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For those of you who don’t know, Bunifa Latifah Harifah Sharifa Jackson is a poised, polite, extremely amicable African-American character from MadTV. When I feel down I always watch her videos on YouTube because nothing cheers me up like Bunfia’s antics. Before reading the rest of the entry, do take the time to watch this video just so you can get a fairly good idea of what Bunifa is like and why she is my idol (to some extent).

This morning, I went with my mom to the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) branch in Santolan to withdraw some dollars for my trip to Singapore. I detest going to the bank because I can never figure out which forms are for what, and I groaned inwardly as I stepped inside and saw the horrendously long line. Well it’s either I deal with the line or I go to Singapore completely penniless, so I resigned myself to line-waiting boredom.

My mom stood in the line for me while I filled out the withdrawal slip, and when I took her place, I noticed that there was this muscular guy sitting on the bench a few feet away from me. His face had the word “asshole” written all over it and he was giving me this look that was bordering between lascivious and just plain nasty. I decided that he’s probably the kind of guy who would grab and rape me should I encounter him in a dark, deserted alley, and made it a point to avoid looking to my right, where The Asshole was seated.

When the line started moving closer to the teller, I saw The Asshole get up and approach me. Oh shit. At first, I thought he was going to make “friendly conversation” and attempt to extract personal information from me, but what he did was worse.

He cut the line right in front of me.

Nobody, and I mean NOBODY, cuts the line in front of Laurisha Faurisha Maurisha Haurisha Dado and gets away with it. *does finger snappy thing* A brutha needs to learn to respect a sista’s place in line.

So I tapped on him on the shoulder and said, as politely as possible, “Excuse me, go to the back of the line. I was here first.”

The Asshole gave me this condescending look and said, “No you were not. I was here first. I was sitting over there”–he pointed to the bench–”and I told to the woman in front of me that. This is my place in line.”

That got my blood boiling. I was standing in line for a good ten or fifteen minutes and the entire time I was there, The Asshole was slouching on the couch like a sultan waiting for his harem to cleanse his body with oil and perfume. Who the fuck did he think he is? I looked him in the eye (he was perhaps almost a foot taller than me) and said, my voice taking on a hard edge, “Still, you weren’t in the line. The entire time I was here, you were just sitting on that bench.”

“Well that’s what the waiting bench is for, isn’t it? For people to sit down while waiting for their turn.”

I gestured to the line, which had grown considerably longer since I had gotten there. “Look! Everybody is standing in the line! Do you see anybody sitting down?”

“Well that’s their fault for not sitting down and using the waiting bench. Besides, my knees hurt.”

I brushed the bangs away from my eyes. “Tough luck. My feet hurt. Everyone’s feet hurts. We’re all suffering from feet problems because this line is moving too damn slow. And just because your knees hurt doesn’t mean that you deserve any special treatment from the world. I don’t give a fuck who you are, but you can’t just sit down like a goddamn senyorito, cut in line, and get ahead of everyone who’s been standing up while waiting for their turn. Get to the back of the line or get out of my way.” *

At this point, I was practically shouting and people were staring. I was half hoping that the guy would punch me, because I’d never been in a physical fight before and I really wanted to take a sock at his mug. I’ll probably get the crap kicked out of me because this dude was a tall, muscular guy, whereas I’m a tiny little waif. But every bruise and broken bone would be worth it. Fortunately (or unfortunately), no fight happened. My mom backed me up and started telling the guy off, and he finally let me go ahead and cut in front of the woman behind me, all the while muttering, “Well that’s why there’s a waiting bench. For people to wait.”

I don’t know what made me more angry though–that The Asshole cut the line in front of me, or that everyone passively accepted the situation. I expected the woman behind me to complain when he decided to back off and cut in front of her. To my surprise, she said nothing. Nobody said anything. How could they just let this asshole cut the line and get ahead of all of them? I wanted to stand on a seat and give everybody a passionate speech about how we need to abolish the non-confrontational behavior inherent in our culture. We need to learn to speak up when an injustice happens to us, or to anyone nearby. It doesn’t matter if it’s something as trivial as a guy cutting the line. When you see someone doing something wrong, you point it out to him and tell him that his actions are unacceptable. It’s no wonder this guy’s a total jerk–he’s used to people allowing him to trample all over them with his big motorcycle boots.

I decided against doing that since my mom and I do a lot of banking at that branch, and I’d hate to have the guard drag me out of there kicking and screaming. That would just be humiliating. So I kept my mouth shut and restrained myself from turning around and shouting profanities at the guy until I finally reached the teller and got my cash.

* The whole exchange took place in Tagalog, which I am rather terrible at–grammatically and phonetically. What I said in this entry is a far more eloquent version than what I actually told The Asshole. I was tempted to intimidate him and respond in English but a) once someone talks to me in Tagalog I’m unable to reply in English, and b) using my knowledge of English to intimidate someone is such a classist thing to do. Note to self: learn verbal sparring in Tagalog.

Unfortunately I don’t have a very interesting typhoon story to tell. My parents picked my sister and I up at the dorm at the ungodly hour of 8:30 because the typhoon was supposed to hit Metro Manila at noon and my mom didn’t want us stranded at the dorm with no food. The moment I got back to the house I went back to sleep, and woke up at noon to the sound of the wind screaming outside my bedroom window. A couple of minutes before I woke up, the huge tree branch (see the picture above) from the tree outside fell on our fence and gracefully decorated the lawn. I hate that I missed seeing that happen.

The ridiculous strength of the storm brought the whole Luzon back into the Dark Ages (aka there was no electricity anywhere; though I know some people may think that the Philippines doesn’t need a huge power outage to be in the Dark Ages, what with our being an uncivilized third world country and all). After a day, I gave up on making little candle wax statues so I ended up staying over a friend’s condo in Makati which had electricity, courtesy of the swanky building’s generator. Naturally I didn’t use the bright lights and the computer to do anything productive, and as a result I am cramming for a test tomorrow. XD

Sunday was spent resting and helping my parents get rid of the fallen tree branch on the lawn. It’s too bad my parents hired some random people to clear it out later that afternoon. There went my career as professional ax-woman. Of course, it didn’t help that the random people offered their services after they spent a few seconds watching me doing a rather awful job and hacking away at the wood.

The billboards have been cleared off the main roads and highways now (I think) and everything is back to normal. If it weren’t for all the uprooted trees and leaves all over school, you wouldn’t be able to tell that a storm just hit this crazy city last week. I hear another one might come in a few days, but I seriously hope it misses Metro Manila. I just want to get this stupid semester over with already.

When I got my Siamese cat Kylee about seven years ago, I didn’t know that we had the kitty neutered way too late. Neutering a tomcat is supposed to reduce their tendency to mark their territory by spraying their piss, their aggression to other cats, and the tendency to roam around the neighborhood. Although getting my cat castrated made him stop urinating all over the house, Kylee still enjoys gallavanting with the neighborhood cats, defending his territory from other strays (the front lawn and the back yard), and picking fights with other toms.

My kitty’s nighttime excursions wouldn’t be such a problem if he didn’t bring home unwanted vermin from his feline friends: fleas.

They seem to like the taste of my blood because my sister and my mother never seem to get bitten. But what’s particularly irritating about flea bites is that they tend to leave disgusting dark marks on my skin after the swelling subsides. My feet are the primary feeding spots of these bloodsucking creatures and I never wear strappy sandals because the skin on my feet is pockmarked with stupid flea scars. The scars do fade after a long while but if Kylee’s fleas aren’t consistently removed, new scars will soon replace the older ones.

Defleaing my cat is a task that requires three people: one to hold Kylee down (my mom), one to control the removable shower head and calm him down (me), and one to remove the fleas (usually the maid). The cat is snatched up from his comfy perch and tossed unceremoniously into the shower area. Upon removing collar and wetting cat, my mother rubs flea-killing shampoo all over his body; the instructions on the bottle says that the fleas should die within five minutes.

While we wait for the shampoo to take effect, the maid and I start removing fleas from his body. Or rather, I point to where the flea is at, and the maid removes the flea and drowns it in a small tub of water. I suck at prying fleas off cat fur because I always keep my fingernails short. That, and I already spent too much time pulling fleas sucking on my feet during the several months we got too lazy to bathe the cat. Once, I was answering a quiz in my terror Theology class when I saw a flea crawling across the paper. It’s just too much for me to have to touch the damn things on the cat itself.

After about five or ten minutes, the poor cat is rinsed and the surviving fleas are picked out of his fur. Except for the occassional growl and angry meow to prove to us humans that my kitty is still vicious, Kylee remains cooperative throughout the entire thing.

The cat is then dried with an old towel and released from the bathroom. Kylee goes off to an inaccessible part of the house, usually behind the fridge or underneath the dining room table, to sulk and clean himself with his tongue. The whole process is repeated two weeks later, or whenever I start noticing fresh bites on my already abused feet.