ACORN STUCK IN SQUIRREL'S MOUTH
By: Iris P. Concepcion

In this dusky weather of unobtuse forays into the wonders of still sleeping, I opened a book for synonynyms and loaded up mentally on the word "rendezvous". A ward back in Manila can spell this without a pause and without batting her dominant eyes, and she was in Grade One at that time.

There used to be a restaurant in a town next to mine called "Rendezvous." There is possibly an overtly literate hippopotamus living in a lagoon who thought of giving our food joint this exasperating (to the tongue) word.

My father and mother had pronounced it properly. I thought I had acquired an amount of class even when we were in a rustic place because my parents can speak very well. Many had mispronounced it, ranging from "ran-desboos" to "rin-debu."

We had no source of electric lights then and we fetched water from a man-made pump. Our restaurants have fanciful names though. Our literacy rate could be judged by how we had baptized our eating joints. This could be a source of practical education. Litter the place with difficult words and the inhabitants can acquire the craving for correct spelling and diction. My style of educational sharing precisely hinges on this. I always advise for every learner of English to buy a compact Thesaurus. "I am hungry" sounds boring beside the vocabulary-charged "I am famished." This is an area where the hardware store is manned by a Chikoy Pura-lookalike of the band Jerks and women had developed a crush on this blue-eyed, motorcycle-riding animal called Winston plying its streets with a James Dean strut.

Curiously, I see the quiantness of my place of origin more vividly now. There were three Chinese merchants at my town center buying the local produce. My father then partook of the food of local natives; him and his fellow teachers' treks to the chilly and mountainous ranges look like the epical location sites of the Brokeback Mountain. Its fog, its cold bites. They all had been there to build schools out of nothing; teaching people how to write and read. My father had combed them all.

I am proud of my lineage for this sacrifice.

Here in Yala, I am reminded of my own personal History by the sights of school buildings flashing before me. I had visited one yesterday, Anubal,  and was astounded by the numerous computers stacked inside its libraries and teacher lounges. I had likewise observed that it had listed down the donors of buildings and their corresponding amounts in cash similar to the Wat Chang Hai train station marker with its immaculate comfort rooms spocked in an agricultural terrain.  It has its own school tee shirt, designed presumably by its students. This is a primary school but it is governed like a university. This area is called the "Green Learning Room" by the school administrators. I have listened to its pupils and was astonished by how proficient they are with their faculty of language.

And the ways of the world had turned circumferential. And inside its wheel is myself, grinning at the feast of sumptuous fare of the intelligentsia and the wicked and the funny, thrust like window sills for me to scrub and refine.

P.S. Joan Rivers does sound ecstatic and hilarious on primetime television. Do not ask her for directions or you would end up in the Himalayas. I am likewise brushing up my knowledge on Thailand and had encountered a wikipedia article about this film that bagged a Cannes. It looks interesting. I was bawled over by the fact that the Thai government, through its Royal Thai Ministry of Culture, helps young directors to finance their flicks. The themes and plots seem to be overtly exciting too, with the little  themes involving sex with/among catfish. Goofy aspect. I have learned that Thais are known for their smiles (Land of Smiles) and they have a term for this: sanuk, or that life should be fun. Read this for some plot inspiration. As an aside, I actually sat beside a woman who is with the Ministry of Culture during the Hindi-inspired wedding which I had attended, the event of which is chronicled in one of my previous entries.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Boonmee_Who_Can_Recall_His_Past_Lives