“What?” He turned to Sadiah. “No! I don’t. If I don’t want to get married why would I want to have a girlfriend?” He felt a little uncomfortable and he didn’t want to mislead Sadiah. I was not flirty at all, was I? he thought, and she’s a thirteen-year-old girl!
“Good,” Sadiah said. The wistful quality in her eyes bothered Dandey. It shouldn’t be there; it shouldn’t exist in any thirteen-year-old.
“If you have a young wife,” Sadiah added, “but you don’t have money to support a family, your wife is going to turn into a prostitute.”
“What? No!”
“It’s true!” Amisah added, spitting a rambutan seed out of her mouth. “I’ve seen it happen to our friend!” They started to speak in a language Dandey couldn’t understand. He had never heard it before, but it sounded familiar. When he asked them what they were talking about they said nothing.
“Amisah! Amisah!” Udin yelled. He was still in the trolley, talking to himself and playing some sort of game. “Give me a rambutan!” he said. Amisah threw one to him and he caught it.
“See I’ve given him one rambutan, I’m sharing this with him. Now, give me my five ringgit!” Amisah said to Dandey.
“No, I don’t have any more money.”
“But your wallet is so thick!”
“It’s thick, but empty. I’m telling you the truth,” Dandey said. “So do you guys go to school?” They laughed.
“I can’t read,” Sadiah chuckled, “But she goes to school!” She pointed at Amisah.
“I go to school every Monday and Wednesday, only twice a week,” Amisah said. Her eyes sparkled as if she’d just received her five ringgit note. “My teachers are Miss Ain, Mr. Faizul, and Mrs. Tan.”
“So you know how to read lah, right?” Dandey asked.
“Almost. I’m still learning,” Amisah said, “I can read a li…ttle bit only.”
“Why don’t you go to school with her?” Dandey asked Sadiah. She smiled, and Dandey couldn’t help but stare at her rotting teeth.
“She’s scared of being rotan by the teacher!” Amisah laughed, “She said it’s painful.”
“I don’t like being rotan that’s why I don’t like school,” Sadiah added.
“But you have to know at least how to read to survive in this world. Do you guys know there’s a public library over there?” Dandey pointed at the Suria Sabah Mall. “You guys can go there for free and read books…” For a second, he forgot that they couldn’t read, and then he added, “Maybe they have a learning-how-to-read program, you guys should go there sometimes.”
“I don’t even have slippers!” Sadiah laughed, “and you want me to go there? People would look at us like filthy trash!”
Dandey glanced at her grimy feet. “Look at their eyes,” she said.
“Whose eyes?”
“Everybody’s,” she said. Dandey hadn’t noticed that almost every passerby stared at them, as though it was a crime for them to sit side by side on the metal bench. Some giggled and some knotted their foreheads, as if they’d smelled something nasty, and some simply passed by as if Dandey and the children did not exist at all. This feels familiar, Dandey thought and then took a deep breath.
“Where’s your mother?” Dandey asked.
“Astaga…How many times do you have to ask?” Sadiah said, “She’s at the fish market bah…begging like us.”
“Is there a house at the fish market? Where do you guys sleep at night?”
“Well, she has a house,” Sadiah said, pointing at Amisah, who was peeling another rambutan with her teeth. “Her house is on water.”
“So you live somewhere over there lah, right?” Dandey pointed to the island where a fishing village could be seen. Yellow lights flickered in the village as the sun dimmed, and the purple sky was darker now. Dandey had always wondered what it felt like to live in one of those houses on water.
“No, not there. Just over there,” Amisah pointed west. Dandey nodded, pretending he knew exactly where the place was.
“Do you still have your parents, Amisah?” Dandey asked.
“Ya, she does!” Sadiah answered.
“But you only have your mother, right?” Dandey said to Sadiah and she nodded.
“I only have my mother, my brother and my grandmother.” She paused. “Grandmother is old.” She spaced out.
Dandey couldn’t decide whether Sadiah was sad, or merely thinking of something else. Perhaps she was reminiscing again. Amisah threw a rambutan to Udin. He caught it and ate it. They were arguing about something in their language, but the noise didn’t bother Sadiah.
“How old were you when you lost your father?” Dandey asked; his voice trembled and his stomach clutched. Sadiah smiled. Dandey noticed her watery eyes, glistening the reflection of the last purple sunrays. She looked at her brother playing with the trolley, while talking to Amisah in a language that Dandey could neither understand nor identify.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was young…the only memory I have is what my mother and grandmother told me about him. He was not a very good man, but a hardworking one. My mother always said to me that all I need from a man if I want to survive is ‘hardworking.’ But I don’t agree with her, I mean, I can be as hardworking as a man too. And we’re still breathing now without him.” She wiped her tears. “He was a fisherman,” she added, smiling.
“Do you know how to fish?” Dandey asked, hoping to cheer up the conversation, but not sure how.
“Of course lah bah I know, but it’s not easy. It depends on luck. There could be days when you catch no fish at all, and now we don’t have a boat and fishing gear anymore. My uncle took them after Father passed away.”
Dandey said nothing afterwards. They were quiet again for a while, watching Udin and Amisah play with the shopping trolley – so gay and carefree.
When Amisah joined them on the metal bench again, she cried, “Bang bah…five ringgit only. Don’t be so stingy…Allah will bless you if you give me money.”
“You didn’t even share your rambutan with Sadiah,” Dandey said. He was starting to get annoyed. “No, I don’t have money anymore.”
“Liar,” Amisah said. “People like you should always have money.”
“No. I’m poor too.”
“At least you don’t have to beg for money like us,” she said.
That’s true, Dandey thought.
“Bang bah...I’m still hungry…the rambutan was nothing. It’s like drinking water only.”
“Where are you guys going to sleep tonight?” Dandey asked, trying to maneuver the conversation. He was tired of Amisah’s cries.
“At the fish market lah,” Sadiah answered, “I’ve told you already.”
“Is there a place to sleep over there? Like a shelter?”
“Yes,” she said, and then looked away.
“Bang, what’s your name?” Amisah asked.
“Dandey – D. A. N. D. E. Y,” he spelled it and they followed his spelling in unison including Udin. Dandey felt like a teacher. He waited for them to pronounce it, but for a few seconds they were quiet, distorting their faces, struggling to imagine the letters in their heads, and how each letter combined and created a meaningful sound.
“Duh-Lee!” Amisah yelled confidently like a good student.
“It’s Dandey,” he corrected her, smiling.
“Dandey…” they said together.
“Amisah! Amisah! Look! Sadiah! Look!” Udin yelled, pointing at a young man who was jumping up and down. There was a young woman, taking photos of his jumping poses, and a little boy who was unwrapping a chocolate Twiggies. It was a young family: the parents were in their early twenties, and their son was about six years old. The boy stood next to his mother, whining that he couldn’t unwrap his Twiggies, but his mother ignored him. The father jumped with his legs stretched open like a frog’s, and flashes of camera light captured his jumping images. Dandey, the girls and Udin laughed watching the man.
“He looks so stupid!” Amisah laughed.<
br />
“Again!” The wife yelled at her husband. “Stop crying, James! You cannot see what I’m doing now, is it? I’m busy, wait!” She took another photo of her husband. The little boy kept crying, then the mother grabbed the chocolate Twiggies from her son’s hands, and threw it on the ground. Dandey was shocked.
The boy continued crying, and when he wanted to retrieve his Twiggies, his father said, “James, no! It’s dirty! It’s trash already. We’ll get you a new one. Come, let’s go!” He grabbed his son’s hand and dragged him along with him while talking to his wife, laughing at the photos she’d taken. The boy was still crying, but his parents ignored him. Dandey felt so angry for the boy.
Then in a split second, Udin jumped off the shopping trolley and fell, hitting the cement ground hard. Dandey was surprised, but before he could react Udin got up and ran toward the trash. He picked it up and then yelled, “Sadiah! Amisah! Look!” Smiling from ear to ear, he ran to them, screaming and laughing, with his eyes shimmering like the ripples on the ocean, holding the chocolate Twiggies high up in the air like a golden trophy, not even aware of the blood dribbling down his knees and forehead, staining his already stained shorts and torn t-shirt.
BLOGCASTER
ALEXANDER MARCOS OSIAS
BLOGOY LIVES
[ BATMANONG | 1:45 AM ]
It wasn’t a hoax. There are hundreds of copies of the dozens of versions of these blogs stashed all around the Net if you know where to look. We’ll make sure Blogoy’s story gets told.
And I don’t care what anyone else says – it all really started with this blog entry:
Who Knew I’d Be Worth It?
Just this morning I had breakfast with an old college batchmate and blogcast circle colleague. Seems like our blog has enough influence with the voting public to warrant a substantial fee for some announcements and considerations for a certain would-be President, and he approached me about considering accepting a bribe.
He didn’t put it exactly in those terms, but let me share the details with you and let you decide. I haven’t had much experience with the “real journalistic approach” for very long, so please bear with my attempt to communicate the facts clearly with you.
I’m paid to do three things:
1. Get the press releases of this candidate out on my blog.
2. Downplay any negative coverage or issues that arise regarding that candidate.
3. Ensure that none of the other candidates get any coverage on my blog.
He was very convincing. His main arguments as to why I should do it were very simple: “Everyone’s doing it already” and “You’re going to write about this candidate anyway”. The latter bit is true – I volunteered to blog every bit of candidate gossip (and mark it as such, naturally), every scrap of candidate scandal that appears in the news, every morsel of information that filters down through the SMS chain of data and post it on this blog. Even the press releases.
So here I am. Bribed into becoming a media mouthpiece. Well, I’d better earn my pay, right? Here goes:
Metro Manila – A well-known blogcaster, Blogoy, accepted money from another well-known and once-respected blogcaster, TunaFriend, in exchange for skewing his coverage on the presidential elections.
TunaFriend, claiming to represent presidential candidate Reynaldo Tambuk, handed Blogoy an ATM card as payment. Blogoy later found out that the ATM card gave him access to a BPI bank account with P30,000 in the balance.
“[It will be a] regular monthly deposit,” said TunaFriend over their lunch meeting at the California Pizza Kitchen in Shangri-la Plaza. “It should increase the closer it gets to the elections.”
It is unclear at this point whether or not the payments will continue after the elections.
I’ve attached the scans of the ATM card and the printout of the account’s current balance. What do you think about the name on the ATM card? It’s obviously not mine, because (for those of you who’ve tuned in late) I’m a guy. Male. Dude. Pare. The last name is particularly telling.
Now, I don’t know if this will put our beloved candidate in hot water.
Okay I guess that’s it for this month! Tune in next month when I earn my next P30K!
Comments (2):
Di ba this was that post that appeared on The Watchful Eye last year in April, when the elections were just beginning to boil over? When I read it I remember thinking: patay ka, Blogoy!
KidKonyo | 5:45 PM
I’d already stopped reading The Watchful Eye and the posts of Blogoy in particular. But when a friend forwarded me that link, I was enthralled once more.
But even then, I could only see it end in tragedy.
EDM_III | 9:27 AM
BEGINNER’S BLUNDER
[ KIDKONYO | 6:45 PM ]
When you backread the earliest entries on his personal blog, di ba malinaw? Blogoy did not hop onto the web out to change the roiling mess that is Philippine political scene. Check this out:
Why Blogoy?
A lot of people have submitted theories regarding the significance of my name and how it reflects my personality.
Actually, it was a mistake. I was supposed to register this site as Blogboy (I know – very imaginative), but the letter ‘b’ sticks on this stupid keyboard and I didn’t notice it till I hit ‘submit’. It turns out that Blogboy has already been registered, so I decided to stick with it. I figured that when I came up with something better I could always change it.
Unfortunately I have a lot of name recall now so, I can’t.
Well, I can, but I don’t want to.
So I won’t.
On My Own – Sort of
Moved into my family’s condo in Pasig. It’s near the Ortigas Metroplex, it's a bit too far from the MRT to walk, but it’s cozy and I get my own room for once. Wish I could get a faster connection – I only signed up for a shared T1 connection and the regular HD movie and video feeds take forever to download.
I was really tempted to go for the dedicated connection, but I’m going to have to wait till next month. I’m getting rid of the family crutches (my monthly allowance) and getting an honest-to-God paycheck now.
Yes, I have a job! I can’t tell you where it is though – blogging about work is prohibited by the contract that they make you sign – so I’m just going to have to hint at it in the future.
Now that I actually have to pay for my own food, I think I’m going to have to learn how to cook more than just pasta and soup, especially since Aileen prefers handling computers over electric stoves.
Come on Aileen
Ah, Aileen. She’s more of a techie than I am – she gets this manic glow that radiates from her when she discusses her laptop and peripherals with me (most of it goes over my head, but I try to take note of the terms she repeats most often).
Like a lot of the folks at work, she held a flawed assumption that folks from the U.S. sleep around all the time like on cable. It took a while before she realized how boring and quiet my social life really was over there.
At least now she knows why I was so well-behaved over there – I was sent to the States after I almost killed a boy from a rival barkada over some stupid misunderstanding in our little corner of Parañaque (our first home in Metro Manila). I also told her about how our family split up as a result: Papa moved with me to the U.S. to make sure none of my old friends tried to contact me, while Mama went back to her family in Ilocos.
Papa eventually left me in the States when he saw I’d grown up a bit. I will love him forever for not giving up on me like mama did. He always told me Mama was the love of his life, and those cold rainy nights in Seattle spent apart from her were killing him.
I didn’t understand it at the time, but on these nights when Aileen and I while the hours away talking about the darkness in our pasts and the hope we have for our future, I get some small glimpse of what
their love must be like – a joyful stillness in the unjust, irrational, and sometimes dangerous place we call our home.
Speaking of dangerous places, Aileen’s taking me to the shooting range tomorrow. She says her grandfather (a highly-respected former military man) could never respect a man who didn’t know how to take care of himself in a fight.
Comments (2):
It’s clear he was a novice to blogging and to living in Metro Manila – he drops clues to his identity right and left, believing that the Net afforded him some measure of anonymity. But all activities on the Net leave tracks.
And Metro Manila is smaller than you think.
BatManong | 2:59 AM
I concur. His posts reveal a contented, yet directionless graphic designer sharing snippets of his life with the general public.
EDM_III | 10:42 AM
A DALLIANCE WITH SENSATIONALISM
[ EDM_III | 9:31 AM ]
Mere months after his foray into blogging, Blogoy and future Watchful Eye co-founder Bong Badong created a conspiracy site called CounterSpin. It was a two-man blog filled with unsubstantiated rumors and wild theories that started, peaked, and fizzled out. Unlike his later work, most of Blogoy’s CounterSpin writings reek of sophomoric editorialism or adolescent demagoguery:
The Most Democratic Country in the World
Just the other day, I was at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf down the street and a foreigner (does it really matter which country?) was complaining about the state of democracy in this country. I laughed out loud when I heard his rather long rant because it reminded me of my grandfather.
TRASH Page 12
