Just an Ordinary Talk Yesterday
It was a lovely afternoon. The rain was gone and the sun was smiling back again. The white clouds flourished the sky. My mother parked in front a house with a fancy bamboo fence (I never thought bamboo would be fancy). Alas! I got out of the car. The moment was beautiful. I stepped, for the first time, on a high class subdivision—-the Forbes Park.
You might ask me, what’s a filthy and worthless girl like me doing in such an expansive place? Well, I might answer: Well, it’s none of your business. So let’s get on with the story, shall we?
"So this is the house of Speaker Jdv.." That’s what they termed Speaker Jose de Venecia.
"Wow!! This place is way awesome! I can’t believe I’m in a real mansion! Whoa!!! A swimming pool, a garden, two buildings, flat screen TV’s on every room.. This is a fantasy!!" I was screaming on my mind. Pretty unbelievable, but what the heck?
Mother and I went inside the small house at the back of the bigger house. Nice place.. My mother introduced me to the congressmen in there and to other people in politics of which I’ve no idea what position they work in. I was in heaven. They served food and stuff like that. A maid asked me if I wanted anything and as a shy person with manners (ahehehe..), I said no. I wasn’t hungry anyway. But after a few minutes, she gave me fruits: an unpeeled orange (how can I possibly eat that?), sineguelas (is it spelled correctly?), and some small, red, unpeeled fruits, the size of a sineguelas. I ate one sineguelas but didn’t get to finish it all up.
After tasting the sineguelas, I was focused on the glorious flat screen TV. HBO was on and I was having fun watching it. The story was good even though I didn’t get to start from the beginning. But dar n it! A guy put it on news. And on ABC! "If you’re putting on news mister, put it on GMA!", I scolded him in my mind. I wouldn’t have thought that if he wasn’t a grumpy old man. So there I was, watching some news. Boring ol’ news.
Beside the board where it was placed was an aircon. The vertical kind. It was blinking. And blinking. And blinking. I enjoyed staring at it for a while. But I stopped knowing that there was a camera that was spying on us. Who knows what the people behind the camera might think?
"Newsers peepers..", I told myself. Then a man sat down beside me, on my left. Nope, he wasn’t the grumpy elder. He was friendly and he had a sense of humor. He asked me questions like where I went to school and who was I with. The questions led to the stories he told me. He started talking about people he knew who never study but were really, really smart. Then he started talking about college. At the back of my mind, I was thinking, is this my mother’s accomplice? Why is he talking about the importance of studying? I was experiencing guilt. Fyi, I don’t really give study an importance. To prevent the crime of not studying become a soulful sin, I took an opportunity, when he was not talking, and asked him what course he got. And he said: " I took up Biology. And I end up here in politics. I was studying environmental management. And this is what I’m managing. " He pointed out to the politicians in front of our table who were noisy and all. I laughed at his joke a little, so not to make a big scene.
In the evening, my mother asked what the guy and I were talking about. I said, "Wala lang." Preventing the explanation from getting long. It was my turn to ask her,
"Mom, was Jdv there?"
"Yes, he was there for a while."
"Was he the guy with a bald head but had hair on his forehead?"
"Haha. Ssshhhh.."
When I woke up in the morning, I came to a realization that everyone on that small house was important. So I asked my mother who was I talking to. She told his name was Mex, blah, blah, blah, blah..
I should’ve not written this. After all, Mr. Mex was ONLY an assistant secretary of Malacañang. Who would care? Hehehe.. ^_^
