– Happy Birthday, Saffy! Today you are the Oracle.
– I am not interested in the asinine concerns of humans. I am sleepy.
– But it is the tradition. On your birthdays you cats bestow a gift upon the minions. They may address you directly to ask questions about their futures.
– This is tiresome. Alright, you may post your questions. Do not look me in the eye, uncouth mortals. Bow your heads and feign humility.
Yes, we support causes and teams just because we believe in them and we don’t expect them to know we exist much less acknowledge the energy we’ve expended. That makes hearing from the people who represent these causes and teams so much more gratifying. Winning a rugby championship final: cool. Being a champion and having good manners: hot.
Ronald Fong who’s back in New York where he’s taking his master’s at Columbia, posted a comment to thank all of us for rooting for the team.
Ronald Fong, photo by J. Sutcliffe
Michael Letts who lives in Sydney emailed his thanks
Michael Letts
and so did his brother Jake Letts, currently in hard study mode because he’s taking his master’s at the University of Technology in Sydney and has to catch up on the two weeks of school he just lost.
Jake Letts, photo by N. Saunders
Oliver Saunders telephoned from Sydney to say Thank you and cheers to everyone who followed the Philippine team’s excellent adventure in India.
Oliver and his mom Marilou Saunders at the Taj Mahal. Everybody: Awww. Photo by N. Saunders
Austin Dacanay a.k.a. Lolo Austy because he’s the oldest member of the team, is back in Texas but left his Thanks in the comments section.
Austin Dacanay, photo by N. Saunders
Marunong mag-Tagalog si Lolo Austy. Chikahin ninyo siya.
So this post is about two things we don’t usually put in the same sentence: rugby and etiquette. I think we’ll stop here because it can get cumbersome. (Thank you for saying thank you for saying thank you for saying thank you endless ellipses.)
We may be new to rugby, but we figure that anyone who trains as hard as he can, then goes out there to play for our country, getting bruised and battered for little more than a Thank you, deserves our enthusiasm. Thank you, readers, for being enthusiastic.
Palma Hall, UP Diliman, 2009. Or is it Melchor Hall. Did you know the two buildings are mirror images?
Last Thursday at dinner Ren mentioned that the Chemistry Pavilion at UP Diliman had burned down the previous night.
“No!” I cried. I used to hang out at the Chem Pav, at the toxic vermin-infested laboratory of Din and Mr Dorothy Schiff Professor of Genomics at NYU (Oy, Michael). Or as I thought of it, Arrakis with smaller sandworms. (Human genomics: building the Kwisatz Haderach.)
“Yes,” Din replied to my text, “What a way to start Chem’s 100th anniversary this year! Only the second floor of Pavilion 2 was hit. Besides, the new building has already been built. My friends who are faculty there actually woke me up last night just to tell me.”
And so Din was woken up on two consecutive nights with the same news.
Koosi would just delete everything.
1. The comment in an excessively familiar tone, unless you are a close friend.
2. The comment that addresses me as “Ate”. I know this is supposed to be respectful, but it makes me feel like you’re asking to take the day off, and I don’t have a maid. I do have one sister, and she doesn’t call me Ate.
3. The comment with the long preamble about how much you want to be a writer. You want to be a writer, write something. No need to announce it.
4. The comment about how much my work has influenced your own writing, which would’ve been nice if your grammar weren’t atrocious, which makes me feel that I have failed you. (We do allow grammatical errors, but aspiring writers must meet a higher standard.)
5. The comment about how everybody says you sound like me, which you really should take as an insult. (They’re calling you a copy. Slap them.)
6. The comment that was obviously composed with a thesaurus in an effort to impress. The fact that you bother to leave a comment is impressive enough, thank you.
7. The comment designed to show how much smarter you are than everyone else. Why so insecure? In the words of a psychiatrist, Hindi ka ba na-‘Very good’ ng mga magulang mo noong bata ka? (Didn’t your parents say ‘Very good’ whenever you did something right as a kid?)
8. The comment that pretends to be about something but is really about the author’s bottomless need for attention.
9. The comment that thinks it is witty when it is just uncouth. Lots of writers (most of them British) make a good living from being rude and clever. It is a skill. Consider that you might need practice.
10. The comment that is less about the subject under discussion than about the author’s bitterness about his own life and resentment towards the people he thinks have it good. Comments of this nature can be very interesting, but most of the time they’re just depressing. (We make a distinction between depressing-that-makes-you-think and depressing-that’s-just-depressing.)
11. The comment that is deleted for no reason whatsoever. I just felt like it.
We sent Big Bird to that store in Greenbelt 5 to check out the currency situation reported here.
When he asked for the price of a table, the salesperson whipped out a calculator, punched in some numbers, and gave him the price in pesos. (If Big Bird had really wanted to buy the table he wouldn’t have asked for the price. He just wanted to hear the answer.)
Apparently some of our readers had already been to the store.
Big Bird should’ve said, “Why is the price in pesos? Aren’t you a multinational company?”
You can’t win.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>More
