Dear McDo

Dear McDo,

I had a first with you today. My youngest bought his breakfast from you all by himself because all our staff are off vacationing and I have switched to lazy mode in honor of the holidays. Besides, I thought I'd go on a diet of sort.

So the little boy went on an adventure of breakfast buying by his lonesome with no past experience! I helped by making him a note to give to whoever will serve him. I admit its really terrible hand writing but please remember the mode I was in.



I thought the message was clear? Don't you? I was confident, afterall I am a communicator, I write messages for a living. The boy came home with (dyaaarannn) ... two orders of the same meal!





I went back to my message - ? It got me thinking along this train of thought :

He is just a little boy so it must be impossible that he would eat alone, so it has to be two! Besides he had enough money to buy enough for two. So McDo may have wrongly  interpreted my note? Or the writing was just really bad?

So my diet is suspended again, there is just too much breakfast for the boy so Mom jumps to the rescue lest we waste hard-earned budget!





 I was ready to end the episode when I realize there was no straw for the juice! I asked the boy for it and he said - they didn't give me one because you did not put on your note that you want one! 

Wha! - as Miriam would probably put it! :)

Dear Tarie would want me to make clear what I want to happen and what I am really saying in this entry! I don't know what I want to happen really hahaha ... I guess its the mode I am in :)

Well, there are still tons of things I need to learn as a communicator.  Room to grow, room to grow :)

Dear PAL

(I have always wanted to write a letter to PAL. I attempted before but never really got to doing it. I guess I didn't have "water" for my letters then.  Two weeks ago, my boys went to Bohol without me. I wrote another letter to PAL, added water to it, and posted it to their FB page.)

Dear PAL, my 9-year old son flew with you unaccompanied for the first time, it was going to be his grand experience for the summer. But even his hand carried bag was checked-in because he had in it his toy nerf gun, so it was not allowed in the cabin. When he claimed his bag in Tagbilaran, Bohol, all the money he saved up for summer (P1300) disappeared from his wallet. They left him the coins. It was his first experience ever of what he calls "grand theft". I know, I know, nobody should leave valuables in checked-in bags, I had my own experience too, but try explaining that to a 9 year old, he would bring you to his complicated reasoning why he believes no one in the airline can do that - "what Mom, they will open all the bags in search for money?" My boy will never forget his first ride with the country's favorite PAL, without Mommy.

Thoughts about toilets, hair and cockroaches

One of the things I remember from my first visit to China is the public toilet. It was just a hole in the ground and you have to squat to pee. But I just remembered and did not write about it. One of the authors of this book wrote an entire essay about toilets. My girl Gayle Certeza, her name is on the cover too, wrote about her hair and cockroaches. Now this to me is self-expression so grand!

Express your self - add water.

I have always been fascinated by anything that changes appearance when touched by water. When I was a little girl and was just starting to write no such thing exists. Now we have complete meals like flavored noodles that satisfy hunger when water is added. And complete drink like coffee that quenches a stubborn thirst when water is poured over powder. With these inventions, it was water that completed the magic. As a writer, I look at water as that which delivered the message. Water made things possible. Water the driver. Water the force.  And so with any problem in self-expression, I say - Just Add Water!