Sweet Non-sense

Yesterday marks my blog’s first year and it earned 1,040 hits. I’m sure those were visits from three blog-loyal friends namely, Ronald, Joanna, and Richmond.

They left several comments which give my blog the illusion of readability. Ha-ha! Thank you.

There were also intermittent visits from at least ten more friends who happen to come by my page through their blogroll and recently through my self advertisement in Facebook.

At this point it gets very cheesy and paradoxical to my goal of making Samanthaisms as impersonal as possible. So I’ll stop saying my thanks and minimize the risk of sounding like Pinoy actors plugging their pinaghirapan na movie so we may all watch.

The deadpan wallflower

It’s been half a decade ago since I decided to kick off a so-called career life. Because I was on an entry level and thought myself grandly verbose and grammatically correct, the obvious choice was the call center. I proved to be a sorry call center agent with no future in the business processing outsourcing world.

My QA grades were painfully average and my social skills were low. It was there that I realized that the business world have no use for my vocabulary and grammar; whereas in the academe, it made me shine despite my social defect. Customers on the other end of the phone line do not care if my preposition and conjunction are perfect.

It was depressing and my already defective set of social skills has become completely run down; I became the most unenthusiastic agent on the floor. It did not help that my days are spent on school and my nights at work and in between I was traveling and sleeping on buses and cabs. I could not cope with my coworkers whose bond grew stronger as we stayed longer in the company. Despite the presence of a boyfriend at work, I felt my self drifting apart from the rest of them.

In the middle of the persistent misery, I had an epiphany. I suddenly wanted a job that would make full use of my motor skills. I thought then that my enthusiasm may be spruced up if I expend more energy at work.

And I was right. My years spent as a barista was a turning point in my life, if not of my career. I had another realization; I belong somewhere and my skills are relevant and I am an important person. I was prized for my abilities.

But there was a draw back, I can not make the front line, I can only stay on the side lines. I envy my colleagues who can carry out a small talk with a hesitant guest. I was a feisty vivacious girl behind the bar as I was the laconic freak during table visits.

I remember telling my coworker Bab Gillera that I was not used to being talked to while growing up. I was used to being invisible and ignored. And it wasn’t even a bad case of ignored, I was simply not talked to probably out of disinterest. I am always overcome with disbelief whenever persons, strangers and those whom I normally mutually ignore speak to me. When my former college classmate Kay Duenas mentioned wallflowers in her nostalgic Facebook album, I was convinced that I was the major wallflower.

Ronald told me that I am elitist; my difficulty to socialize does not stem from pathology but from an innate repulsion of everything I find disagreeable.

However I struggled with customer relations, I successfully felt empowered as I discovered my niche, and this gave me delusions of grandeur. Aside from making friends and bridging authority, which used to be a waterloo, I also found admirers, which included me.  I discovered and cultivated my aesthetics and developed a deeper interest for material wants, specifically, clothes.

It was then I altered my plans of culinary servitude and dreamed of climbing the ladder of a fashion powerhouse.

These jobs caused paradoxical changes in my attitude. I became more reserved and patient towards strangers whenever I’m out of the work place and developed notoriety for scorning and disparaging irate customers. I was conscious about how I behaved to potential customers, but unmindful to those who made my job more depressing.

As I evaluate my progress in this detour of a career path I made, I can feel the resentment boiling. I have long suspected that this was a wrong turn and I have indeed carelessly walked out of the niche I found. I am slowly slipping back into the deadpan wallflower I was before. Bleak future, no friends, and without enthusiasm.

The difference is I am probably scorned, please don’t ask why, but that’s better than invisible. Also, as I regain further social awkwardness, my wardrobe will make up for me.

My Village

Contrary to popular notion that I have always been a city girl, my formative years were spent in rural Cebu. We live in an idyllic place that feels like ‘The Village’ village.

It is off the highway and a little skirting road leads to the foothills where we are situated. It has an atmosphere of a self sufficient tiny bed of civilization. Bordered on the north by great hills, on the south by a brook, and on the east and west by fruit bearing trees and corn fields.

There’s a tiny elementary school where I studied. Although it is no longer as tiny as I remembered it; because improvements were made. I embraced its quintessential barrio school touch that I was disheartened to see that they traded in our vegetables plots and school gardens for additional classrooms. In the 90’s we only had six classrooms all for grades 1 to 6, and the gardens were so vast I extended my gardening to our own home yard.

I used to sneak into the gardens during weekends and pick tomatoes, eggplants and okras. I ate the green tomatoes dipped in salt and spend the rest of the lazy afternoon playing with tadpoles in the stream.

The great hills, much to my dismay, had parts of it buldozed for a cement road. We used to visit relatives up the hills by foot. We hiked up the foot path made of rocks and tree roots. I thoroughly enjoyed these hikes, but it wasn’t so apparent because I was a lousy hiker.

As kids, we turned the ravine into a giant slide. We each got our own palm leaves and any giant leaves we can find and use it to slide against the steep hillside.

Cows and goats abound, I had an unforgettable immaculate sighting-for a seven year-old, at least-to witness the birth of a kid. It felt like the confirmation of animal books and nursery rhymes and sesame street episodes.

I can still sense the earthy smell of fruits, damp soil, cow manure and burning leaves. The frogs still come out in the early evening, some still hang out at the door. The big lizard, a.k.a. tuko is still making the tu-ko sound at night.

But my childhood brook is no longer pretty. Modern stone houses have sprung up in our quaint village. The mountains which provide a mystical backdrop to our smallness is now venue for expensive real estate. The moving fire lights at night, which we used to think as voodoo ceremonial lights are now gleaming halogen bulbs.