It’s amazing –the power there is in language.

Earlier today, I had to place a call to the hotel I amthinking about booking in Manila when I go on holidays to check if they would honourthe Ozzie gold card gift voucher we had. The minute the phone picked up and I heard the lady on the other endspeak, I  felt a pang of nostalgia.

The funny thing was, I opened my mouth fully intending tospeak in Filipino, and then blanked out. Filipino was never my strong point –it is my third language after alland because my head was struggling with what my mouth was saying, I ended upsounding stilted and caveman-like. So I started laughing at myself. Yes, the lady at the other end was confused, and when she finally strungtogether what I was trying between laughs to say, she pulled the reservationup, looked at my new last name, my stilted accent and assumed the worst.

 

So she valiantly held up the fort and rallied forth with hertwang, while I pulled myself together and struggled to not to make each wordsound like a sentence.  But howamazing is it that in the course of two minutes, she and I had compiled aseries of impressions about each other based on language?

 

And then there was that lady at the shop who bought a prettypair of open toe pumps.  I askedher if she was Japanese and she said quite guardedly “yes I am”.  You should have seen her face light upand heard her laugh when I said “moshi moshi”.

 

Then there was that guy who came up to me at a camping spotbetween Katherine and Darwin, asking if it was okay for them to park theircaravan right beside our ute.  WhenI asked “Vous etes francais?” he gave his friend this very French look and saidin an embarrassed tone “’Ow can you tell? Ees it by my acc-unt?”  Itold him, yes, it was the accent but I also had to reassure him that it wasonly because I have French friends and because I had studied it that I pickedup on it.

 

And this sweet old man who at a roadhouse who was trying sohard to describe what he was looking for (a memory card).  He was clearly German, knew littleEnglish and I had to scrounge around in my head for what to say but ended upsaying “Nein sprecken deutsch, ma frantsosich ist besser al mein deutsch (I don't speak German, my French is better than my German!” andthen he just started to describe in random French words what he wanted “is unecard, with grande memoire? Memorie? Pictures!” And his funny wife who was inher own world, yelling out “Mais c’est la-bas! Les chapeaux! (But it's over there! The hats!!)” LOL

Meet Bitville Hercules, the latest addition to our family.  He's been v good so far :)

  

We were going to name him Sparky, but the name Hercules suits him :)   

Also, it has been a really busy last 2 months.  We have been away from KNX and I can honestly say that although we now stay in a town that is much smaller and more limited, Daz and I are a LOT happier.  We are also a few hours drive away from Perth, and in the last 2 months have already gone twice to get away and shop :)  It has been great!

From a two bedroom flat, we moved to a 3 bedroom house with a HUGE backyard that came with a cat.  We don't know who owns him, but he seems to have come with the house :)  and because Daz and I are softies, we've been feeding him so it's unlikely that he's going to leave anytime soon.  He seems to be quite happy with us, though, and since Hercules has come home, has been acting quite jealous.  Puss, as we call him, is not allowed in the house on account of the birds.  Hercules does not seem to notice the birds, even when they are on the floor right in front of him.  More importantly, the birds aren't scared of him, although they do eye him pretty warily when he's around.

Anyway, as anyone can imagine, there has been no time for blog updating at all.  I've actually been toying with changing the nature of this blog, but can't be bothered to actually do something about it at the moment hehe.  Maybe soon.  After I've unpacked the last box.   

 

   

a memory can turn traitor

leeching fresh blood out of old wounds

Just downloaded a really fun app on the phone.  It's called the Touch Closet.  You know that scene in Clueless where Cher has a computer program for her closet? It's exactly the same, except on your iphone or ipod touch.  

So you take photos of your clothes --shoes, belts, accessories, even jewelry, categorize them and then you group them together into outfits.  You can even keep track of how many times you've worn an outfit, or an item, the dates when you wore them and even who you were with.  I thought it was a great tool for shopping :)  Cool, hey?  

So, this is what I wore the other night when I got together with a few friends for drinks and dinner at the Grande. 

 

I was going to title it "Appalled on a Saturday morning", but hehe thought twice.

Had to get up early because Daz has a job out of town and I had to pack his bags and make some fajitas for his lunch while he packed the car and trailer with all the stuff he needed.  Couldn't sleep after that, so I sat here and watched Saturday morning cartoons for the first time in a long time.

My first thought was: why are these kids (and cartoon characters) shouting?  It became extremely annoying after 5 minutes.  

 

I love planning trips, booking tickets, packing, traveling to the airport, airports, planes, going somewhere new, going somewhere at all, backpacking, 4-star, trying new cuisines, learning new languages, packing to go home, flying/train-ing/bus-ing home.  I could spend hours and hours getting lost reading travelogues, planning new adventures, walking in places I've never been to before.  I adore traveling. I love everything about it.

So I am a happy little clam because for the next few weeks, my spare hours will be filled planning our holidays for 2009.  And I just needed to share that lol 

Filipinos who live and work overseas are bound to get slighted (whether from the locals of the place they live in or other fellow Filipinos).  As a migrant of two years to this country, I have long been tossing up the idea of getting citizenship or just renewing permanent residency.  Perhaps growing up in the 80s in a staunchly politically aware family; the values are imbedded in my system that I now find I cannot give up my Filipino citizenship just like *snap* that.  The only truly compelling reason for me is to get a blue passport, so I can travel unencumbered by months of planning, visa applications etc.  Of course, I also try and see if this place is really a place I see myself growing old in, settling, living out my last days and if gaining citizenship is worth losing my current one.

Of course, to others, I probably sound like I'm making too much of it.  A lot of people are dual citizens, it really is no big of a deal.  But this, to me, is deeply personal because of the way I was raised and the time I grew up in.  And also because I have had many thrilling moments of studying Constitutional Law (I can hear the groans now LOL) and seeing the pockets of possibility and Hope in some decisions.  LOL Of course, this all comes from a romanticized POV and from someone who hasn't lived in the motherland for a while and who scarcely knows the issues.

But, back to the beginning.  I know this is probably all disjointed and the writing leaves much to be desired in terms of coherence, but forgive me, am writing on the fly.  

And now I am exhausted LOL just thinking about it.

But, here, in an excerpt from letter to friends, is something that happened to me yesterday which made me think about all this and whether I can justify giving up current citizenship to be like them.  (Of course, I realise that not everyone here is like this, but I am hard pressed to find them :)  Maybe they all live in the cities. LOL)

**snip**

I got offered a new job yesterday, at the TAFE here, which is a tech college.  It's an assistant position, part time (which was my one condition because I still need to do Daz's paperwork).  So I'm assistant to the head of the college, and will be assisting HR and Accounts when needed. I'm pretty excited because while it doesn't sound like a dream job (I've given up finding one of those here LOL), it's something different that requires me a little noggin work.  It was all great until one thing.  There's this woman there, her name is C.  She's a friend of Darren's parents.  I've met her only once or twice, but around here that's enough to consider us friends.  Apparently, she has been batting for me, urging the head of the college to hire me.  

I applied last year, but one of the requirements was permanent residency (as it's a government job) and I wasn't then, so they hired someone else.

Anyway, that someone else went on maternity leave (maternity leave here is like a year) so they needed someone to fill in.  And now that I'm a permanent resident, they called me.  

Anyway, as I was leaving TAFE, C congratulated me on getting offered the job and I said thanks, and then she said "You deserve it", which sort of struck me as a weird thing to say.  But she kept saying it, you deserve it, you deserve it.  And this woman does not know me from Adam, so I had to ask her what she meant.  She said that she had heard that I used to study really hard in the Philippines and that this was such a good step for me to take yada yada yada.  In my head naman I was thinking (you mean law school?  But I didn't go to law school so I could work as an admin assistant at the TAFE)  I just thought her answer was a bit weird so I just smiled and said thanks and went home.(My momma raised me all polite like y'see LOL)

Call me slow on the uptake, but all that sort of stewed on the back burner the rest of the day.

And then while I was talking to Daz, I sort of realised that she must have thought that when people said (at the time Darren and I were dating) that I was studying, she probably thought that I was studying very hard so that when I get to Australia, I'll have a good life.  That good old poor Filipino stereotype.

Biglang natawa/irita lang ako.  Irita because I hate being pegged in a category, no matter what it is.  And natawa kasi, how myopic and funny is that?  And I said to Daz last night how hard I found it to have to break all the stereotypes.  Kasi naman before I came here, all the other Filipinas have been the (and I'm not saying this in a mean way, just fact) marry-a-white-guy-to-leave-the-Philippines type.  No higher education and with bad communication skills.  It's better now; there are a few new Filipinos here that are vaguely interesting (you still get the first sort, though, only much younger this time).  So now when they meet me, they get thrown.  Sure, it was cute the first few "your english is tremendous!"(my thought balloon: if only i can say the same about your grammar!) or "how great is your english, you can make jokes and everything!"(my thought balloon: how insulting is that?!) and the "are you american?" questions I got, but it got old really fast.

Anyway,wala lang.  I just sort of needed to vent that.  I'm far from being balat sibuyas and I'm too self aware to be insecure so it takes a while for me to realise that things like that are happening to me. LOL  but holy crap I just get tired of the stereotype.
 **snip**