Right now my niece has just come home from a trip to the doctor. She’s been complaining of body pain brought about by fever for the past two days now, and everyone’s worried because her immune system is a tad weak compared to your average healthy kid. Ysa’s fast asleep beside me, and I am constantly checking her temperature since she already has cough and colds. The adults are no exception to what seems like an epidemic caused by the sudden change in weather: the two yayas both have colds, my cough sounds more like a bark now, and everybody else is sniffing.
These past days the only question in my mind is this: what will I give? We’re talking about Christmas gifts here, of course.
I am not in any way related to Scrooge, but I didn’t grow up in a gift-giving household. While other families had Christmas programs that included dance numbers from the kids and the ever-present exchanging of gifts, my family, well, we cooked. And then we ate what we slaved over for a whole day. Gifts often came in the form of cash, and were given as an afterthought – you know, Tita will hand you 5 crumpled 100php bills and tell you to get a haircut because you look stressed out or buy a new top because you wore the same thing last year. And while in most households there were gifts under the tree, in our house there’s…dust. No kidding.
Days ago a friend posted a status update in Facebook saying that October 17-23 is Special Education Week. I don’t really know how accurate that bit of information is, but I would like to share something related to the matter to all of you.
If you look at this post it’s dated 16 October 2010. The truth is, though, I wrote it today – 19 October 2010. Apologies for the delay everyone.
Selecta’s “Sarap ng weekend!” ad works because of two things: (1) ice cream and (2) the assumption that people relax during weekends, which is ideal but not absolutely true. I mean, look at the writers here in EPh!
Two Thursdays ago I accompanied my daughter, Ysa, to the Aerospace Museum and the Nido Science Discovery Center. Although the sites were something else, I went to bed that day thinking that bringing kids 3-4 years of age there was not a great idea. I mean, come on! The Aerospace Museum, really? Almost all the kids saw the planes as EK rides. I should know – Ysa wanted her turn inside the fighter plane, and her classmates didn’t really give a hoot about the types of planes on display, the evolution of the bayonet, the yellowed flying certificate given to someone whose name I forgot, and the kinds of AA guns used during WW II (or was it WW I? Now I feel like a fool). The tour inside the Science Center didn’t g o that well, either. While the very bubbly tour guide talked about the tallest man-made structures in the world – while pointing at gold replicas that required scrutiny before you realize that they are, in fact, replicas of the tallest buildings – the little girls played with each other’s hair, while the boys ran around and behind him. The day was not entirely a disaster – everyone enjoyed the 1.5-hour lunch break – but I bet most of us parents who were there were thinking along the lines of “we-could-have-gone-to-the-zoo-instead”. Toddlers and the Aerospace Museum and Nido Science Center are not a good match, primarily because toddlers have the attention span of a, well, a toddler – hence they probably found talks about the history of the universe just a tad too boring.
When my mom asked me how I met my husband, I told her we were classmates in a GE (general education) subject. I think she found it unusual that all of a sudden I was going out with someone from Engineering, when I could have (should have, would have) gone out with, say, one of my Philosophy orgmates – or at least someone from the same building. And I never took GE subjects without my college clique, so how was he able to talk to me, at the very least?
Essays.ph Papyrus is a collection of thoughts from the staff and guest bloggers related to EPH and freelance writing in the Philippines.
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