Dyesebel

Channel 7 starts its newest television series 'Dyesebel' tonight. The media hype in the past few weeks has been intense, with unveiling of billboards along Edsa, nightly teasers, and yesterday, a launch in their noontime variety show. Needless to say, children of all ages who became avid fans of the Marian Rivera-Dingdong Dantes loveteam from 'Marimar' can hardly contain their excitement.

Including my daughter. It is her seventh birthday this week, and she has been doing her countdown, crossing out the days in the calendar, adding and subtracting guests to her hypothetical birthday party, listing down the gifts she would like to receive, . As is customary, she is allowed to request for one gift (aside from the surprise ones). It is usually a Barbie, which means she now has 6 Barbies from her 6 previous birthdays. She is torn between a new winged Barbie, a robot, and a bike. That is, until Dyesebel came along.

After watching the Dyesebel launch yesterday, she announced that she would like a tail. Not just your ordinary costume, thank you, but something that she could use in the pool. And so this harassed mother rushed through her lunch to drop by at Toy Kingdom in search of a tail. The only one there is Ariel's tail with a matching little bra, from Disney's The Little Mermaid. I almost choked when I saw the price tag: P1,000.00. The saleslady helpfully said that it's been selling like crazy, and the one in my hands is the last on stock that would fit a 7-year-old.

After a serious consultation with two girlfriends and an exchange of text messages with the nanny, it was decided that it would be better to buy the cloth and create the tail ourselves. Of course we needed a bra, and Dyesebel did have a pearly headdress. I seriously considered having mussels for dinner so I'd have some real shells to work with, then I remembered that Kultura Pilipino sells pre-packed polished seashells. Then by way of sharing the misery, my girlfriends agreed to create tails for their own daughters as well. At least we could compare notes.

My daughter's birthday party is on Saturday. Today is Monday. One could sympathize with the crazy things mothers put themselves through, all for the love of their children. I know I'll try my damnedest to create the nicest tail , even if I also know that in a week's time it will probably be in the farthest corner of my daughter's closet.

the 92,000-peso bag

The items in the online buy-and-sell corner at the office today:

1. A 2004 BMW motorcycle for P765,000
2. A Nokia 6280 for P5,500 (negotiable)
3. A 2003 Honda CRV for $13,500
4. Lacoste perfume for P3,400
5. Sweet kittens looking for a home, free
6. HP Pavilion DV6000 laptop for P65,000
7. A house and lot at BF Homes Paranaque for P3.6 million
8. A Chanel medium-sized white bag for P92,000

I thought about the Chanel bag for a while. The post says it comes with a certificate of authenticity. And I thought a Liz Claiborne bag at 1,500 is already very expensive!

To the average Pinoy 92,000 can pay for the following:

1. 6 years' tuition in a respectable semi-private grade school
2. Down payment for a two-bedroom townhouse in the outskirts of Metro Manila
3. Jollibee birthday parties for 13 kids, having 30 guests each
4. 92 dresses from Karimadon (and let's not think about just buying from SM Department Store)
5. 1 complete tricycle to provide income, with something left over to pay for one year's worth of electric bills
6. 76 1-kg cans of baby formula, enough to last 19 months
7. 18,400 pencils, enough for 368 Grade 1 classes

But then, probably the seller (and the interested buyer) are not your average Pinoy. Expensive is also a matter of perspective.

a lesson on kindness

Last Saturday was my first experience in bloodshed. After dinner we heard some commotion from a neighbor's house. Since the couple over there occasionally fight noisily, I thought nothing of it. My husband disappeared from the house and I thought he went to see a piece of the action, so I wasn't really concerned until he called my phone and said that someone got stabbed in the neighbor's house, he is taking the wounded person to the hospital, and could I send someone to bring him clothes since he was only wearing boxer shorts when he left the house.


And then the drama started. In a few minutes there were policemen and a lot of the neighborhood men looking for the suspect. Perpetrator might be the better word, because my husband said he stopped the man from stabbing the victim further by hitting him over the head with a broom handle. And this man was just outside our gate a few moments earlier, looking listless. I thought it was because he was drunk.


I asked the nanny to bring my daughter to her room because it was the only upstairs room with window grilles. Then I turned on all the lights in the house and inspected all the rooms, bathrooms, and closets. I made sure all the windows were locked, then I went out to follow my husband.


He took the wounded woman to a hospital that's about half an hour away. I found my husband in the hospital parking lot, in his boxer shorts and with blood smeared on his body. The woman needed to be transferred to a government hospital because the present hospital was private and would not admit her without a deposit. The hospital was asking for someone to pay for the emergency room charges before they would release her. The woman, whom we did not know, had sixteen stab wounds, mostly on the back and the neck, and a deep gash on one cheek. But she was alive.


I paid the bill and then we were rushing home because the nanny called and said that the suspect might be trying to get in the yard. That was when I started to get upset. If he got inside and my daughter was harmed in any way, I would castrate him. Never mind if I was eight months pregnant.


Fortunately, the man was not in our house. We settled down at past one a.m., tired and shocked but unable to sleep. My husband and I both had heavy knives under the bed. We knew the man (let's call him Joe). He was often at the house; he took his meals with us. He wasn't exactly a drifter, but he had no job and had a way of getting into fights when he was drunk, which he did at least every other day. When Joe was sober, he was quiet, polite, and helpful. I know my husband gives him money for the odd jobs around the house, and I know that Joe listens to my husband whenever he gets into a fix and needed some help making peace with the people he managed to offend while drunk. But now he had tried to kill somebody.


After a few minutes the dogs started a racket again. There were men outside the house, and flashlight beams criss-crossing the little tree park in front of our house. There was an empty fishpond there, a failed project of my husband with Joe and a couple of other neighborhood guys. There were sounds of struggle, and suddenly the policemen came out with Joe, who had been hiding in the bottom of the fishpond. Joe was brought to the police station, where we heard he was beaten up and jailed.


Joe had not tried to flee. He circled back twice to get close to our house. If he had run away in the first hour, the policemen would not have caught him. The village is very large, sparsely populated, and had lots of trees and grassy spaces for cover. We thought that he came back to ask for assistance, perhaps for money so he could get away, and he was just waiting for everything to get quiet before he would try to get to my husband somehow. And I was thinking, would he have hurt any of us if he got in and found out that we used all the money to pay for his victim's hospitalization? Did he really believe my husband would help him get away? If he got away that night, would he have returned in two, three days to get what he wanted? What if he came back to the house and only my daughter and nanny were there?

People ask us how we could have befriended a character like Joe. My husband says it was a way of being kind. When someone has no place to go, even if you don't exactly trust him, you have an opportunity to help. He says you don't pay for a stranger's hospital bill or help clean up the blood in the neighbor's house (or stop someone from getting killed) just because you think you'd get in the headlines. You do it because you know that at some other time, in some other way, the kindness will be returned. And at the moment, it is better to be the one who could offer help than be the one needing it.

I don't think my husband was playing hero, but that night I loved him more. And oh, if he had gotten just one little wound in that incident, I would still try to castrate Joe, even if I had fed him countless times in my kitchen.

flowers for algernon

I went to the bookstore earlier to browse for books to add to my want-to-buy list. Aside from Wilbur Smith's African adventure novels, I wanted Thomas Harris' Hannibal Rising and Ken Follett's The Pillars of the Earth. I saw Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale and Frank Herbert's Dune. And it gave me a jolt of pleasure to see, on the shelf, Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon.

Charlie is a mentally retarded man who becomes a genius after an experimental brain surgery, a procedure which has been tested only on mice. It is written in the voice of Charlie, and it becomes a heart-wrenching journey when he realizes that his intellectual capacity will diminish after some time, and he is as alone as when he was dim-witted. The book had won a Hugo and a Nebula award. Like Dune (which also won a Hugo and a Nebula) and The Handmaid's Tale, I read Flowers for Algernon when I was thirteen.

Now I'm thirty-one, and the book is on the bookstore shelves again, with raving reviews. And seeing it has made me excited. I wanted to tell the other people there to grab it because it's a damned good book, and it can make you cry.

Good books are like your childhood sweetheart. They steal your heart, and when you see them again after some time, your pulse race just a little bit, you smile a wistful smile, and you think, Hello, good-looking. I've known you some time ago, and boy, wasn't it marvelous.

my nine west guilt trip

My friends on the third floor are passionate about shoes. They have Ferragamo, Nine West, Naturalizer, Charles and Keith. Their bags are Prada, Coach, Fendi, and Louis Vuitton. Ada has eighteen pairs of shoes under her workstation, and none of them costs below 5,000 pesos.

I adore shoes, although my taste is not as expensive as theirs. I raid end-of-the-month sales for those good finds that do not wreck my budget. And since I often have to weigh the need between a new pair of high heels and a can of infant formula, I treasure my shoes.

Every night I walk from the office to where the shuttle is parked. I cross a mall and an overpass. And every night, there are little kids there, begging for money. They are very dirty and they usually block your way when you try to walk past them. Sometimes, when they're in a bad mood, they even kick you when you don't hand them money. They are barefoot.

I try to ignore them, citing excuses such as the anti-mendicancy law, or that they use the money to buy drugs anyway, or that I don't have small change. But I never fail to notice their dirty feet. And I think that these kids have never heard of the difference between Michael Kors and Naturalizer. They're probably more worried about the whipping they'll get when they go home without money. And every time I see them I remember my friends' shoes.

I have nothing against expensive shoes. I have one pair of Nine West wedges, a pretty blue-green, with ribbons that you tie up. I like it very much. I only wear it in the office, because it's too expensive to use when I go traipsing all over the mall or when I commute home.

Call me a hypocrite, but somehow I feel I cannot cross the overpass wearing a pair of shoes with a price tag that could feed the barefoot child a hundred lunches. :-)

ANTics

I sat under the mango tree today with a pad and pencil, planning to draw, while my husband watched a rerun of Voltes 5 dubbed in Filipino. It's a nice hot afternoon, and it seemed such a waste to spend it indoors.

I was distracted by one intrepid red ant traveling along the back of the plastic chair where I had put my feet up, and before it could reach my leg I smashed it flat with my daughter's Barbie ruler. Soon enough, another ant came aong and stumbled upon his dead friend. I assumed he freaked out. He sniffed around, felt along the dead ant's head and tail, and then he commenced to drag it by the neck, back up the chair and on to the chico tree where the chair was tied to.

I repeated the murder of the ant. As soon as I whacked one ant, another would carry it off by the neck. I've known that an ant can carry twice its own weight, but I didn't know they followed a protocol for carrying their dead.

"The neck! The neck! It's crucial! Hoist your comrade up your back, lift, and heigh-ho! Back to the nest we go!"

News must travel fast among these red ants. When quite a few lay squashed, a crowd of their colleagues came and inspected them. They tend to gather more around the half-dead ones, as if unsure of what to do with them.

"How do we carry them without injuring them further?"
"Splint for broken legs!"
"But all six legs are broken!"

I have smashed five again; there are at least 30 ants gathered round the casualties. The two really dead ones have already been carried off, always by the nape of the neck.

I prod one of the bystanders with the tip of my pencil. It reared up its bottom and bit the lead. I put the pencil in the middle of five ants who are probably arguing who will carry their maimed friend. All five, with their butts in the air, attacked the pencil. I pinned one of the ants down and flattened its tail. When I lifted the pencil, seven ants converged on the tail. Much as I want to believe that the seven are trying to apply first aid, it certainly looked like they were drinking the moisture from the smashed tail. And then the fallen ant was carried off, still struggling, by the neck.

Now there are more ants. Are they waiting for more casualties? Are the dead ants brought back to the nest as food? Do the maimed ones recover, or are they eaten? It's summer; I suppose they are gathering food stock, but I don't remember seeing in Animal Planet that they eat their own kind.

Now a whole squad of ants is marching down the tree trunk. Someone has reported to headquarters about this mysterious enemy: flat and transparent, with little pink human lettering that spells "Mattel, Inc. All rights reserved."

I've been watching the ants for over an hour. I try to smash another ant, but quick as a flash this one dodges the ruler. He climbs up and onto my hand. I try to shake it off, but it goes up my arm, up my shoulder, and takes a quick bite on the back of my neck. I slap the ant-- dead-- but my nape stings.

Sweet revenge, he must have thought. I wonder if he planned to commit suicide. I get up to find something to put on the ant bite. I think I will watch the cat next time.

medical city

I am one of those people who, by some stroke of luck or good genes, rarely get sick. The last time I was hospitalized was when I delivered my daughter seven years ago. So I am not a fair judge when it comes to comparing hospitals or medical services.

On Thursday last week, after a rather heavy lunch, I had a stomach ache. It was the kind that told you you had to go to the bathroom and free some space, so I went. I was in the bathroom for almost an hour, and was unsuccessful. By that time I was already miserable and sweating and my stomach was tight as a drum. Since I am seven months pregnant I went to the clinic to ask if I may be given a suppository so I would not strain so much, but when I got there, the medical staff got very busy with me. They said I was already having contractions. Fifteen minutes later I was in an ambulance, going to the emergency room of Medical City.

The doctors said I was going into pre-term labor. I was admitted, hooked in an IV drip with a uterine relaxant, and confined to the bed. The private room I picked had cable TV but no fridge, since I thought I would go home the following day. I understood that I needed the supervision of an OB-Gyne so that I would not push the baby out by straining to defecate (let's be delicate here). I thought a night would be fine. I called my husband, and the nanny came that night with a couple of books and a change of clothing.

Being on bed rest was strange. Since I could not go to the bathroom, I had to do my business in the bedpan all the time, and it was not funny. There was so much food. Medical City gave you three square meals and two snacks, and since there is a food court in the second floor, you could have Pizza Hut, Red Ribbon cake slices, Max's take-out, hotdogs, leaf-wrapped meals. (Good thing they did not restrict my diet.) The drugstore was stocked like a convenience store. A nurse gave me a sponge bath, and I honestly don't remember ever getting a sponge bath in my 31 years on earth.

The doctor said I should stay one more night to finish the drip, so I was scheduled for discharge on Saturday noon. I was already feeling fine after the sessions with the bedpan, and I was bored. Then the time to settle the bill came. I only had to sign the statement of account because the bank will take care of it, but still 15,000.00 for 2 days came easy to swallow but hard to digest.

The hospital charges were carefully itemized, from the gloves and syringe down to the washtowel and basin used for my sponge bath. The nanny reacted to items (1) cotton balls at 16.00 (which she does not remember being used) and (2) micropore tape at 57.00 (which she says I only used two short strips and therefore we should ask for the remainder of the roll!). The doctor must have stayed in my room for a total of 5 minutes in two days, asked a few questions, and signed the clipboard, and the charge for her service was 5,000.00. We brought home the pillow, the basin and washtowel, the bedpan, and the 'welcome kit,' which the nanny says are souvenirs of my stay. What, am I going to bring out the bedpan when we have guests and say, 'Look, I got this from Medical City! And my washcloth has a logo!'

Medical City is a hospital that puts the patient first. You really feel pampered. Not once did I see a nurse who is not smiling or pleasant. It's as if you're the only patient they ever had. The food, though bland as hospital food goes, was hot and very prompt. When they put you on bed rest, you literally don't lift a finger. When I was discharged, someone accompanied me to the Billing Section and out to the van that would take me home. My medical certificate was handed to me even before I left the room.

The hospital does not come cheap. But if you have money (or if someone else will pay your bill), the stay is worth the price. More than making you well, the staff makes you feel good. You are treated with respect, and you know you're in the hands of competent human beings.

So there goes my Medical City experience, and all because I wanted to poop.