Brain Contour

Whenever you hear a non-native English speaker, a Filipino specifically, uttering broken “carabao” English, or a version you are not used to hearing, please reserve your criticism. Entertain, instead, the notion that the English language might be evolving, that nobody owns the language any longer. To a certain extent, it is already shared across continents and cultures. Just as there are American English (read: the ever prestigious), British English, Canadian English, Australian English and Indian English, there is also Philippine English. In this day of unimaginable innovation, English is no longer a singular term. Numerous Englishes exist around the world!

“You are like constipation, you take my breath away.” Here are two more: “My blockmates and I took on different roles as Supreme Court Justices.” “I stayed in some barong-barong in town.” These are sample lines to show that we, Filipinos, are fond of coining, compounding and innovating words to make it our own. The use of mate is basically abused. We can connect it to any existing noun to create new words with new meanings. So what if “every now and then” means “often” to majority of our locals when in standard American English it means “occasionally”?

Brookings SD Lake Scene

She said “I love you” and hung up the phone. A little girl ran towards her asking “Is daddy at work?” She nodded and gave the child a tight hug – a profound love that very instant, I saw.

I was glancing at them, a photo-perfect mother-daughter pair under the shade of a pale green tree. Leaves were falling on them and sprinkling her every kiss attempt and the girl’s every giggle of anticipation.

Cha-cha has come out in the news again. Charter change, that is. Opposing Philippine politicians are in a brawl once more, debating the need to shift from a presidential, bicameral system to a unicameral, parliamentary form of government.

So which is preferable? Should the Filipino people retain this current presidential form of government or should we try the parliamentary system? Here is my viewpoint on the issue, which the press people, either prints or TV, have been feasting on for so long now.

Dreaming is my constant companion. It has caused countless unexpected things to come my way, including my being a US neophyte and appreciating the scores of stuff most of my countrymen love about Uncle Sam.

Traffic, for instance. Traffic jams are virtually unknown in this place. There are lanes for bicycles – even for pets! No officer on sidewalks watching undisciplined pedestrians cross where crossing is prohibited.

Friday blackness. That is how it is this very moment. Interstate 90 looks like one of those highways in horror movies where creatures drop dead from the skies and into your windshield. The absence of light that could have come from civilization along this area in Wisconsin makes it hard to know what lies out there at this time of the night. Corn fields, lakes or just deserted plains, I could not exactly tell. Where few lamp posts stand are billboards pointing to eateries and gas stations. A car or two crosses the way once every 10 minutes. Other than that, nothing disturbs the blackness that takes place in the expanse where light seems to be unheard-of. Not even the starless skies connecting to the horizon somewhere is able to muddle up the supremacy of the swallowing darkness. Blackness creates a way for the horizon and the skies to mate with soft oohs and ahhs minus the spying eyes of traveling creatures.