. It was so raw in fact that the words caught up with me, and before I knew it, I was wiping tears from my eyes. Maybe it helped because I’m aware of the challenges that my friend had to endure when his mom came in and out of various hospitals. And as a self-confessed “mama’s boy,” the thought of losing my own mom is simply unfathomable (knock on wood). 

I had met my friend’s mom only once in the past. It was during our college graduation way back in 2000. All I could remember is that she was a radiant smallish woman with a warm smile. That brief encounter was understandably not enough for me to realize what a great mom to her children she had been. Through my friend’s eulogy, I learned that she sacrificed a lot to send her children to university. See, my friend’s mom was unable to fulfill her wish of becoming an architect. In the old days, a woman was perceived to end up as a doting housewife to her family, no matter if she shows great promise and potential.

Music happens to be my friend’s mom’s passion aside from her family. Before the funeral service, cd’s containing her favorite songs were handed out. Scanning through the compilations, there were standards from Barbra Streisand, Norah Jones, and Sergio Mendes. Clearly, my friend’s mom had impeccable taste. It also tickled me when my friend recounted how his mom is unable to cook anything but sopas and ketchup-drenched spaghetti. And since their brood consists of three boys, his mom’s frustration is not having a girl for whom she can sew dainty dresses. My friend’s mom has worked as a seamstress for most of her life, and it’s highly admirable on how she was able to support the needs of her family with the threads of a spoon pin.

Through the twenty-minute eulogy, my friend managed to maintain his composure. Although his voice was beginning to crack towards the end, I couldn’t imagine being in his place, being the cry baby that I am. When the funeral service ended, people flocked in front of the casket to get their final view of the deceased, and to pay their last respects. I turned to the Duchess of Acoje Platinum (DAP), another college classmate and good friend who joined me in this trip to Angeles City, and asked her if she wanted to take her place in the queue. DAP shook her head, saying that she’d rather not have the final memory of our friend’s mom as a mortal body resting on satin sheets. In my mind, I shared the same sentiments. For in the end, it’s still comforting to remember my friend’s mom as the radiant smallish woman with a warm smile, an impeccable taste in music, and a heart that has endeared her preciously to those around her.    

Like almost all Filipino households yesterday, I was glued to the television screen to watch the highly-anticipated rematch between our very own Manny “The Pacman” Pacquiao and the Mexican Erik Morales. Towards the end of the 10^th round, raucous cheering and revelry swarmed our nation with Manny’s stunning knockout of the fancied Mexican. It was so unlike the pugilists’ previous encounter in March of last year when Pacquiao took quite a beating, and promptly lost in a unanimous decision. Back then, Manny’s personal issues – his woes with his promoter, taxman, and yes, even his boxing gloves and socks – were claimed to have contributed to his eventual loss.

It may seem like sour grapes but given that Pacquiao has become the hero of every ordinary Juan Dela Cruz, it’s no wonder that our countrymen feel so strongly for who could be the best boxer to come out of the Philippines. And with the depressing national and economic issues plaguing our nation, it’s no wonder that people would rather see a triumphant Pacquiao on the front cover of our daily broadsheets, rather than the latest developments on charter change and the please-make-it-stop-now-or-I’ll puke-green-slime “Hello, Garci” wiretapping scandal.

Pacquiao’s victory in the pinnacle of boxing glory inspired me to resume what I neglected to do for more than a month now: join my friends’ weekly badminton games in Star Smash Timog Ave every Sunday. For the past year, my clique has holed up in this place to smash shuttlecocks (or shuttledicks, as we prefer calling them) and stumble ungracefully on the Taraflex-lined badminton courts. Between my daunting office tasks and plain indolence, I somehow have all the varied excuses to shun performing cardio-vascular activities. But with the euphoric mood affecting me like a venomous snake bite, I decided to grab my stuff and head out for the badminton court.

My bestfriend, the Guru of Adidas and Badminton (GAB), who happens to be the best player in the group, has gotten pretty depressed with my and our other friends’ abysmal failure to improve on the game. GAB laments that despite all the pointers that he has shared to the group, most of us have somehow managed to wallow in the “skilled” (read: beginner) level instead of progressing to the “advanced” level. Up until now, our smashes lack power, our grips are all wrong, and our footwork is comparable to a duck that has gone to an all-night lager fest. It’s not like we lack the motivation to improve; but rather, we treat badminton as a social sport.     

Badminton has ceased to be the sissy sport that only shrieking girls in wind-blown skirts would play. In college, I passed the chance on taking a badminton class in PE for fear of my high school buddies learning about it. If I’ve known that badminton would be so huge now, I would’ve signed up for it in a heart beat. Nowadays, its blitzing popularity of the sport is evidenced by the growing number of private badminton courts mushrooming everywhere. I heard that some badminton racquets are even more expensive than most top of the line tennis racquets. The good thing about badminton is that one does not have to be built like a burly athlete to play. It’s not as physically demanding as most sports, and is one of the few games where technique and timing is more important than power or sheer brute strength.

Going back to yesterday’s badminton game, I immediately swung my racquet around as soon as I arrived in Star Smash. Since time was ticking fast, we didn’t have time (or just plainly didn’t want) to stretch and warm up. In the middle of one game, I had stitches all over my chest and back areas. It was hurting me like crazy, and it limited my mobility to chase after the shuttledicks. After losing two consecutive games, Yaya, one of our friends, joked that I was fast becoming the “alat” of the session. Not wanting to give up, I teamed up with Ivan, one of the better players of our group, and proceeded to win our game by bageling (15-0) the team of Luis and Joma (peace!). “Tapos na ba? We hardly broke sweat,” we kidded quite cockily afterwards.

Our group usually devotes 6-8pm of every Sunday to play badminton. For us, it’s a great way to bond since everybody can take part in it and a session would normally cost just a hundred bucks each. In contrast, it costs more than a hundred pesos to watch a movie in the theatre these days, and even a bottle of brew in your standard bar would come close or even more than that. Besides, Sundays also give us the opportunity to have supper and chit-chat after our games. It’s rather refreshing when friends are able to have frill-free fun and bond closer in the process. These days, such opportunities don’t come often.

Right now, my muscles and joints ache from playing two hours’ worth of badminton without much of a flex or a warm up. I might have to visit our company nurse to request for a pop of Alaxan. And since our group’s after dinner chat went close to 10pm, I now have this nagging urge to take an on the job discreet nap. Yep, it’s far from being comfortable, but with Sundays like the one that I had yesterday, it’s definitely all worth it.