by a recently found long lost friend

Beed of Rouses
Rowena Rose M. Lee

My roommate, my adamant I-will-remain-a-virgin-until-I-got-married roommate apologized to me for a minor fault, and said as a way of explanation, "Na-libog ako eh." Ahhhhh, her horniness got in the way of rational thinking. What joy! What utter joy!

Only here in Mindanao do I hear these things. I do not know if this is a case of my Manila-born idiocy bubbling out or I just plain don't get it. Someone tells me, 'Uy, taas na yung buhok mo." And I smooth down the top of my head thinking that I must look like a troll with my hair up high.

I keep telling the people I talk to here that I am not Jude, or Lagi or Gani or Gilok, but that doesn't stop them from calling me that anyway. I'm beginning to think that perhaps these appellations are part of a ritual name calling. You know, Japanese style of name calling like Koji-san or Sakura-san. In my case, its Weng-Jude. I know that the Filipino term 'Lagi' means always. But what is a Gani or Gilok. Is it alive? Is it a mammal? Is it an alien from the deepest reaches of planetary existence? And why the heck am I being associated with it?

Often too, people here seem to mistake me for some other Chinese person. Sometimes they tell me, (especially when I do something nice for them, "Si Weng Uy", and I tell them that I am not Weng Uy, but Weng Lee. I swear to myself that one day, one friggin' day, I will get to meet this Weng Uy, and set the world right.

Okay, okay, so I may be exaggerating things to a hilt. But it just seems more like a language shock rather than a culture shock to hear all this things from someone else's lips.

I confine the term culture shock to little innocuous things that many Mindanaoans take for granted. For the life of me, I have never seen cows and carabaos and horses and goats and pigs co-mingling freely with people. I have never seen mosquitoes the size of butterflies before "... na baby pa lang yun." I have never heard people speaking like a flock of mayas taking group baths. Oh, by the way, people correct me here when I call the mayas just that. They are langgam pari, they tell me - and a whole new debate issue arises.

Now I know why the dorm security guard and the house parent of the dorm looked mighty surprised when I complained that "Maraming langgam sa kuwarto ko."

"Paano makakapasok yung langgam, may screen naman?" They asked me.

I was like, "Duh? Kasya kaya sila sa butas ng screen? Heller?"

They went into my room and looked at the ceiling. I pointed them to my walls and my tables and my floors. They laughed and they laughed. "Ah, amigas!" They said.

Good Lord! What have I gotten into? The dorm security guard and the house parent had ant friends they call "amigas?" In my part of sanity, my mother would introduce a close female friend as, "Eto ang amiga kong si ..." I tried to hide the fact that in one corner of my dorm room, I had swept about a hundred of their friend's carcasses unceremoniously.

There is too, the husband and wife tandem Boogie and Prunset. I seem to be always riding with them on the public utility jeepneys. The 'konduktor' or jeepney conductor would slam the vehicle's sides and thump on the roof while yelling for Boogie. "Si Boogie, si Boogie ..." they yelled and I wanted to yell on my own, "Putragis! Hoy, Boogie, bumaba ka na kasi... Galit na nga sila sa iyo, ayaw mo pang bumaba!"

But wallowing in this soup of confusion, I find that all is not lost for me. I am happy to report that I finally met Prunset. She is an elderly lady that smells like a fish vendor from Mintal wet market. When she hails the jeep, everyone just yells, "Nay Prunset! Nanay Prunset!" I almost jumped for joy. Finally, I have a face to go with the name. Nanay Prunset must be one very popular lady, though. Even when I don't see her on the jeep, people still call out her name. One time, this 'conductor' tells me, "Miss Prunset!" And I'm thinking, he must've mistaken me for Nanay Prunset's daughter.

Really, this article is stretching for any form of reason. It's very difficult actually to concentrate on finding the differences in language. I am honestly, not very well versed in speaking or in the nuances of the English language. But when I go ride on the jeep down the length of Mintal Street and I see a side car with a tail sign that says, "Beed of Rouses" and stall signs that announce, "For Sale Honey Bee," I desperately searched my brain, not for reason, but for some semblance of sanity.