Spending the weekend with a backache

It seems that I spoke too soon when I said I thought that I exceptionally healthy for my age: yesterday morning, I carried my laundry basket with my dirty clothes to the laundry area. As I bent down to put the basket down on the floor, I felt a sudden sharp pain in my lower back. Alarmed, I stood up straight right away and immediately regretted that I didn't take care to bend down the correct way, that is, bend at the knees rather than by the lower back. Anyway, I didn't feel any more pain then and was hopeful that no major damage was done. But I felt stiff as I began to walk around and especially after sitting down even for a few minutes. And so it was for the rest of the day which was rather inconvenient because I practically do work sitting down whether at my desk or at my PC in my office. (Curiously though, after spending half an hour sitting down reading books at the Catholic book center I mentioned last time, I didn't feel any pain or stiffness at all as I left the place to walk back to my office.)

I'm still as stiff as ever today especially after sitting down. Lying down flat on my back does bring a little relief (at least it used to when my back would feel tired) but I found that I felt no pain at all if I remained standing. Perhaps sitting down means bending my back at the point where I injured it hence the stiffness upon standing up. Anyhow, I can't stay too long here at my laptop surfing or writing this post for my blog and so will have to log off soon. I hope I will be much better tomorrow since I brought home something to do from work, was looking forward to practicing some piano this weekend and have mass (with all the sitting, standing and kneeling to do) to attend tomorrow morning.

A little Catholic book center

About a month or two ago, I noticed a poster at the local shopping mall advertising a Catholic book center called St. Joseph's Thesaurus located in the same shopping mall. I was at once interested in checking it out because I especially love reading saint biographies and other Catholic books.

Indeed I did get to check it out a few days after that and found it to be more of a reading room rather than a book shop. The small room had a couple of shelves at the back and a few tables with chairs for reading. From where I stood outside the glass door, I could recognize a few of the books on the shelves: they were a compilation of saint biographies by Ann Ball and published by TAN books. Having a fair-sized collection of TAN books myself (mostly purchased from Goodwill Bookstore over a five year period starting a decade ago when that bookstore was doing well), this peaked my interest all the more. But there were no people inside except for a shopkeeper sitting behind a counter near the door and I was too shy to go inside. Besides, it was a weekday and I had to return to work, having just gone out to buy lunch.

It was only this noon after lunch when I thought I had the time to drop by and spend some time reading. To my dismay, there was a sign posted on the counter saying that there was a charge of Php25 (Php20 for students) for reading. But never mind. Here was a chance to relax even for just a short while and read books I've wanted to read for a long time. So I went in and greeted the shopkeeper who directed me to the shelves at the back. I timidly walked down to the back and looked through the titles. To my joy, nearly all the books were published by TAN books and there were even some (like Celine Martin's My Sister Saint Therese and Joan Carroll Cruz's Angels & Demons) that I had longed to purchase but couldn't. (I was slightly disappointed to not see the biography of the Cure d'Ars by the Abbe Francis Trochu but as this was just a reading room and not a TAN book shop, I wasn't--and shouldn't be--surprised.) Goodwill Bookstore had stopped stocking up on the books and I couldn't buy the ones available through the TAN Books website simply because I didn't have a dollar credit card account. Sigh. Anyway, this little book center was therefore a dream come true for me. Here I was with most of the TAN books I've wanted to have right before me. And so I contentedly spent the next half an hour or so reading a few saint biographies and browsing through a few others I had been eying. One funny thing happened: when I got the second volume of Ann Ball's Modern Saints to browse through, I found myself face-to-face with a picture of the Cure d'Ars, my favorite saint. It was totally unexpected as I thought modern saints referred to saints who lived in the late 1800's and in the 1900's. (In the meantime, the shopkeeper I noticed had been reading St. Teresa de Avila's Interior Castle which he later returned to the shelf. Then I saw that he began reading a Bible and I could hear some Gregorian chants being played on a small CD player.)

It took some time before I could tear myself away from that bookshelf and walk up to the front counter to pay my reading fee. When the shopkeeper told me that it costs just Php20 for students, I realized that I did look like one as I was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. I just replied that I wasn't a student and proceeded to dig out Php5 coins to pay the fee. The smallest bills I had in my wallet were Php100 bills and seeing that the place was rarely visited didn't expect that the shopkeeper would have any change. I handed the coins over and inquired who owned the place and if the books were imported. The young fellow said that his aunt owned the place and that, yes, they had to import the books. At that I said my thanks and left.

When I got back at my office and after a short search through the World Wide Web, it turns out that the shopkeeper was most probably a Discalced Carmelite novice-friar. This explained why the saint biographies available at the book center were mostly about Carmelites like St. Therese and St. Teresa and why the shopkeeper was reading Interior Castle. Then I made a sobering discovery: He had put a few TAN books on an online auction to support the center. All the while I had been wondering if the little place had been making money at all all this time. I might have even been the very first person to go in and read some books!

You know, I'd hate to see this little place fold up like so many businesses that have put up shop in the shopping mall and failed after a short time. Long time ago, someone had a cart making those cute little mini-donuts. I've loved those mini-donuts ever since my sister and I bought some at the Iowa State Fair more than a decade ago. So it was sad to see that cart disappear after several months of doing poorly. A year go, a bakery had also a kiosk selling all sorts of baked goods like brownies and oatmeal cookies. I often bought the latter for snacks. But that kiosk too disappeared. Then just a few months ago, someone had a popcorn stand from which we would buy a big bag of sweet/salty popcorn for Php60 nearly every Sunday after mass. But that too disappeared. The Mister Donut counter that had been located near KFC also closed shop lately. Sigh! And now while I was happy to find that a Catholic book center had opened right here in town, my heart sank to see it practically empty of customers. So I really hope that it will be here to stay--at least for a very long time, if not forever.

Marcel Marceau, mime artist

I was not totally surprised but still deeply saddened to learn late yesterday afternoon that the legendary mime Marcel Marceau had passed away. He was 84.

I remember very vaguely watching short black-and-white clips of his performances as Bip on a local channel years and years ago when I was still in grade school. I didn't know who he was then but somehow the image of this funny and melancholy man with the expressive face and hands stuck in my mind. I did eventually learn what his name was but beyond that nothing much.

Then nearly two decades later when I was in Ames, Iowa with my sister pursuing graduate studies at Iowa State University, I learned that Marcel Marceau was to perform at the University's theatre as part of his farewell US tour. I knew by then that he was famous and recalled those short sketches I saw on tv when I was a child. I read that he had frequently toured the US almost always to standing room only. I wanted to see him perform live naturally and persuaded my sister to come watch his show along with me. We got tickets and the perfect seats: we were seated some 13 rows from the front, smack in the middle and practically level with the stage. I was slightly disappointed though that there were several empty seats. But that was forgotten when the performance began. As usual, the program distributed to the audience listed several vignettes from which Marceau would select for the evening. My favorites of course were the Bip sketches particularly the ones of Bip at the circus: his laughable attempts to get a lion to jump through a hoop, at tight-rope walking, at knife-throwing (the audience roared with laughter at Marceau's reaction after he pantomimed removing his blindfold) among others. Another sketch of Bip trying on masks with different expressions was also amazing. What I saw unfold on stage that evening was truly something unique and never to be forgotten. I'm sure the rest of the audience felt the same: we gave him a standing ovation at the end.

Being his farewell tour, I thought that that performance in Ames would be the only and last chance I would have to watch him perform. But by some happy circumstance, it was not so.

Just a few years ago, while I was Singapore (again to pursue graduate studies), I was ecstatic to learn that he was coming to perform at the Victoria Theatre in Singapore as part of his farewell world tour. I of course got tickets right away and watched his show with a friend who had similar interests in the performing arts. Ten years has passed since I saw Marceau perform in Ames but while he was obviously much thinner he was just as eloquent as ever and I enjoyed this latest mesmerizing performance just as much as I did the one in Ames.

It is indeed a lonely thought not to see him perform live again. He was apparently one of those people who refused to let old age stop him from working. And it did seem that he could go on and on, that he would always be there to perform and to create new Bip episodes. Unfortunately, it was simply not to be. But as it is with creative geniuses like Marceau, his memorable wordless portrayals of Bip and the art of mime that he single-handedly restored to the world stage will hopefully always live on.

Still, the death of a legend is always a great loss. This was a man whose silence was louder than spoken words. That silence will be missed.

Graphic: Marcel Marceau, as drawn by another uniquely talented artist, Al Hirschfeld.

More reflections off the tv: Being healthy

I've just watched an episode of One Step Beyond on the Discovery Channel. This particular episode featured, among many others, a man suffering from a lack of proprioception and another who suffered from epidermolysis bullosa. Learning about these highly rare and unusual disorders made me reflect on a few things:

First, how grateful I should be that I am fortunate to be a healthy individual and how much more I should be able to do because I'm not disabled in any way. In fact, I believe I'm unusually healthy at my age and given my medical history. I haven't been seriously ill--not even with the so-called childhood diseases like chicken pox, mumps or measles--or had to be confined or had any major injury like a broken bone or undergone any major surgery. Not even a deep cut that needed stitches.

Second, what an amazing machine the human body is (and hence what a genius God truly is). And how just as amazing is the way we're put together so that we can do what we can do and therefore that there are so many things about the human body that I've taken for granted. For instance, the internal awareness of the status of the body, like the relative positions of the limbs with each other. Before watching that documentary about the man without proprioception, I never realized how necessary it was in carrying out the most basic activities like sitting down or picking up an object or that without proprioception, he is basically unable to feel anything like the ground when he walks or the pressure of somebody else's hand in his. Or that the "anchors" between the epidermis and the dermis underneath was so crucial that without these any action applied to the skin such as sudden pressure or rubbing can cause blisters or sores making for a very painful existence.

Finally, how indomitable the human spirit is. The man lacking proprioception was utterly helpless given his condition but he fought back by working hard to retrain his body to recognize where his different limbs are. Now he virtually relies mainly on sight to be aware of what his body is doing. And then the man with epidermolysis bullosa likewise refuses to wallow in self-pity. He insists on wrapping his body in bandages all by himself to help protect his skin and goes about his daily activities unassisted as well. The documentary mentioned that people suffering from the skin disorder usually do no survive beyond their 20s. But this courageous man is now in his late 30s. As is usual for disabled people, he thinks that when people see him, they should not feel sorry for him but rather that they should feel thankful with what they have. I simply couldn't help but admire these people for their determination to live life to the fullest despite their debilitating conditions.

Birthday feasts galore

Today is the birthday of both my mom and my boss at work. And with it came the requisite birthday blowouts.

First, yesterday my mom treated some former officemates to catered lunch at her office. As a result we now have container of buko salad (pandan gulaman with buko strips and nata de coco) in our freezer. Thankfully it's just a small container because I'm not exactly fond of artificially flavored and artificially colored (bright green!) gulaman and buko salad. Apparently her former colleagues gifted my mom with a fruit basket as well; it's now sitting on counter in the pass-through between our dining room and kitchen.

Then just today, my boss treated all of us at the office to a merienda which for me was more like an early heavy dinner. There was spaghetti (the sweet Filipino style with hotdog which I rather detest but never mind, it was something to eat), lumpiang shanghai, some kind of BLT sandwich and three-layered cake! Boy was I so stuffed this afternoon that I didn't need to eat anything for supper this evening.

I also found out that my mom also treated former officemates at her other office to merienda today. She had bam-i, pork and chicken barbecue and brownies. I have yet to find out if there are leftovers of that blowout in our fridge.

Then for our own little celebration here at home, I bought a cappuccino mousse chocolate roll to bring home only to find some of my mom's friends had also bought her a cake from a local bakery. (Good thing I didn't anymore buy ice cream to eat along with the roll!) Except that it was pandan flavored with yema filling. And after having a slice myself to try, I decided that pandan should never be used as a flavoring for cake or icing. It simply doesn't go. And the yema made it too sickly sweet. Ah well, I managed to get rid of the taste by having a small square of dark chocolate.

But anyway, here I am, still feeling filled to the brim and ready to go to bed. Burp! Excuse me...

Too many holidays

It's another Sunday and we're facing another prospect of another non-working holiday tomorrow. Early this morning my mother received a text message from her research assistant with the news that there won't be work tomorrow. As there is no official announcement at all about such a holiday on the papers or on television, we're still trying to confirm this surprising bit of information. If this is indeed true, this will be at least the third time this school term when we'll have no classes again on a Monday.

This might be good news to students or teachers who would like to have another nice long weekend. With the final exam week approaching, most students are probably trying to rush working on projects due at the end of the term or else teachers are probably trying to catch up on work that has piled up over the past few weeks like unmarked quizzes and unfinished lecture notes.

On the other hand, this will mean another round of make-up classes to make up for time lost which isn't much fun for either party. As most make-up classes are scheduled on Fridays, which is the day of the week when the least classes are scheduled to allow for faculty meetings and the like, students won't probably be looking forward to spending a Friday in campus when they could just have already gone home to their families for the weekend.

I for one will lose a few precious hours on a Friday to make-up classes which I normally spend on making lecture notes and presentations for my classes. This is something that I cannot do during the weekend as I can only work on these on my PC in the office. My laptop here runs on Windows XP but my desktop at work runs on Linux. I mainly use Openoffice to make my lecture notes and presentations and I only have Microsoft Office here in my laptop. Yes, I am aware that I can convert my OpenOffice documents to MS Office documents and vice versa so that I can work here at home as well. But I've found that this is more of an inconvenience. Because the conversion isn't perfect (bullets, spacing and graphics get all messed up), I end up spending more time tweaking an OpenOffice Impress presentation converted from an MS Powerpoint presentation that I'd rather create a slide presentation using OpenOffice at the offset. I learned this the hard way several semester ago when I had to make slides for a course that I was handling for the first time: my right wrist would ache after several hours of using the mouse to highlight this and that text and to redraw this and that graphics.

Second, scheduling make-up classes on Fridays isn't that easy either. I usually have to schedule more than one session of make-up classes since not all my students have a common free time even on Fridays. That means I'd have to hold a marathon of lectures--something I did just this past Friday and which is probably the cause of my sore throat right now. Sigh. I can only hope I don't have to miss any more classes this term simply because I've lost my voice.

Anyway my point is while these longer weekends may give a boost to local tourism (the main purpose for having holidays on the nearest Mondays rather on the day itself) and give each of us more time to spend with our families, it is wreaking havoc on our semestral schedules and making us instructors less efficient at work. Since we now have to cram everything into a four-day work week, it is more likely to make us more fatigued by the time the next weekend comes around. And this will in turn affect our performance at work the following week.

This is simply just another instance where too much of a good thing can be bad. So a holiday once in a while would most certainly be a welcome break. But too many holidays are simply--ah, the irony!--too tiring.

Some cures for a stuffy nose and a sore throat

As an instructor, I can't afford to get sick or else I'd fall behind in giving my lectures which have been carefully scheduled throughout the semester. (My apologies if that sounds like the beginning of a tv advertisement based on actual users' testimonies.) Just late the other day I was starting a cold and sore throat (probably due to the heat) and was practically feeling terrible by late last night as I went to bed with the dreadful thought of having to miss a few more classes so late in the semester with little time to hold make-up classes. But beginning this morning I promptly began to take a few home remedies which have proven most effective time and again. So now that I'm feeling so much better I thought I'd share with you these home remedies that I take to prevent a stuffy nose and an itchy throat from developing into a full-blown cold:

• At the first sign of a cold (the sniffles), I sometimes do some steam inhalation: I fill a small bowl or tabo with tap water and set the water to a boil using my portable water heater. Or else, I put some water into a small sauce pan and heat the water to a boil on the stove. At this point, you've got steam rising which I inhale while placing a towel over my head to keep the steam in. Sometimes I would put in a drop or two of White Flower or Lion Tiger oil in to the water as well. (We would put in a small teaspoonful of Vicks Vaporub ointment in the good ol' days.) This is really very effective for unclogging a stuffy nose or stopping a runny nose. I found out though that this is only works in tropical climates where you do get a lot of steam because of the humidity. I was dismayed to find that I couldn't get any steam at all when I tried to do some steam inhalation while I was in the US during winter.
• A good way to sooth an itchy throat is to drink some ginger tea or salabat. I usually drink two or three cups in a day and I often feel much better afterwards. For a better effect, I sometimes mix in one or two tablespoonsful of honey and some orange or pineapple or calamansi juice (the latter is the most effective). Some lime juice or lemon juice should do as well. Unfortunately some people won't take to the taste of ginger very well but for those who do give it a try I suppose it will be like eating some Halls honey-lemon candy.
• Then my latest discovery is Pei Pa Koa candy. (The name almost sounds like how we would refer to an origami bovine.) I used to see my roommate in Singapore drink the syrup form of this Chinese herbal medicine and she swears that it helps relieve a sore and itchy throat, if not completely cure a cough. My mother discovered that a local supermarket sold bags of the candy and bought one some months ago to try. I was starting a cough at that time and found that it is indeed effective, probably safer than taking the regular cough lozenge from the drugstore once in a while since the candy is made from all natural ingredients. (I'm one of those who believe in resorting to all-natural cures and would rather not bombard my body with drugs and manmade chemicals at the first sign of illness.)
  

When I broke a piano string

ATP tennis has a wonderful magazine called DEUCE which they launched a few years ago but WHICH I don't think did too well on print because it is now being published exclusively online. Having it online should be a big plus since it will be more accessible to many who are interested in reading the articles in the magazine but cannot afford to pay for a season's worth of issues. This year's summer issue has very enlightening articles about many ATP players like Federer, Djokovic, Gonzales and Karlovic. It's a joy and refreshing change to read about off-court facts these players.

The article about Federer for instance lists down the "last times" when Federer went somewhere and wasn't recognized, had to hire a tennis court, etc. One item there set me strolling down memory lane so to speak: the last time Federer broke a string.

I certainly have never broken a string on my tennis racquet but I've broken a piano string on a grand piano once. But just as I never expect to break a string on a tennis racquet, I had never expected to break a piano string so when it did happen, it came as a complete surprise. I've always thought that that was 'feat' reserved for the elephants of the piano keyboard who pound away at the piano when they play demanding pieces like those by Rachmaninoff or Liszt. [I've read about how Leon Fleisher played the first Brahms piano concerto during a competition and broke a string. But he played on, pounding out that out-of-tune key.] Certainly not by someone like me, I thought.

But I did. And this was while I was playing the recessional during mass at the grand piano in a church in Ames, Iowa. I remember well that I was playing then the accompaniment to "City of God" where I had to pound out a octave on E natural with my left hand repeatedly. Then all of a sudden this loud bang came out of nowhere. At first I couldn't understand what had happened but when that second E below middle C started to sound funny, I realized that I had broken a string. Of course, I had to continue playing until the end trying to avoid playing that E. When it was over, I stood up and looked over the music stand to take a look. Everyone else in the choir came over as well to look and I remember somebody said in amazed tones, "Wow, Margie, you've broken a string!" Sure enough, there was this thick coil of metal wire sticking out of the frame and straining against the piano lid. The loud bang must have been due to the wire striking the piano lid.

And was it possibly due to my, ahem, brute strength? Probably not. The piano was pretty old though still in tune and the varying humidity within the chapel must have contributed to the weakening of the piano string. But still, I had broken a string. Ha-ha.

Anyway, it was some weeks before the church finally had that string replaced. So whenever I had to play "City of God" again, instead of playing it in the original key of E I would transpose it to E flat to avoid hitting the key with the broken string.

Recalling 9/11

It was simply one of those incidents where you can clearly remember what you were doing when it happened.

It was also a Tuesday evening and I was busy working at my laptop at the small studio apartment at Prince George's Park I shared with another fellow graduate student at the National University of Singapore. I remember receiving a text message from another graduate student (who had a tv at his own flat) saying that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York. My first reaction then was that this was another hoax because some months or years before a small plane had crashed into the World Trade Center; there was a similar incident where the news turned out to be a hoax or something. So I replied saying that it might be a hoax and got back to work. Several minutes later, however, that same friend sent a text message saying that another plane had crashed into the other WTC tower. That's when I started thinking that this might be real after all and decided to check the Internet for news. But I couldn't upload any news website at all. Instead of CNN, I would get a page saying that the website was too busy. I couldn't get anything either on Yahoo! News. After that I don't remember what else I did except that I anxiously tried to get some news and was frustrated for a long time. Then I finally got the Yahoo! News website and that's when I read that one tower had already collapsed. I was stunned. I relayed the news to my roommate who was equally shocked. Then later came the news that the other tower had collapsed as well. I don't think what was happening had began to sink in even then. It was just too horrible beyond belief. Too terrible to comprehend.

Of course, my friends and I could talk of nothing else for the next few days. Even my friend all the way out in Washington state emailed a short message to assure me that he was okay but that he felt so vulnerable all of a sudden. He most probably had seen it all unfold on television. It was indeed so surreal.

Long life light bulb

A bit of trivia: where can you find a light bulb that has been burning for over 106 years?

Over at a fire station in California is a light bulb that has been working since 1901 when it was first installed. Amazing isn't it? There's even a webcam trained on that famous hand-blown bulb in case you want to see it when it finally snuffs out.

The modern incandescent light bulb here in my hallway has been there for probably a decade but I don't think it would last for a century. I suppose this is an instance where they just don't make things the way they used to. And now that there is a plan in the United States to ban incandescent bulbs in favor of the energy-saving fluorescent or else LED bulbs, this long lasting light bulb will probably be the last of its kind in use in that country. (Do you think it will be removed if and when it won't be excluded from the ban?)

Piano practice at a grand piano

The auditorium here in campus has a wonderful Yamaha grand piano which has been around for as long as I can remember. Sadly, I believe it rarely gets ever played unless there is a (classical) musical performance at the auditorium, which in itself is a rare event. I remember playing on it in my high school days and well into my college years when our high school choir (they kept me on as their accompanist for special occasions) would perform there in choral competitions.

I myself have an old upright piano here at home which still sounds good but whose keys get stuck more often than I like that I now prefer to play my Yamaha P-80, which of course sounds great. But I still sorely miss playing on a real piano, especially a grand piano. I simply love the tone (especially in the lower and upper registers) that one can't get out of an upright piano. I like the fact that when you hit the lowest A or the highest C, you can still tell it's an A or a C. Then there's the feel of the keyboard vibrating as you hit chords, something that I don't get when playing my P-80.

I had so missed playing a grand that I was ecstatic when the committee in-charge of cultural events here at the university approached me last year and asked me to practice at the grand piano to keep it in tune. Apparently they had recently forked out some funds to have all three pianos--there was also an upright and a Chickering baby grand--at the auditorium tuned and needed to keep the pianos in tip top shape as long as possible.

But as much as I looked forward to playing the grand piano there, I could barely get away from work to practice. So far I've been over to the auditorium to practice just three times these past nine months since I was first invited.

The last time though was just yesterday. As usual, I had to ask the caretaker to bring the piano bench out of storage (it's always put away for fear it would be stolen) and open the back doors to provide light and ventilation (the piano is kept backstage where it's dark and stuffy). I had to practice also despite the racket going on because there were some students hammering away on the stage trying to take apart some props from a recent theatrical performance. But I did manage to practice satisfactorily. My fingers were rather stiff though, especially those in my left hand. I got carried away practicing that I didn't notice that more than two hours had lapsed since I started. I had to cut short whatever I was playing then, close the piano and rush back to my office hoping nobody had noticed I was gone for a long time. He-he.

Paying the electricity bill

Today I had a bit of an adventure paying our electricity bill. My father had always been the one to go to the bank or else to the payment center to pay our electricity and our phone bills but since he recently had surgery and is unable to drive a car in his condition, the responsibility fell to me.

My father also used to write a cheque out to pay the bills but as I was the one paying the bill this time I only had cash. I knew had to pay the exact amount knowing that the payment center usually is unable to give back the exact change especially when the amount payable involves an odd number of centavos. So as soon as I had some time to spare at my office, I decided to prepare all the cash and coins I needed to pay the bill and place them into a small plastic bag. That way I wouldn't waste time by digging into my wallet when I arrived at the payment center.

Unfortunately, having just withdrawn some cash from my bank account and used the smaller bills to pay for my lunchtime meals, I had mostly Php500 bills in my wallet and still lacked two Php100 bills to pay the exact amount for the bill. I had no choice but to try withdrawing cash again to get more Php100 bills. (When ATM machines here give out cash, they give out cash in Php100 and Php500 bills: five Php100 bills and then the rest in Php500 bills.) So off I went to withdraw a total of Php500 (the minimum withdrawable amount) after my 10-11am class hoping I'd get five Php100 bills. To my disappointment, the ATM machine spat out a single Php500 bill. Arrgh! So much for trying to get Php100 bills.

Anyway, I just walked on to the paying center just outside campus with my Php500 bills and coins.... only to find out when I arrived there that their payment machine was offline. Okay, I had to pause and consider how to deal with this new road block. When I inquired where else nearby I could go to pay the electricity bill since it was already due today, I was instructed to go to an area near the town proper to another payment center.

So I did just that after my last class for the day. I got on a jeepney from behind our office building and got off at the area I was told about. (I had an interesting jeep ride, by the way, since the jeepney I took took a roundabout route through campus before going out towards town.) I had to ask around a bit before I finally found the payment center. After paying without any trouble at all, I considered going directly back to office. But seeing that I was near a pharmacy and shopping center with a supermarket, I thought I'd take advantage of being in the area and do a bit of shopping. I needed medicine anyway and some things from the grocery. Besides, I had not been to that area for a long long time (thanks to heavy traffic which I'd rather not wade through when driving) and needed a bit of a break. At the same time, I was hoping that nobody important I knew from work would see me there shopping during office hours. Funny thing was I actually ran into one of my officemates at the supermarket.

Needless to say, I managed to get back to work (after another roundabout jeepney ride through campus) with lots of time left in the workday to me to use for making more slide presentations for my classes.