JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Sabi ko na nga ba kailangan kong magdala ng dongle na may data roaming. Sabi nila, Okay lang yan, siguradong may wi-fi sa first world. Wala! Walang wi-fi sa tennis club and rugby pitch! Kaya mamaya pa ako magpo-post pagbalik sa paaralan.

P.S. Wala ring wi-fi sa shushal na prep school. Yung internet access nila maraming password ek. Hindi rin puedeng ikabit yung cable sa laptop ko dahil sa security ek. At magpapakamatay ang mga makina kapag matabihan sila ng pagkaganda-ganda kong Mac Air. Anobaaa. Ah well, bakasyon ako kung ganoon. Sa London may wi-fi.

I don’t play any sports so I cover tennis and rugby, and I don’t like children so I’m traveling with the kids’ rugby team from Bahay Bata Orphanage in Angeles City. Makes perfect sense in the context of my life.

Touraid, “a UK-based charity who offer support to UK schools and clubs wishing to host activity based tours for disadvantaged children from overseas”, and Clifton College, a boarding school in Bristol (I googled it, John Cleese went there) is sponsoring 15 Filipino kids on a tour of the UK from May 5-14. While in the UK they will play against English school teams, watch a professional rugby match, tour Twickenham stadium, and engage in other rugby-related activities.

The UK tour was organized by a British teacher, John Milne, who used to teach at Brent in Manila. The team is accompanied by the Philippine men’s rugby team manager Matt Cullen and by the kids’ chief carer, Mercy Luis of Bahay Bata Orphanage. Mercy has been working with Bahay Bata for 8 years–basically she raised these kids.

At 1 am we all got onto an Etihad flight to London Heathrow via Abu Dhabi, and the kids (age range 9-14) were exceptionally well-behaved. (In our observation it’s the overprivileged kids with three nannies each and overindulgent parents who will buy everything the children point at because they’re guilt about not spending more time with their spawn who behave badly.) You would never have guessed that it was their first time on a plane. Getting their passports and visas—that was a Kafkaesque procedure.

From reading Dickens and watching Tagalog movies we tend to think of “orphans” as babies left on the doorsteps of churches. Not in these cases—these kids aren’t even orphans technically, their parents are still alive. According to Mercy, they were abandoned and living on the street until they were rounded up by social workers and taken to the orphanage. (Getting their documents and passports required finding all the parents and having them sign papers. Many of them wanted money.) Bahay Bata is funded by private donors including the Philippine Rugby Football Union, which donates the proceeds of their rugby tournaments to the foundation.

Our question is: If you got six of these, would you give them away?

A few days ago I riffled through my credit card receipts and discovered that I was entitled to some goodies. The choices were pizza, ice cream and tacos. So off I went to the mall to make more purchases with my credit card and claim the goodies. I had already claimed pizza before and there was no taco store in the vicinity. The only option left was ice cream. I did not read the promo mechanics when I handed the receipts to the cashier. The staff immediately jumped to lightspeed. “Make some more!” hissed the cashier. “Put them in a box! It’s for take- out”. Ten minutes later my name was called. I was presented with six ice cream sandwiches and three 9 oz. cups of ice cream. I was stunned. How was I supposed to eat all of these?

It was already nine in the evening and eating complex carbohydrates was a huge threat to my efforts at weight management. “It’s all yours,” chorused Greed and Gluttony. “You have been very good for a long time now. You deserve a break”. “No, I can’t!” I said. “Do not resist us”. Suddenly one of the plastic spoons stuck in one of the ice cream cups sprang to life and assaulted my mouth with thick, smooth cookies and cream ice cream. “Nnnnnnnooooooo” I gurgled as ice cream was forced down my throat. I wanted to cry “Stop” but a large chunk of chocolate was stuck somewhere in my esophagus. Despite my protests my mouth was compelled to munch on chocolate, cookie, and nougat bits. After this horrendous torture, I had ingested 250 calories of mostly fat and sugar.
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Yesterday the White House released this photo of US President Barack Obama and State Secretary Hillary Clinton watching the live video stream of the raid on the compound of Osama Bin Laden.

Your assignment for the Weekly LitWit Challenge 5.6 is to tell the story of this photograph in 500 words or less, from the point of view of one of the people in it.

As always, post your entries in Comments. The deadline is Sunday, 8 May 2011. The prize is this:

PacMan: Behind the Scenes with Manny Pacquiao, the Greatest Pound-for-Pound Fighter in the World by Gary Andrew Poole.

We predict that the streets of Manila will be traffic-free on Sunday morning because everyone will be watching the Pacquiao-Mosley fight. Of course we’re looking forward to the release of Manny’s CD featuring seven versions of his favorite song, Sometimes When We Touch. And Manny’s signature fragrance, which should be called “You Know?”

On my last visit to my dvd. . .dealer, I picked up a movie called Cash. I’d never heard of it but it starred Sean Bean. Practically everything I know about the Napoleonic Wars (until War and Peace) I learned from the Sean Bean TV series Sharpe, in which he played a rifleman in the British army. And then he was Boromir in The Lord of the Rings, so he has my loyalty.

Yesterday while packing for my trip to England (I will be away for 16 days and I don’t like doing laundry while traveling) I needed to distract myself from the assorted tricks my cats employ to make me guilty. As they can no longer scratch up my suitcase (It’s lightweight polycarbonate), they try the big-eyed “kawawa” look (This would work better if they weren’t so healthy), roll adorably on the floor and show me their large tummies, or hide among the clothes in the suitcase. I can only take too much, so I picked up the first dvd I saw and put it on. It was Cash.

I didn’t know Chris Hemsworth was in it. (Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa)

The pre-Thor Chris and Victoria Profeta play Sam and Leslie Phelan, a young married couple struggling to make the house payments. One day a bag full of money literally lands on their car, and given their financial problems the Phelans are not inclined to find out where it came from. They do what most people would do: they pay what they owe the bank, then they buy a Range Rover, flatscreen TV and furniture. But before they can kick back and enjoy their good fortune, along comes the scary guy who owns the money. Or stole it fair and square.
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After way too much thinking, Mike decided where we would have our voucher lunch. I call it a voucher lunch because every morning Mike scours the internet for deals and discounts (our buffet lunch was 50 percent off) and snaps them up. Then he realizes that he’s bought too many vouchers and they’re about to expire. Then he schedules a series of voucher lunches, which makes him feel guilty about overeating so he resolves to go on a diet just as he’s starting the series of lunches. Yes, there is nothing so relaxing that an overthinker can’t turn it into a source of stress.

Read Walk and Eat.

True to the concept of Walk and Eat, I walked to the venue in the blazing sunshine. See I didn’t know where Berjaya Hotel is so I googled it. In the map the hotel appeared to be after A Venue if you’re coming from Gil Puyat. Turns out that it’s before A Venue so I had to backtrack along Makati Avenue at 12 noon.

After our lunch we wanted a good coffee so we went to that Paris cafe something Delice up the street. We think it is an odd place to have a Parisian-type cafe but the French don’t seem to think so because the diners we see there are all French. I wonder if French cafes are profitable in Manila. There’s also Alexandre, which opened in Megasmall. Delifrance was a Jollibee company but it didn’t do well so they sold it to another group, which changed the name to Cafe France. The name is kind of blah—wouldn’t Ooh La La be more enticing, or as my friend suggested, Ooh La Lafang?

It’s not clear in the picture but I was wearing my earrings made from empty tubes of super glue (“rugby”). I love those earrings, they’re a conversation piece. On the way to the cafe I noticed a group of beggars (taong grasa) huddled on the steps of the bank next door. When I left one of them approached me. I don’t give money to beggars—they work for a syndicate, it is not paranoia—I give them whatever food I have on me and I didn’t have any. Without thinking I handed her some change. The beggar, who must’ve been 14 or 15, looked at my earrings and said, in a concerned voice, “Ate, bakit ganyan ang hikaw mo?!” (Why are your earrings like that?!)

Hah! My accessories have been critiqued by a vagrant! Sadyang mapanlait talaga ang mga Pinoy, ano? It cuts across socio-economic classes. I wanted to say “Kasi hinithit ko na yung rugby” but what if she asked for some? (No! I overthought my riposte!)