Out of my mind

This is my column today. It sounded like a great idea so all of us in the committee jumped at it: Make dirty ice cream available all day long for all employees, clients, and everyone else who entered the bank’s premises during its recent anniversary. We got so excited at the idea—and why not? Dirty ice cream is so Filipino, the tinkling of that all-too-familiar bell rekindles shared Pinoy childhood memories. Best of all, it is cheap. In these difficult times, an eat-all-you-can offering is something that costs an arm and a leg so at a few thousand bucks a cart, offering dirty ice cream sounded patok na patok (a bestseller). For a while there, we thought we would have to pound the streets to round up a dozen individual mamang sorbetero from the street for our anniversary. But we were heartened to discover that most of the dirty ice cream that’s peddled in our streets comes from a handful of factories so contracting a supplier was relatively simpler that we thought. We talked to a few su...

This is my column today. I’ve been asked the question many times in the last two weeks. The answer I give depends on the manner and tone the question is asked. There are those who pose the question with the sincere intent of broadening up their perspective and finding out what other people are thinking and where others stand in this whole stinking sordid mess. There are those who ask the question with a tad more emotion, as if pleading with you to please see, hear, taste, smell the filth and stench that he or she thinks you have failed to perceive. Sometimes these people ask the question in a rhetorical way, not really expecting an answer, but more as a preface to a lecture. Then there are those that ask the question in an brusque, sometimes even accusatory way, leaving no doubt whatsoever about the level of condescension that they feel for other people who are not with them, yet, or who haven’t joined their call. They ask because they seem to derive some pleasure from pointing out jus...