ESSAY
Magic in the Air
By Michael Tan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 04:20:00 12/28/2008
Filed Under: People, Lifestyle & Leisure, Entertainment (general)
ASKED to write about Filipinos who made me smile this year— presumably Filipinos who made it to the news—I found myself hard pressed to think of anyone who made me smile out of contentment, or happiness.
Then I realized that happiness has nothing to do with being rich and famous or a celebrity. There are many nameless people, some in government service, who make us grin. This festive season, we might want to go out of our way to make them smile in turn.
1. My kids’ pediatricians. The visits are rarer now as the kids have outgrown their regular immunization schedules, but just thinking of these doctors makes me smile. Even in those times when I couldn’t diagnose what was wrong with the kids, the minute they made it to the clinic, the fever and coughing, would disappear as did all my anxieties. The kids love them too, sometimes even calling out as we pass the hospital, “Hello doctor!”
2. Annabelle Evia. Many readers know how rare it is to find a pleasant Administrative Officer (AO) or executive secretary, but the one I’ve had for two years now at the anthro department in UP Diliman just has her way of smiling through the day. It made me realize that if AOs and executive secretaries get a bad name, it’s because they often have to deal with very difficult staff (e.g. professors) and eventually end up as mean, even vicious, to defend themselves. Annabelle shows that a pleasant demeanor and equanimity are still possible.
3. Aurea Bongco and Caryll Bolivar from the HRDO (Human Resources Development Office) of UP. The government is serious about cutting back on the bureaucracy, which can mean long waiting periods to get permission to hire new staff. In a terribly understaffed office, I was at wits’ end trying to figure out what to do when these two staffmembers from HRDO came to my office to help out. Listening to them, I realized they knew every personnel item that was available (or unavailable) in UP, together with salaries and qualifications. They were serious, almost grim, but ended our meeting with a smile that told me, “All will be well.” And indeed it was.
4. Glad (that’s her name!), from the Department of Social Work, who had been helping me with adoption papers. Adoption is not easy, but Glad, who reflects the name given her, has her way too of assuring you it’s not that difficult, and that it’ll all be worth the wait.
5. Cashiers’ office (at the Inquirer, and at UP). Time was when we had to go into long queues to get our salaries. These days, much of the work is done through automatic remittances, although there are honoraria and special payments that still take us to cashiers. And I’m amazed, at both the Inquirer and at UP, at how the cashiers remember names and are quick to locate the checks and papers, making the process so much less painful.
6. Anne, one of the toll booth collectors in Greenhills. It had been a long day and I was sure I had lost my parking ticket, ready to pay the fine. She was patient and, like an elder sister, kept encouraging me to take my time and to look harder for the ticket. “It’s there,” she kept saying with a smile. To this day, I believe I had lost the ticket but Anne made it reappear with her magic words.
7. Security guard at Greenhills. We’ve all heard of dancing traffic cops but there’s also a security guard near Unimart who dances as he directs traffic, eliciting hundreds, maybe thousands, of smiles each day, lightening the impact of the horrendous traffic jam in that area.
8. Vendors at Farmers’ Market and the Sidcor weekend market. Had enough of dour, even rude, clerks in supermarkets and malls? Try more humane places like the Farmers’ Market and the weekend market of Sidcor, where vendors never run out of jokes—about me, my kids, about government, about other customers, even about their wares. I asked one vendor once if her fish was fresh and she said, “It was when the fishermen caught it.”
9. Tin and Tess and Jorge. Tin and Tess are editorial assistants at the Inquirer’s op-ed pages, while Jorge is our big boss. They do more than merely go through the submitted columns though. In this age of e-mail, all kinds of things can go wrong—writer’s block, Internet blocked, emergencies with the family—and when I text in panic about a delayed column, they’re there to tell me, “It’s OK, there’s still time.” In the end, their “Got it!” brings relief... and a smile, ear to ear.
10. Kids. I know the cliché about how we come home from work exhausted but how the kids bring us a renewed surge of energy. The occasions when I did smile, even when I felt my batteries were totally dead, are many but let me just share one story with you: My son was asking, well, demanding, for a late night snack (“Dada, I want rice”) and I wanted him to say “please,” so I asked, “What’s the magic word?” I knew he knew, but he was probably tired, too, and hungry and, without batting an eyelash, he answered, “Mischka, mushka, Mickey Mouse Club,” which are indeed the magic words used to open the cartoon series. He got his snack.
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