The Email Rainbow Connection

Had my first offer for teaching here, but since I listened to a counsel of a friend to haggle and negotiate, I gave the prospective employer an “I’ll-think-it-over” goodbye. It was a bit of pride on my part. The school was offering 30 grand to white folks, and since I’m not authentic white, it’s just 28. I mean we spent some 10 minutes of the interview talking about how I look farang (pronounced falang, for foreign) in the picture.

The irrepressible John Jasper C. of lifestylebohol (LB) (before he went to Thailand) fired off these nuggets some months ago.  You certainly are your Mom’s falangga, Jasper, you who look like so many Arabs in the Gulf.

They are fun, these emails. That is, if they come from people we really, truly and in point of fact know, wherever we stand, courtroom or desert or on top of a Thai elephant it be.

Michael Ligalig (formerly of Bohol Chronicle and prolific LB poetry contributor) who I address as either St. Michael or San Miguel, is now also in Thailand.

AMB (Alma Mater is Bohol) dear, Michael writes. I have started using Miguel Ligalig de Ortega as my “other name.”  Have you been to Friendster?  There I use this name. Thank you for canonizing me.

I can’t let this pass or I’ll lose sleep. NakakaLIGALIG ka talaga, I email back.  You have in you both the names and greatness of Jose ORTEGA y Gasset, Spanish philosopher famous for his “Revolt of the Masses” treatise/book, and MIGUEL DE Unamuno (Tragic Sense of Life.)  Butch himself is excited about your name!

Higalang Alma (A.M.B.), Michael starts in another email, and ends with Oh, buntag na man diay. Sakit na akong hawak ug abaga. Mohigda sa ko kadiyot ug tilokon ang namilit nga kangitngit.

The husband is on in the fun when he emails for me at times.  He once turned whimsical: Dear Sonieta and the rest of the Creative Team:  Here’s a couple of stings/ From a lady who sings/ Of vagabonds and kings/ And other curious things.

Hi, Sonya and the Creatives!  This is Butch again doing the bidding of She-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.  I just came back from a brief break and here I am assigned some backbreaking labor enseguida! Anyways, good luck to you all this coming year of the fire pig!  (Unsa ni, lechon nga napaig?)

Sonieta L. (the Sonya to the husband and me) now and then updates us with how they are.  They celebrated Mitzi’s birthday by helping themselves to exotic cuisine –– fried frogs, kagwang, pantat, and soup no. 5. Four brujas they were, I was told, and I tried to imagine if they drank the night away without (how dare!) Vida T. who was in China.

I’ve given my email address to only ten people; still, stingy me gets more than 400 mails in the bulk folder, which I delete even before I go to the inbox where, by some inexplicable ethereal twists, chances are there’s a ratio of two unknown source to one known source of emails.  The unfamiliar sources are just as readily deleted without opening, like the one entitled, ‘You’re the winner of an Israeli lotto!’

Hands down, I would have believed that I won in a lotto if the news came from LB kith and kin Mitzi A., Vida T., Paul V., Liza M., Judy P., Christopher R., Ryan M., and now Manila-based Archie C. Email exchanges with LB beings and likeminded entities are time well-spent, especially at the approach of LB’s second anniversary. (Congratulations!)

Dear Creative Team, the husband starts an email in my stead.  This is not A.M.B. Apalisok, but her dutiful slave named Butch. I have been dispatched from the comfort of home to send the attached article.  Knowing full well that life isn’t fair, I’m not complaining — even when I’m commanded to edit where there’s none to edit. Best wishes from a henpecked OFW.  P.S. One of these days I’ll have the courage to complain about her to our consulate.

Hi, dutiful slave, Sonya answers. My first reading of your message had you dispatched from the comfort room. And I was ready to rise up in protest against such injustice. One can claim sanctuary. To be pulled out from a place hollowed by one’s daily prayer for release from all the burdens that upset the inside of a human, how ruthless, how unnatural!  Yes, life is a fair. And all I can do is pray. May you have the courage to edit nothing. May she have the serenity to accept your complaints. And may I have the wisdom to know the difference between a room and a home.  Signed:  Way lingaw, Sonieta. Well, Sonieta is not at the helm of LB for nothing.

It’s a grand combination, the LB and the internet highway.  Together they become a bridge that connects, which the LB team has turned into a rainbow. Luckily, I am one of those at the end of the rainbow.

(18 Jan 2006)