How much of me am I willing to reveal? How much do you want me to?

• Kamesh, our general manager, is the best! Super cool Malaysian-Indian dude! =)
• Aarrgghh… my shoulder hurts… =/
• Sana naman hindi mapilay si dad… =(
• To the one I was chatting with tonight: Oh no dude, ‘kala mo maiisahan mo ako? Well, sorry, I’m no ordinary girl and I’m not naïve either.
• Ang dami naman ng Adam’s population. Haha. Go figure.
• Lately I’ve been one hell of a biatch. Really. Just ask my victims.
• To my hon: Love loves with eyes closed, mouth shut, ears covered. But love loves with an open heart, a patient mind and a passionate soul. It withstands challenges and overtime prepares for the future that becomes the present and develops into the past. The entirety of its being and what it was, is and will become is fate not written in the stars but a road chosen to be traversed wherever, however and whenever.
• Mommy, if I could give you wings I would; so you need not lie for hours on end on your uncomfy bed; so you could fly and once again, give us your smile.
• I’m hungry…but I can’t breathe. So which do I answer first? The call of hunger? Or the ultimate intake of fresh air? Either way, looks like I still have to wait until I get home and remove this blouse.
• Respect me. Treat me like a longed-for birthday present that you would not even dare to play with so you could preserve its very looks that took your breath away from the very first moment you saw it. Put me on a pedestal. And please do be careful with my heart.
• Trust  -  what I value most. Patience  -  what I need to learn most. Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. Love always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Love never fails.  -  Corinthians 13:4-8

• PWP? People’s Welfare Fund? Partido ng Walang Pera Pero Wagas ang Puso? Hmmm… Nice one. Hope daddy wins the rat race next year.

• I can’t wait ‘til 5pm.

Dear God,

If only I could, once again, listen to the concerns of my mom about the dangers of arriving at home very late at night;
If only I could hear her soothing voice that once captured the hearts of radio listeners;
If only to, once more, have her reassuring tone calm my troubled thoughts;
If for one day I could lend my voice to my mom so she could speak, a voice she willingly gave to me from the deep recesses of her being when she bore me;
A voice that is very much hers from the very beginning, literally and figuratively;
If only I could, I would.

_____________________

As a result of my mom being already in the advanced stage of a combination of Vascular and Alzheimer’s Dementia, her speech is already impaired. Aurora Villamiel Tierra-Cardenas was once a skilled features writer, sketch artist, accountant for Saudia Airlines/Travel Wide, and a radio announcer/DJ for DZWJ in Lucena City, Quezon.

It’s that time of the year again… The heat is a welcome respite to the chills my overly sensitive body always experiences but it seems like the cold is a better and more merciful refuge. A year ago, the summer heat produced friction with the chills I was feeling over the fear of not graduating and the cold and empty space in my heart. Two years ago, the same heat clashed with the coldness in me caused by the numbness I intentionally hurled over some organization problems. Three years ago, that heat sent numerous pains to my head that contained nothing but chilly images of frustration over the relationship trap that I unwittingly chose to be into. And now? I’m scared over what this heat will produce. To be the ice queen is better. Now for some ice cream . . . Where is that ice cream vendor I was hearing earlier?

This appeared in, I think, either a late 2002 or early 2003 issue of either The Philippine Star or Manila Bulletin. Sowee, I can’t even keep track of my own clippings. Hehehe. You could also find this in Peyups.com

______________

Quite typically for me and for the many others, one could be called “art” if it is, first and foremost, aesthetically enjoyable. Playing second fiddle is its capacity to be unique: based from how, who, when and where it is produced and on what circumstance.

According to the aforementioned chapter, what I experience is usually the case. Even more confusing is the supposedly root of everything’s classification: how we consider or identify something as “culture”. And yes, I do agree when the chapter mentioned something about how we usually agree or neglect an everyday chore as something infinitely “culture”. This conflict brings to my mind what I learned in my history and journalism classes. Culture is defined as the “way of life”. But in journalism, so is the word literature. The chapter, as I see it, isolates literature from art when the latter must be a characteristic of something to be called “culture”.

The enigmatic but docile attitude of the society we belong to, again as mentioned in the chapter, follows a recognizable but sometimes unfriendly “canon” from which we distinguish something as art. It is only now that I realize that I quite oftenly dismiss this seemingly underrated idea. I look at paintings, sculptures and anything which people call “art”, sometimes read the historical value, and then move on without even noticing the cultural discrimation that its innocence entails.

I recall an exhibit about women in CCP. It featured a huge variation of what society often sees - but neglects - as naturally a woman’s.

And then there are these two “works of art”. The first one featured a woman’s exposed belly, complete with intestines and an unborn baby. For a narrow-minded person, of which I can proudly say I’m not, this scene is disgusting and revolting. He might even say, “Why on earth would someone want to feature the bloody inside when one can take pride at the beautiful outside?”

The second display was enclosed in walls and can only be viewed by climbing a ladder. Curiosly enough, it displayed what I usually detest - that of a cluttered room. That was not art! That was clutter! Ironically though, it brings to memory my room. And I hate being reminded of that, that’s why! But coming to my defense, I recall a movie wherein one speaks of “artist’s clutter”. But I’d rather not dwell on what sometimes we call as “comfort justifications” for suddenly, I can hear my mom’s scream ringing in my ears.

Coming again to the indomitable but often underrated conflict and confusion that comes with art and culture, the humanities more specifically, as far as what I can possibly understand, it is but true that it is the society which sets up the norm to which we classify art. Forcibly, the society avoids the ugly past and the discrimination that pushes it away. To state my case, I would certainly not identify something or someone as “beautiful” if it reminds me of something undeniably bitter. If I see my father’s belt and then simultaneously recall the numerous times my mom sacrificingly stood in the way so I would not be hit, would I stand proudly and say that this is culture because it is normal to think of hitting a kid only to hurt the mother? Now tell me, even if this action was just provoked by my mistakes in the past, would we certainly call it art because of its specific value?

This is my own cramped vision of art. However isolated it is, as what others say, from the finite and confined walls of a society’s tenet and a culture’s problematic area of description, it still is like an open box of free ideas wherein equality and happiness is possible and of which sculpts, dramatizes and paints the world in a brighter perspective.

###############
The author wrote this for her Hum 2 paper. She would just like to share it with you especially to the art lovers.

Dear All:

Please forgive the informality but I would just like to share things that might come in handy to you in dealing with customers.

In the time I’ve spent as a staff for Speechpower, as a call center agent, both servicing clients and customers of all sizes and shapes, and as a customer myself, I have come to realize that though we have all, by now, learned that the customer is not always right, there are still certain rules that should be applied.

Note that I’ve also learned this from experience both as a customer and as an employee servicing a customer. Also, most of these "rules of etiquette" may apply to almost any situation.

1. Remember that though in Filipino culture, we usually think it’s respectful to call a person by his own appearance, i.e. "manang" and "manong" for old women and old men respectively, "lola" and "lolo" for the much older women and older men respectively, it is not right to judge in haste.

Once a man calling for van passengers called my attention using his megaphone: "Mrs., are you going to Cubao? The van will be leaving soon." Surely you all know that I still am a "Ms." and that I just look like a Mrs. due to my "issues" with weight. With the apparent "personal" (because no one really knew my "real" status) embarrassment I went through with the guy calling me while I was still at the side of the road opposite to him, I still took it as an insult nevertheless because of first, respect, and second, my weight issues that caused me to look older than my actual age. Having known that I never really had to take the van as beside it, its competitor, a bus going to Cubao, is also calling for passengers, upon reaching the guy’s side of the road, I stood in between the bus and the van and in raised eyebrows I said "Mrs.? I’m still single". And with that I strutted towards the bus.

Another instance happened to me just recently. Well, not actually to me but to my mom who’s in the hospital. My mom’s sickness, dementia of the Alzheimer’s type, caused her to look very much older than her actual age. But because I was highly emotionally charged and physically weak and tired that time due to what had been happening, I erupted rather violently when the nurse (who is much older than me) who entered the room, in a loud voice, called my mom "lola". Maybe I got it from my mom, you know, reacting with a really bad temper over what we consider an "insult". Maybe I was just being protective of my family.

WHAT TO LEARN: As members of a company servicing people, we should always remember that we should never judge in haste and should be very careful in calling a person based solely on his/her appearance. Especially with women, a "Mrs." may only be a "Ms.". The usual trick is to call a female client or a stranger, "Ms." or "Ma’am". But if a situation calls for extreme caution, ASK (the pitch of the voice rising at the end) with all the politeness we could muster: "How should I call you, Ms. (surname here)?"

_________________________

2. When giving response to an irate or frustrated and confused customer over something that he/she have done or have not done whether correctly or wrongly, never ever begin your spiel with a chastisement as if scolding a naughty little kid over what he/she should have or should have not done.

Again, a very recent situation involving the female cashier of the hospital where my mom was confined and me was something very similar to this. An hour before said incident, I paid in full my mom’s hospital bill so we could finally have her discharged. She looked a bit of a "stern snob" but I just set aside those thoughts away as I have some much more important things to think about than my own personal biases. After paying the bill, I went outside to a nearby internet cafe to check some important emails and when I went back to my mom’s hospital room, our house help turned over to me prescriptions that the nurse has just recently gave shortly before I arrived. Noticing that there were two bottles of unused dextrose, I grabbed the bottles and went to the nurse’s station to ask if I could have those returned and the amount deducted from the bill I would be charged in buying the new drugs in the prescription. They said yes and that I should just inform the pharmacist. The pharmacist, after, examining the receipt of the dextrose bottles, told me to go over to the cashier to have it fixed. The cashier, upon seeing the receipt, frowned and in an irritated tone, said some things which at first, I could barely understand except for what she said first "MS. THIS SHOULD HAVE……" I asked her again and she repeated her explanation, obviously more irritated by my calm request. She said I should have informed her immediately, before paying the hospital bill, that there would be some medicines that would be returned. So I asked "What are we going to do now?" The pharmacist, after wondering what’s taking me so long, approached us and talked to the cashier. From what I heard, she said the same thing. The pharmacist told her "Fix that, it’s the patient’s right for a part of her bill to be reimbursed." But the cashier didn’t give in so the pharmacist walked out.

One of the tasks of my previous job was to reimburse the cash of clients if with valid reason to do so even if I should go to the extent of making numerous notes on the receipts just to explain what happened wrong and why the reimbursement should be done. Having known this, I once again talked to the cashier and got the same reply. Now agitated, yes, I burst out, my voice rose that a guy from the admitting office had to intervene. Needless to say, he became the bridge that had my problem over my mom’s bill resolved but not without the cashier not giving me everything I needed for the pharmacy and having me go back and forth from the pharmacist to her.

WHAT TO LEARN: Don’t react with pessimism if a distraught customer comes to you for help. Say first what you could do before saying other things.

___________________________

3. Never ever pass on to others a task that is yours to do.

Another situation with the same hospital had me fuming mad. Looking after my mom and other patients of dementia is a 24/7 job. On my third "sleepless" night, after dozing off for a few minutes, my mom woke my dad and me up to uneasy moans and cries and screams that had one of the nurses coming inside our room. All of us glancing at the dextrose, I realized that a few minutes beforehand, she instructed me to tell her if the dextrose was close to running out. With that realization coming all back to me, she gave a joke in Filipino while mom was screaming that didn’t sound like a joke at all: "Oh no…mommy’s watchers must be so busy that they forgot to check your dextrose…" With that I retorted: "I don’t like what you just said. For you to say that to us who are without sleep and tired! How dare you! May I remind you that it is YOUR JOB to check on her dextrose, not us!"

WHAT TO LEARN: Do your job and do it well.

******************Our new house help, after witnessing during the past few days how I could react with a really bad temper, told me, "But this is a government hospital. The courtesy you have experienced in Medical City (NOTE that this particular hospital has the motto "Patient on center stage"; well, save for mom’s neurologist who knew mom’s case but still reacted with rudity when mom was in a state of a violent anxiety attack, everyone adhered to this motto) is because it is a private hospital. I told her, it is NOT AN EXCUSE regardless of the ownership of the hospital.

You see, disrespect breeds contempt. I am not justifying the way I reacted. I know it is ill of me to stoop down to their level because at some point our house help was right when she said that I am the one who knew how to behave. Regardless of who started, the way we respond most especially if we are the ones who service people is a reflection of our personal etiquette and a gross representation of either the quality or inferiority of the service of our companies and offices.

MARIA PRECIOSA T. CARDENAS
Sales and Marketing Coordinator
Technology Business Group
ECC International Corporation
Mobile No.: 0928-366-5256
Tel. Nos.: 750-5671 to 73
Fax Nos.: 750-5670