Late

"Let's welcome the late Joe Tye Otten!"

What I like most about my past workplaces were the opportunities to improve my heckling skills. There was nothing much to remember anyway being the non-performing ass that I had always been. Arriving late to a meeting and being welcomed as a deceased had always been the favorite routine at the Institute for Labor Studies, my last workplace before I came to America.

Joe Tye Otten was a character who I brought along with me from Northern Mindanao. Maphie Mook and Madge Noon recently joined forces with Joe Tye to celebrate cultural diversity and gay pride in America. Now all immigrants and naturalized Americans, Joe Tie would always be Visayan. No amount of Latter-day Saints' Christianity would change Maphie Mook and Madge Noon who would always be Arabs.

I initially thought of writing this blog to commemorate the birthday of my friend who died forty days ago today. The late Priscilla Decena Pampliega. My Abyan is officially accepted in heaven. I meant this blog to be sober and soul searching to mark Priscilla's point of no return to earth. But I don't want to miss taking note of how I hugged a tall lady wearing her little black dress who I thought was Vilma at the chapel where Priscilla's memorial service was being held in Phoenix.
"I'm Tess, Priscy's cousin. How are you?"
"Ohhh..."
I couldn't think of anything to say.
I hugged the wrong person.

workplace diversity at its best

My ideal workplace. Johannes* (pronounced like you' highness) is such a professional and serious clinician and that couldn't be him goofing off in front of my blackberry. I didn't expect Johannes could come out looking so funny and be captured as such by Chita** in my blackberry.

It was a night of Androids, iPhones and my lowly blackberry curve. Jesus told me it could be his last night working at the unit before he leaves for Northern California. He got accepted to a graduate program at University of California Davis on a scholarship. Wow. My Nelson Mandela personified. Cool. I thought I would never come upon the likes of Lev A. in the American workplace.
Jesus asked me to hold my "plus" sign. I did obligingly and that instant, I became a photo file in his iPhone with my "plus" sign hidden between my thumb and forefinger, and a thyroid in the foreground.

Jesus is Issa in Arabic. Jesus asked me if I am a Christian.
"Why'd you ask?" I could never give a straight answer because I don't have one to the questions of Jesus.
"You're wearing a cross. Christians wear cross."
Jesus is obviously a Christian, what else could he be?
"Jesus, it's a plus sign."
Jesus. Maria. Jose!


*Not his real name.
** Not her real name either.

Social Network

RN recorded the movie in this post title: Social Network! I love it because I could relate with the story. It's my Facebook. Because of Facebook, my social network expanded. My trip to the Bay Area in June 2010 was Facebook-related.

Thoughts while at Cafe Santa Fe

The last time I wrote a blog in this place, my friend Priscilla was still alive. She laughed at my nonsense as usual. It's been two weeks since Julie left me a voicemail using Priscilla's phone asking me to call back. I cried "Oh my God" over and over again. I cried some more while I was on my way to work. Norah Jones song "Don't know why" consoled me as I remember singing the song all the way to Arizona to meet my friend Priscilla for the first time less than a year ago in November.
"But I'll be a vagabond, driving down the road alone." I sang out loud with Norah.
I wanted to adopt Julie as my kid sister from that time I talked with her telling me Priscilla had passed away.
It's been a week since I drove 350 miles to Phoenix to pay my last respects to my dear friend endeared in her native Iloggo terms. Do I miss her, of course I do. Priscilla represented my oldest sister who was born the same year but died a year earlier in Turin, italy. I was not able to go to my sister's delayed burial the month before. Maybe next month, I would be able to visit her gravesite in Turin.
Dealing with dying has forced me to reflect on death, mine. Ugh. No viewings. No ashes either. I hate cigarettes and I don't want to end up the same fate as that of a cigarette. And since I am organ donor, i might as well donate my remains for compost.

Ugh...pha khin toxic!