I USED to belong to the Palakihan ng Bag Department—the bigger the tote bag, the better, as I brought along my girl-scout essentials: umbrella, huge wallet, mobile phones, phones’ chargers, shawl, meds, rubbing alcohol, face powder, lipstick, perfume, keys, and everything else that a woman needs for daily survival.
Note the “s” in mobile phones. I used to have four—Globe, Smart, Sun, and Bayantel.
But I got, uh, older, and the shoulders began to complain. So, time to switch to minimalist mode with the cutest bags I could find.
I now use the tote bags as storage for small bags.
But with the weather-weather app refusing to tell the truth and nothing but the truth about the weather, I now bring an umbrella when it’s cloudy, thus, requiring a bigger bag for the rainy-weather essential. Although a boat would be more essential here in Cagayan de Oro.
Drainage systems and levees are being built in CDO’s flood-prone areas to encourage the rain to find more appropriate exits once it hits the ground.
Water is like that Pinoy bank: it finds ways. Even uptown CDO is sometimes flooded now. And surely other cities in Pinas have this same problem. That must be the reason for Pinas’ latest tourism slogan: “Love the Philippines.” Since love is blind, thus, making the tourist ignore the country’s flaws.
Yes, the slogan does sound like the country is begging for love. Parang awa n’yo na, please love Pinas. Tsk tsk. Tawon pud.
A tourism slogan is like the cherry on top of the icing on the cake. You start eating the cherry, which is usually yummy, and you can now hope that the icing and the cake are yummy, too.
Journalist Howie Severino has a suggestion: “How about a comma? Love, the Philippines.” Which is the better version—doesn’t sound anymore like Pinas is begging. Instead, it’s a love letter that ends with “Love, the Philippines.”
In Lynn Truss’s book, “Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation,” she wrote about this particular panda joke:
“A panda walks into a cafe. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires two shots in the air.
“‘Why?’ asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife annual and tosses it over his shoulder.
“‘I’m a panda,’ he says, at the door. ‘Look it up.’
“The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds an explanation. ‘Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves.’”
Her book is not exactly funny, sometimes it may even sound boring to punctuation checkers, but it awakens the realization that such sticklers do exist.
At a recent event, we were listening to a speech that was obviously written at the very last minute. The guest speaker couldn’t make it, so he sent a representative. A representative whose accent was noweyr heyr nor theyr—that’s how she pronounced some words.
Whenever a speaker starts delivering speeches that people could hardly understand, that’s when I say, Binisay-a na lang gud na oi. Because what’s important is for a speech to come from the heart.
Is the correct punctuation from the heart, too? Hmmm.
