How's that again?

You know how sometimes people say something without thinking. (Reader's Digest is filled with such anecdotes.) Or in the case of most Filipinos, say something in English without realizing what it actually means. Here are just a few instances from my own experience:

• Years ago, my family invited my beloved piano teacher over to lunch at an exclusive restaurant after which we returned to my grandparent's house to chat. Since my elderly grandmother and my piano teacher's mother grew up in the same town, the two were eagerly exchanging stories about friends and relatives. Then my piano teacher asked my grandmother how she was related to so-and-so who also came from the same province. When my grandmother replied that he was a distant cousin, my piano teacher exclaimed, "Really? I thought he was your nephew or something. I didn't know he was that old!" [My piano teacher instantly clapped a hand over his mouth although my grandmother didn't seem to have noticed anything wrong with what he said.]
• I read in a newspaper probably a little more than a year ago this article about a well-known broadcast journalist who had just given birth to her and her husband's first child, a daughter. The brand new mother was being interviewed about her experiences as a first-time mom and the article actually quoted her as saying, "Malunggay is an excellent source of mother's milk." [And all the while I thought she was advocating breastfeeding. Haha.]
  
• Just earlier, I saw on television a local talk show hosted by another prominent broadcast jouranalist. As the current show focused on the recent explosion in Makati, a couple of victims of the blast were invited over for an interview. One was a lady who appeared to be in her early 30s and had suffered a few cuts on her left hand and arm. She was recalling (in English) that she was in Glorietta 3 with a friend when the explosion occurred. When asked in which direction she heard the noise, the lady replied, "I heard the blast come from my behind." Now, that's proof that the tragedy was not due to a bomb but rather by a "gas explosion"! [My guess is that she literally translated "galing sa likod ko."]
  

Final grade reactions

Like I mentioned previously, I'm just about done with the current school term. The past week has been spent giving final exams, grading final exams and computing final standings. And so it was with great relief that I finally posted the final grades of my students in the various courses I teach.

Since I post the grades on the corkboard nailed to my office door, I can overhear my students' reactions to their grades as well as to their classmates' grades. Often what they say add to the little entertainment I get each day at work--one of the few things I enjoy about these end-of-term periods. You get those who go absolutely hysterical when they learn that they had just about passed the course. I can hear exclamations of disappointment from those whose standing went down due to a poor final exam showing. Some obviously scan the entire list to see what the others got because I can hear a few wonder aloud who it was who got that unbelievably high score in the finals. Or else some are aghast to see that many failed the course. (I believe these are not my students but rather those who are planning to take the course in the future and want to get an idea of how easy or difficult the course is.)

What I dread though are students who received a failing and come into my office to beg me (which is against the University code, by the way) to give them a passing grade, often asking me to give them some extra project to do to make up for the deficit. I get a multitude of reactions as well when I, of course, refuse to change their grades. I've had one, like many others in the past, look totally downcast and eventually break down in tears as she left my office. On the other extreme, a few bounce in with smiles on their faces and bounce out almost just as cheerfully. I suppose these students make going through college as some kind of a game: take a course and see what happens. Most though, after listening to why I can't change their grades (an unnecessary explanation if you think about it) or else seeing what contributed to their failing grade (often extremely low scores in the exams or quizzes), appear to accept their fate more calmly and with a heavy sigh leave the office. A few take a more optimistic outlook and look forward to re-enrolling the course hoping to do better.

When you're feeling blue, just watch the cockatoo

This video made my day. I first came across a link to a shorter version in a recent blog post at the Mental Floss website before looking it up at YouTube. The description of the video there reads:

Snowball is an Elanora Cockatoo that dances to the Back Street Boys. He came to the Bird Lovers Only Rescue a couple of months ago and is a joy. Visit us at www.birdloversonly.org

Music is truly a universal language. Even animals "get it".

P.S.
Oooh...it turns out that this is my 100th post here.

Monday treats

The school term is winding down and I'm nearly done with giving lectures to my different classes. More and more of my time at the office is now spent grading quizzes, recording scores, double checking my class records and making exams and less on preparing lecture notes and presentation slides. In other words, things are not as hectic as they usually are--at least for the time being before there are once again exams to grade and grades to compute.

Anyway, since I normally have a class at 1pm, I would go out to buy lunch as early at 11:30am to beat the lunch crowd, But today having given my last 1pm lecture last week, I remained at my desk longer than usual before leaving to buy lunch at nearly 12:30pm. I got myself a chicken fillet sandwich with coleslaw and dalandan juice from KFC and two Mister Donuts chocolate doughnuts. One of the doughnuts turned out to be a surprise: it was sprinkled with cinnamon. Yum yum. I had not tasted cinnamon for ages. (The other was rolled in crushed peanuts.)

Then later in the afternoon, I heard the excited voices of some our younger staff outside in the hallway. After popping my head outside my door to see what was going on, I learned that ice cream was being served at the office kitchen. A couple of our instructors were celebrating their birthdays and were treating the rest of us to ice cream. There was palitaw as well and I got some to bring home for desert after dinner.

The cat on the mat

For a long time now our house has been used by a few cats in the neighborhood for hanging out. We have two cats of our own but they appear not to mind sharing their territory with strangers. Lately, there's this cat who apparently enjoys lying down our front doormat. I've noticed that he stays there nearly all day during weekends (I'm at work during weekdays so I don't know if this is true on weekdays as well) and only disappears around sunset, perhaps to go hunting or have dinner at his real owner's place. I've seen him around before, particularly sleeping on top of a pile of newspapers in our garage but I suppose he feels freer to roam around our backyard now that we no longer have a dog.

Anyway, I decided to take a picture of this visitor of ours earlier today and here it is. He's got a funny expression on his face because he was apparently annoyed when I woke him up as I approached to take the picture.

A week with a back ache

It's been more than a week since I hurt my back and I'm glad that I'm nearly back to normal. I thought that I would be okay after just a few days because last time I hurt my back (which was I think a couple of years ago) the pain and stiffness were gone after a day. But that was probably because my mom contacted our doctor and he prescribed me an anti-inflammatory drug which did the trick. This time around, I opted to skip consulting a doctor (I'd have to spend a long time sitting down anyway waiting to see one) and taking any medicine and so ended up being uncomfortable for a week.

Like I said last time, I would be rarely free of pain. I thought for a while that I needed to keep moving to get rid of the pain but that only made it worse and I eventually decided it best to take things a step at a time and take the slow but sure road to recovery. In fact I thought I was already all right come Monday morning that I opened the garage door myself (everyone else was still asleep and not around to help anyway) so that I could bring out the car. That turned out to be a bad idea because my back ached all day after that.

I would be especially stiff after sitting down for a long periods of time whether at my desk, computer or in the car driving to and from work. I read somewhere though that not sitting up straight puts less strain on one's back. So I'd try "slouching" with my back at the prescribed 135-degree angle instead of sitting up straight and strangely enough, it works. (That's how I spent most of yesterday afternoon as I graded papers.) For a while, I also thought that by standing up instead of sitting down, I would be less likely to feel pain. But I found that I was wrong particularly when my back would feel so tired after giving an hour-long lecture. (I wonder if my students ever noticed that I wasn't walking as briskly as I used to or that I seemed to move around like an old woman.) And then I'd had to sit down to "rest" my back, which I already knew didn't really rest my back. After also finding out that I was stiffer than ever after sleeping flat on my back, I also ended up sleeping in bed at night with my pillows piled up so that I was half sitting (again with my back slightly at a 135-degree angle). But at least after a few nights of a good night's sleep, I was starting to feel much better and less stiff. I also slowly started doing a few stretching exercises to get rid of the stiffness.

And so now, I don't feel pain too often and I can bend at my waist and not feel too stiff. My back still feels tired after sitting down but at least it isn't as bad as it used to be. I even got to spend three hours practicing piano late yesterday and today. I suppose I'd get so carried away playing that I forget all about the pain. Of course, my back is a little painful now but it's the first time it's been painful all day which is sort of a good thing, right? So I'm truly relieved and thankful that I'm getting over this back pain business and do so look forward to a week with lesser back pain.

Monday morning surprise

I woke up this morning as usual to get ready for work: took a shower, got dressed then had breakfast. As it was a Monday morning, I was the only one up at that time and my parents were still fast asleep. After brushing my teeth, I had to go back to the kitchen to get something. As I was about to pass through our dining room, I happened to look out our glass sliding doors that opened out into our screened rear terrace with its view of our backyard.

There I noticed were several birds either perched on the branches of some our plants or on the clotheslines my father had put up the week before. There were also several just standing around on the pebble-washout surface of our terrace.

I don't know what species of birds these were but when there was a rectangular tub filled with water placed just outside our rear terrace to catch the water leaking from a hole in one of our roof gutters, several birds used to come in the morning to the tub for a bath. It was amusing to watch them test the waters (the tub being much deeper than a traditional bird bath) before diving in for a quick bath. Each bird had its own "technique" of diving in. From their perch on the rim of the tub, some would jump in and flutter their way out back to part of the rim from where they came. Others opted to jump into the water and instead make a right-angled turn to the adjacent rim.

Anyway, that was a long time ago. Now the tub is gone because the hole in the roof gutter has been mended and I was sorry to no longer see the birds come visit especially because of our cats which we now let out into our garden. That's why the sighting this morning was so unexpected and particularly welcome. I counted at least ten birds there and they stayed around for a little over ten minutes before flying off one by one to the chico trees.

It was a nice way to start another busy week.