Small Talk

Good news Naruto fans! Episode 1,490,588,675,750 is now out!

Pathetic Software Developers, ha ha  (sigh).

The magic mirror tells me I’m a SS Engineer.

I’ve lots of nephews and nieces (where in tarnation do they come from, it’s like a factory here!).  One of them is Yana, who is half-British.

When they were here, and she was about 5 years old, I took to playing with her — which consisted more of her showing off what she coud do.

Her mom,  in a misguided plan to make her civilized, prim, and proper, had been sending her to folk dance school. And Yana, in her effort to make me realize how good she was at folk dancing, showed me a few moves.

“Can you do this,” she said as she did a tumble.

“Nope, I can’t”

“Can you do this,” she did a pirouette.

“Nope, I can’t”

“Can you do this,” she clicked her heels in a jig.

“Nope, I can’t”

“Can you do this,” she did a handstand

“Nope, I can’t”

Well, she didn’t really show me a few moves. She actually gave me her whole repertoire.

Afterwards, seeing that I couldn’t do any of her moves, she ran to her mom with urgency and whispered, “Mum, he can’t do any of my moves, I think he’s old.”

In my anger, I hatched a plan to make her disappear the next day.

And disappear she did, never to be seen again.

Just kidding. They went back to the UK.  And I’m still old.

Not too many people know that I am waray on my mother’s side.  And if you’re asking what waray is, and assuming you aren’t from the Philippines, warays are people from Samar or Leyte or its roundabouts.

Now from first hand experience I can tell you that us warays decend from the feral beasts of the south — extremely testy, with a temper to boot. And this extends to most of our family, although the later generations have come to mellow a bit.

You know the song “Waray-waray?”  About that girl toughie. True. True.  Even in our family, its the girls who are really tough. And I’m not even talking about my mom yet.

In our brood of six, which includes a 6-foot behemoth of a brother, two Chinese rascals (me and Gilbert), and another kuya we used to call the “big, dumb, barbarian ( ),” I will always consider my ate Jing to be the tough one.

When we were younger, my Mom strove hard to make her girls…um, girlier.  So she gave my ate money for ballet classes. My sister wasn’t interested in ballet and promptly spent her money on Karate classes.

Which was good really, because she got to use it a lot.

Since she was rather tiny ( a sprightly 5 footer), snatchers would often think she was easy prey, just like the time someone grabbed her necklace thinking he could make a clean escape.  Imagine the shock when the sprightly 5 footer bore down on him as he tried to get away.

Well, he did get away, but only because he got into an alleyway that was unfamiliar to my sister.

Another snatcher wasn’t as lucky.

There was this time when another snatcher tried to take her stuff in an alley near where we lived. This time ate Jing caught him by the arm and threw him to the ground where she proceeded to beat him up.

And I know that being manly and all, getting beat up by a chick can scar you for life :D.

But I think she’s tough because she’s probably the only one in our family who can keep her wits about her when there’s some crisis in our family.

Oh wait, haha, I’m getting a flashback of a time when she took care of a scary situation while “big, dumb barbarian” was a total wreck.

Anyway, that’s my sister for you.

p.s. Don’t tell my kuya I called him a “big,dumb barbarian,” he’s going to go nuclear on me.

I probably won’t be able to update this blog for the next few weeks since I’m rather busy on a top-secret project.

Having said that, this old dog is requesting for prayers (I kinda need them right now :D).