The Cat with the Fiddle

my daughter is sick. she has a congenital anomaly that can only be corrected in 3 surgical procedures within her first year, each of them a few months apart from the other. the first one had already been performed the day after she was born. the second is scheduled around april/may, and the last one around july/august.

since november 1, no day has gone by without the nagging dread of what’s going to happen next. i hate surprises. so the the last 2 months has been personally legendary for the morbid anticipation of other associated anomalies that might spring up on me like a wild animal.

but i am tired of bracing myself. so i am committing now to a life of optimism. it’s corny and many times (by experience) tedious, but i have found that this is a very brilliant philosophy.

so every week, i will come up with a list of seven things that make me happy…

1. piso fares at cebu pacific. our next-door islands don’t seem so far away anymore, thanks to aggressive marketing. of course, with the taxes and other charges, you don’t end up paying just one shiny coin to board the plane, but the 2,700.00 mla-cbu-mla round trip is a far better deal than 6,000.00++.

2. red shoes on sale. the very first thing i bought for myself this year is a pair of red, peep toe, ankle-strap, three-inch stiletto heels. a huge steal at only 550.00. although i don’t take comfort in retail (i lost the thrill when i got pregnant; all the more now that i have to save up for impending hospital expenses), i thought one frivolous bargain buy would bring back my faith in serendipity. and what object captures the paradox of nonsense and reason better than a pair of red stilleto heels?

3. white cat in the parish office. i entered the parish office last sunday looking for a book, but i found a big white cat instead. i simply could not resist him with his dusty coat and frayed maroon collar. so i let him rub against my legs while i tried to finish my business there. and i scratched his ears before i went on my way.

4. zuma. not the snake-bearing comic book character (though i have to say that bembol roco’s rendition of the character on screen did make me happy at some point in my childhood), but this computer game my cousin uploaded into their unit. it’s shamelessly repetitive, the speed involved gradually gets quicker, the colors get more confusing…it reminds me of the old school feeling i had playing the gloriously two-dimensional tetris or arkanoid on the family computer of the paleolithic period. 

5. point-of-sale. we see them nearly everyday. the bar code scanner beaming red, the printer loaded with thermal paper, sku codes that turn into product descriptions as if by magic. as my first job in a retail corporation, all the pos procedures were new to me, yet strangely enough, quite familiar too, as i’ve always taken keen interest in observing how cashiers process these transactions. and now that i cover even pos in my programs, i am somehow living this schoolgirl curiosity of how it feels like to scan items and print tape receipts.

6. the females, elderly and children’s car in the mrt. ok, so many people complain to high heavens about daily commute. honestly (please, with absolutely no sourgraping), commuting has never been an issue to me and i have never even dreamed of having my own car. not to say that i won’t accept it if someone gives it to me on a silver platter, but i’ve just never put it among my personal goals. having said that, i am happy that the mrt has a car exclusively for females, children and elderly passengers.

7. pirated dvd’s and software. i am a patron of modern loot, an unconscious contributor to the deterioration of creative rights. but don’t people on a budget also deserve to watch good videos or use good software without breaking the bank? there must be dozens of very talented professional digital artists who were once penniless and had to learn their craft using pirated software. so sue us???