Man On A Street

There's this thread in Istorya.net that working in a call center is a "no-brainer" -- so easy even a dumbass could do it? Heheh. I don't know. All i know is, working in a call center 'team' is not like in a basketball/baseball/soccer/whatever team sense but like a part of a team of racehorses -- you are made to run like hell over a burning racecourse set with landmines and thorns and booby traps and then there's the panel of judges at the finish line flashing scorecards rating you for how relatively unscathed you managed to be... Of course, you are fed like thoroughbreds -- unlike in other jobs where you are "kayod kabayo" [worked like a horse] and fed weeds at the end of the day... I take it back, not fed like throughbreds -- you can feed like a pig -- and so many do -- and they balloon up after a few months with the accompanying systemic diseases -- what with sitting all day and getting all kinds of crap both from both your bosses and customer...

I have always admired, what nowadays is called, 'elfin' appearance' -- slight, delicate yet strong, often pale ... Scandinavian mythological origins, online sources would say... (we have our own old myths -- the dalakitnons -- people of the banyan trees). Later sources would say inspiration for these would come from ingesting psychedelic drugs (i have only ever tried the Panaeolus species of magic mushrooms [in college]) -- "Machine/Fractal Elves," some would say. But i've always been drawn to the elfin phenotype since i was a child -- it couldn't have been the mushroom tea... So when, in our primate past, did we encounter -- and retain -- the memory of elves?

Two of us from the old Mulberry dorm 'family' went to Bohol to visit our friend's grave last February. We were met by another member at the port and we rode by bike from Tagbilaran to Batuan. It was raining all day but it was a good reunion. We lighted cigarettes -- we had no candles -- over the grave. It was good. We left the next day and our Boholano friend took us for a fly-by at the 'chocolate hills' viewing site where there's a hotel on the hilltop. Who would have thought we would find magic mushrooms on the hotel lawn? Well hello . . . old friends.

Indifference . . . it's heavy in the city. Some bask in it, sometimes it's alienating. . . . My phone was stolen from my office locker today (this is Cebu, afterall). I did not think this much introspection can come from the loss of a cheap cell phone. I've been basing my identity four years on a phone number. . . . Thank goodness for that heads-up. :p

I don't like to call my current workplace 'site' (it's a call cenner, for crying out loud). Many of my coworkers do ... it's hip. But the word 'site' for me evokes images where there's a big hole or burn in the ground or where there's a generally unpleasant thing happening -- crash site, mine site, bomb site, dump site  . . . . A beehive of frantic activity . . . On second thought, they may be right -- it is a 'site' afterall . . .

My body clock tells me it's time to sleep now . . . in preparation for my 2am shift tomorrow. I'm very sleepy and about to sink in. Speaking of deep -- i heard 'profound' means "just before you hit rock-bottom." Of the cliff? Where the best prayers are said -- just before one hits the bottom... And Terry Pratchett says 'wizard' came from "wyz" + "arse" = one who is, at the bottomline, clever. Don't mind me -- i'm just on my way to the bottom....

I'm currently working for a call cenner -- it's the in thing -- for pinoys like me who need the money and have a little English in their belts. It's the first company that i applied in -- and who hired me not for my degree (or lack thereof) -- during my exile to Cebu so I'm grateful. It's just that it's not my line of work -- i'm more at home doing graphic design than dealing with people. It's been six months since i got kicked out from my cocoon at Visca. [Speaking of cocoon -- isn't that the thing that rots in order to release the new creature?...] And so here i am in Cebu -- my workplace has it's share of people who were looked down on while they were in Visca -- and who have risen to be top-performers in their new career. They have 'metamorphosed' so to speak -- but not me -- I prefer to be on the sidelines, watching the parade -- i like to have the best view. I'll be here for a short while only, i hope -- then go for a job i'...

Everybody has his/her first time. And for some people, it actually is not as grand as we thought it would be. Like this blog. Until two-o'clock this afternoon, I never knew I would be writing a blog—this was unplanned and unexpected—just came out because a friend e-mailed me, pointing to his blogspot. You could say I "fell in blog"—when I clicked that white 'B' in the orange square. I imagined, if ever I was going to post in the Web, it would be something important, deep, like the blogs I come across in my surfing. I kept putting off blogging because, I told myself, I don't really have something important to say. Until today. OK, not even. I just did this so I can keep in touch with my friends with something more than e-mail. And keeping in touch is important. That's a good excuse to blog as any.