A Glimmer of Light Through the Fog

There is a line from a song that surfaces in my mind from time to time.

"The darkest hour is just before dawn…"

(Name that tune *)

I take it to mean that just when everything is feeling at its most hopeless and difficult it always means that a breakthrough is in sight, imminent even, and a new day dawns, so to speak.

I know this to be true.

Well, the lyric popped in to my head once again the other day.

I’ve been taking Tagalog lessons now since last September. Every Wednesday afternoon when I’m in town my teacher shows up at my house for an hour and a half of one on one – what shall I call it – drill?

Now I know French and some Spanish but neither of those is any help to me at all in learning this new language. This is totally uncharted territory. Check this out: maganda, mamayo, mabait, matanda, mababa, malapit, malinis, magulo, mainit, mayaman, mataba and on and on and on. A list to learn of over 45 adjectives all starting with ma-. You can see my difficulty…

Someone told me that taking these lessons is like taking piano lessons when you’re a kid. There is every intention of practising every day during the week, but it never happens. Then a day or two before the lesson it’s back to the scales and chords in a frenzy before the weekly humiliation on the piano bench.

So there I was the other day, trying to fit these new words and expressions into an overfull (or perhaps shrunken) brain. Frustrated. Nothing would stick. “I can’t do this!!!!!” I screamed. Not out loud, I don’t think, but can’t quite be sure about that.

"The darkest hour is just before dawn…"

The following day when my teacher showed up and we started the lesson all of a sudden I knew the words! The light started to shine. Not only that but after all these many weeks of learning words and fixed expressions we actually had, for the first time, what could pass for a two way conversation! Eureka!

Now it is not my goal to be a fluent Tagalog speaker. Heaven forbid. No, my intentions are far more modest. My goal is to not be so completely illiterate in this country, where the sounds around me are just so much noise and I can’t read the words on a sign.

This week it occurs to me that what once was a fog of noise and incomprehensibly arranged letters now has some glimmers of light starting to peek through. I listen to conversations around me and pick out words. I read signs and see things that are familiar. Last night I even watched an interview on television and knew what they were talking about even if I didn’t understand it all.

Hey, I can do this! I’m not completely bobo (stupid) after all!

* Dedicated to the One I Love - The Mamas and the Papas

History Buff

buff - noun: an ardent follower and admirer. From the buff-colored uniform worn by New York volunteer firemen around 1920, originally applied to an enthusiast of fires and firefighting. Colour term comes from hue of buffalo hides.

I’m feeling a bit like I’ve just finished a term at school and I’ve been let out for summer break (or hopefully, even better, have graduated). Last Wednesday I gave my last presentations in the history class.

I’ve been up to my eyeballs in Philippine history for weeks now. It’s been fun but also felt like cramming. Post-war reconstruction, Marcos, martial law, human rights violations, rural insurgency, land reform, landowning and political elites, poverty, corruption, fraud, bad guys…

It was all very much like reading the papers today. “Same same” as they say in Laos.

Meanwhile I can’t go into a bookstore without buying something, but I refused to allow myself to read anything other than Filipiniana during my tour of duty, so here’s what’s happened. My reward.


I think I may have overdone it. My "to read" stack is a bit out of control.

Smarties

When I was a little girl, there was a commercial on television that really caught my attention. For Smarties. In the commercial, with its jingle "lots and lots of Smarties", a couple of kids were frolicking around in a vat full of Smarties. Like the ball room at IKEA in today's world. It was my idea of heaven.

Later, when I became a big girl, my roommate Kelly, knowing this, gifted me on my birthday with an ENORMOUS bowl of Smarties. We put it on the dining room table as a centerpiece and I took great pleasure in running my hands through the colours (the bowl was too small to jump into, unfortunately).

Our recent houseguests from Canada brought me a present - a huge box full of 48 individual boxes of Smarties. Two and a half KILOS! They said that there was enough there to last almost a whole year - 52 weeks.


Fat chance!

When you eat your Smarties,
Do you eat the red ones last?
Do you suck them very slowly,
Or crunch them very fast?
Eat that candy-coated chocolate,
But tell me when I ask,
When you eat your Smarties,
Do you eat the red ones last?

The Smarties Song