No Cause For Complaints

My claim to uniqueness.

2011-11-02T00:59:00.000-07:00

My maternal grandmother has a hole at the top of her skull. Her anterior fontanelle did not fuse as it was supposed to do. Throughout her life, it was a source of her own uniqueness and pain.

I don’t know anyone, alive or dead like my grandmother. I also have not heard any stories told like hers. I am also not able to find anything like her case on the internet. So let’s just suppose it is that rare. The only possible similar story is the article I found on Wikipedia about the hole in the skull of Chihuahua called molera.

The hole may be was an abnormality. But she did not suffer any mental disorders. She was supposed to be very intelligent. She was also supposed to be very modern and advanced thinker for somebody who lived in the mountains and was not properly educated. She was not sent to school simply because of her being a female. Some girls in this time and age are still not being sent to school; so we won’t go into the why’s and how’s of her parents. For the record, not being able to afford to was not one of the reasons.

My mother tells us that the fontanelle throbbed all the time. Just like the fontanelle of an infant. Our grandmother never went anywhere without wearing anything over her head. Even inside the house she had to wear a bandana. It was protection against panuhot (pain in the stomach and/or other muscle groups due to excessive gas). And the salakot (a wide-brimmed hat made of rattan and palm leaves) over the bandana she had to wear at all times when she was outside the house was also a dubious protection against any hard and pointed objects. There was a constant threat of death through that open fontanelle.

Local folktale existed until this day because of that fontanelle. She was supposed to be a witch. My grandmother’s torment probably started with another legend, much older and a national sort this time I suppose. It is commonly believed that fair-skinned and beautiful women in the middle of nowhere are nothing but witches and fairies. Her situation was simply made worse by the hole in her skull. She was not just any witch but one that went out into the night and did terrible things to people. It is told that during one of her witching expeditions, an ever-vigilant local folk who caught her in the act whacked her on the head with a hammer; hence the hole. Any normal human being would not have survived being whacked like that. And so another legend was born. My cousins who still visit the place because they grew up there say, the tale is as alive as ever before.

Growing up, the tale was a source of fascination for us kids. It was a source of pride, albeit a misplaced one and a way to intimidate childhood enemies. But we never really give it much credit until we went to visit our mother’s barrio in the north of Cebu when we were teenagers. There and then we experienced the awe. Not that it was our first visit ever. That occasion I suppose was different because we all grew up into young women with white complexion and beautiful and mestiza features (my older sisters that is). We looked as expected of the descendants of a supposed witch. People actually came to visit simply to take a good look at us. But there was this wariness that suggest, they would flee or fight if provoked.

The hole in the skull is not just a tale. We have proof. We have a photo of our grandmother’s skull. Others might say that the hole happened after death. That somehow due to the elements the hole was developed. But the hole has uniform, even, and fine serrated edges. I’ve seen the hole for the first time almost thirty years ago. It looks exactly the same. Let the experts on anatomy and physiology decide. If ever one happens to read this post.

Biology predicts that recessive traits sometimes re-occur in the fifth generation (if I remember my biology lessons correctly, that is). I never saw her alive. She died when my mother was still eighteen. There is already a fourth generation in our family. I am hoping I would live to see at least one fifth generation issue with her trait.

British Subjects

2011-03-10T08:56:00.000-08:00

I’ve been to London. To visit the Queen!

Well, not really. I couldn’t as yet afford it.

I’ve had, however, very good interactions with her subjects. Well, mostly they were one-sided.

In January, I read three books from two British authors, Tom Sharpe and Doris Lessing. Tom Sharpe’s book, Grantchester Grind was funny. Doris Lessing’s “The grass is singing” and “The cleft” were both disturbing; a woman’s grinding poverty and hopelessness in the first book and cruelty in the second.

During the Sinulog weekend, I met two Brits, Anne and John. They came here to learn diving. Anne has already left middle of February while John will leave end of this month. When we met, I kept quiet the whole evening. I always keep quiet when I met new people. Sometimes I hate my reticence.

On the same month, from Jessica Zafra’s blog, I read a poem from another Brit, Philip Larkin who incidentally happened to be a librarian.

January was a very productive month. And somehow the interactions with Her Majesty's subjects were a change from the usual American literature I seemed to be always reading and American accent I always hear, maybe because the latter is more accessible than the former.

And last night, for the first time, out of sheer boredom (not that I had nothing better to do, but sometimes the brain simply refuses to work at top notch), I visited audible.com. What did I listen to? Love stories. Samples of them anyway, and I found out, I preferred listening to the British narrators. I don’t know why, but there is just something elegant about their accents.

Censoring myself and my blog

2010-11-30T18:14:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago, I read from one of the national dailies that writing anonymously is a form of cowardice. I told myself I am not a total coward. If someone is really, really interested, I could be found.

Of course, it would take a lot of effort compared to having my name simply plastered on my profile. But I have reasons to be partly anonymous. Social Anxiety Disorder? Somewhat. But the most is the fear of friendship or any relationship that may develop from my blogging. Totally illogical I know.

Despite all that, I hope I am not as irresponsible.

And as you can see, there are no negative comments on my blog. I publish only the positive. (There are barely any comments to my blog to publish.) They’re as anonymous as my blog. So you may say what are they worth in the end? They don’t try to take people down. On the contrary, they try to prop up someone anonymous.

I am grateful.

Anatomically Correct Armour

2010-10-16T21:51:00.000-07:00

I am not a fan of online gaming. I do not know how to play any computer games, well except solitaire and word games. The only time I tried playing any online game was playing farmer in Farmville. I forgot my plants. The next time I remembered them, I cannot remember how to enter the farm and left it at that. Off-hand I cannot name any games, especially games that has powerful women characters or warriors.

I am all for giving power to women, power over their bodies, their future or whatever and wherever they wanted to use their power on. I admire women with power. Sometimes I envy women with power. As an avid observer and admirer of powerful women or women with power, these online games with powerful women warriors and characters should be one area where I draw inspiration from, but I hated the women in these games. Rather I hate how these seemingly powerful women are portrayed.

Heck, I even admire women criminals. So why do I dislike how these women are portrayed? It’s their costumes! Any sane woman, including the frumpiest and most socially inept would agree with me of the importance of the correct dress to the correct occasion, even if the difference is only between pressed and un-pressed clothes.

Ancient and brutal games have evolved into civil games and sports such as boxing. Their modernity and civility now involved dress codes, including a mouth piece if applicable. Fencing, that very polite game for the thoughtful and philosophical is so polite that when players are hit, they don’t just grunt, they say “touché”. Beach volleyball of course has the skimpiest attire ever. But then it is not a contact sport and no one is wielding any pointed and sharp objects waiting for a chance to hack your body into as many pieces as possible.

Meanwhile, in the real past, ancient history of humanity, women warriors who wielded swords wore body armours including the all important head-pieces. Just like the men warriors do.

However, in the make believe ancient and future worlds of online games, women carry swords as tall as they are, knives as many as their limbs but they wear next to nothing pieces of clothing. Their clothing are not only very tight fitting and scanty, these also include flying, dangling and excess ribbons of cloth or leather that will not only hinder their own movement but can be used to pull them near, anchor them for the death blow or more spectacularly to strangle them slowly to death.

If I am a woman warrior vain enough to expose my thighs, arms, midriff, and upper chest, I should think I am also vain enough to keep my skin blemish free. (Among other things, one reason men portray these women warriors near naked is their beautiful skins.) Now if you say, these women carry their battle scars as trophy so they won’t mind being wounded, so be it.

But clothes, aside from it being protection to dubious modesty, are also protection from the heat of the sun or from the cold weather. You can’t be an effective warrior if you are shivering with cold or literally burning and losing energy with extreme heat. For all warriors, more practically, clothing is protection to skins that will surely bleed if nicked. A cut on the skin may determine how long a warrior can last in the fight without fainting for loss of blood or pain. It is a given that women warriors who wear bits and pieces of cloth do not care for modesty. Therefore they won’t mind very much if they’ve become totally naked during the fight. But damned if breasts, pert or sagging, are not another exposed appendages. Damned if I, a woman warrior fighting another woman warrior, do not look at it like several square inches more of exposed skin, another tempting target for slicing and hacking and jabbing.

And let’s not forget the very high heels some of these women warriors are wearing. Surely gymnastics, another elegant sport, surely its disciples should have already mastered landing on and from the balance beam on a four-inch pair of heels. Surely they’ve perfected by now to wear high-heels on the floor, flying and leaping, tumbling and back-flipping, swirling those ribbons, catching those balls, shaking those, ugh, musical instruments. Surely, a gymnast’s feet would look better encased in glittering shoes than wrapped with generic bandages. Are the swans in Swan Lake wearing high heels yet? I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to see Swan Lake except on TV. Surely all these metered, calculated, choreographed movements with no one threatening to slaughter you at every turn, they’ve managed to combine with wearing of high heels?

If it is a hand-to-hand combat, are there polite rules. Is it possible to shoot an advertisement for hair products, er, flying hair during hand-to-hand combat is just stupid. You can as easily whack your enemy with your long, lustrous hair as she can use it to hurt you. Or is hair-pulling foul? At the height of my romantic and sexy phase—growing my hair long, I never thought to grow my nails long too. It is not practical to wash clothes with let alone to play a civilized volleyball with. I wouldn’t know if it is possible to make a fist with long nails. Maybe it can be done, but would it have the necessary power to smack your enemy’s face with? Who’s to say my enemy can’t pierce one of my carotid arteries with her long fingernails? There are so many possibilities to hurt your enemy using long fingernails; I can’t all describe them in words but I can try. You forced her palm to stay open; then you smash the tips of her fingers with the long nails to the wall or the floor or anything hard.

If these outfits and posturing are meant to divert men’s attention from the fight at hand, then it is not very effective. Or else women warriors with sexy clothes would have been redundant. And like I mentioned it is not always men who are the enemy. Is any warrior that good, they can’t and hadn’t been wounded? If they are that good, they might as well use their index finger to point and their enemies will all just fall dead. But that’s another fantasy altogether.

Oh, hey! How stupid of me, these women in online games are fantasy women. They can do anything they like. They can hover in the air, shoo their hair out of their eyes, et cetera, et cetera. But if they’re human, they can’t help but bleed when wounded. There is no going around that fact. The most fantastical imagination has perhaps imagined a human being evolving without blood to live and function, ice water in the veins, some chemical substitute? But the human mind has not reached a logical explanation for this possibility. And if we can imagine a human being without blood in their veins, let’s imagine a human being too that does not bleed. But they do die in these fantasies too, don’t they? How else can you earn and gather points if no one dies? I know at least that!

And let’s not forget, that in the brutality of war, rape is not too far away. Men have been known to have sex with dead women. What’s to stop them from raping a half-naked and half-dead woman warrior? If you say rape is not about how women are clothed, but about power, then there you are power over an insensible enemy. And it will be supreme irony indeed, if the woman’s struggle is about injustice and rape in the first place.

The most powerful women are probably the most practical. Ask your neighbourhood powerful woman, how practical had she been.

Reticent No More

2010-10-08T09:28:00.000-07:00

There hadn’t been any posts these last three months not for want of topic to write but for the sudden reverting to form, reticent.

I’ve rejoined, more regularly than the occasional weekend visits, the bigger and more dynamic society of Cebu City. There is so much to observe and think about. There is less chance for narrow points of view. There is less time for self-absorption and self-indulgent essays. There are less of provincial observations and conclusions.

One thing I discovered with myself these last months, I’d like to be a teacher or a facilitator of a learning process. I suddenly found myself exhilarated sharing my knowledge, observations, ideas and being able to construct and deconstruct concepts to anyone open enough to listen to them.

My reticence has its roots with how my parents and grandparents trained us in pursuit of knowledge. They taught us, my siblings and me, not to ask obvious questions. You can only ask an adult a question if you do not understand how a book explained it or if you cannot find the answer in any book. Hence, I never asked questions in class. If I have questions, I research for the answers. And so far, it worked just fine. With reticence in asking questions, comes reserve in sharing what I think. I rarely ever joined class discussions. Grades did not matter to me. They are not always a true reflection of what I know or do not know.

Just as I’ve always known, not all articulate people are really logical. Some of them say what is on their mind whether these are relevant or not. Some just find it so easy to speak and it’s not necessarily the correct explanation or explication. This rediscovery has led me to think; why not let others learn from me than from these kinds of people? Because whether we like it or not, these people will always have a follower. If we can prevent more misconstruction of theories by speaking out then it’s the least we can do for humanity.

One problem arises though with this new-found and profound need to share knowledge. I don’t think, if I become a teacher, have the necessary patience or false encouragement style of teaching to say to anyone, “yes, you have an idea”. This type of support does not always stand. Sometimes it has become euphemism for “no, you’re wrong, but I don’t think as a teacher I have the right to discourage your learning process".

There is always time and place for philosophical blah, but for a study that has half its roots firmly in science, technology and technological innovations, nah. Philosophical discussion is especially not suited to discussions on definition of terms in science and technology. All we can do about definition of terms is to understand it and split it to its most basic. Even as forgiving and less rigid a science as anthropology and sociology, “yes, you have an idea”, will not always float.

It is so much easier to teach oneself not to be afraid of an audience, than to teach oneself critical thinking. As it is, my knowledge, understanding and logic may not be profound but it at least is sound. Fluency will not be a problem.

I, as a lifelong learner would rather be told I am wrong, than to go out into the world thinking the world of myself. I’d rather have the fleeting humiliation than have an incorrect view of my ability and capacity, because in the end, it might not only be just humiliation but death.

Chemical imbalance

2010-06-27T04:55:00.000-07:00

Paulo Coelho. I had heard of him several years ago. About two years ago my eldest sister became a fan. She bought most of his books. I then gave in to my curiosity and read one of his books, The Alchemist. I did not understand it at all, so I put him out of my mind.

Lately, for want of something light to read, I read the same sister's collection. I had read three more of his books, The Winner Stands Alone, Eleven Minutes and Veronica Decides to Die.

I had been uneasy this last two weeks because I thought I ought to agree or at least understand his thesis. Today, while mulling about this, it occurred to me, I have been happier reading Albert Camus's Exile and the Kingdom. I had been reading it in between two Coelho’s.

Camus's short stories and Coelho's books actually are similar, the search for meaning, love, passion, freedom, redemption. What made me happier about reading Camus though is the absence of the overt mention of love, the romantic kind and the conscious or unconscious or subconscious but none the less blatant search for it.

But I've decided to like Coelho only on the basis of what he said about clothes and clothing. In Eleven Minutes he said (I am paraphrasing here) "the rich wear clothes like they are rich, and the millionaires dress like they are poor. And in The Winner Stands Alone, he said "the world has now a new order, high fashion is now outdated because the new and young billionaires in the Silicon Valley wear ratty jeans and t-shirts"...

Global environment

2010-05-05T00:54:00.000-07:00

I always believed what books, documentaries, journals, magazines and experts tell me about this subject.

The massive deforestation in the Amazon is supposed to affect the quality of air all over the world. While the air pollution brought about by industrialization in the US and China raises global temperature.

Yet, some people still cut down a stand of trees for landscaping and beautification. When asked about its effect on the environment, their answers are as irresponsible and as illogical. They say that the amount of trees cut down do not have much effect because the remaining trees are producing more than enough oxygen for the community.

As if a square meter of ice melting in the Arctic only affects people in the Arctic or people living near the oceans and the seas.

As if this is still a world where one can still live without being the least bit dependent on something or someone outside the self.

It isn’t called global for nothing.

Making up for lost TIME accounting

2010-03-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

As you may notice on my book lists, I have finished reading three books this month. Alone, Alone! by Dinnage, on the “current read”, and Scoop by Waugh and Engelby by Sebastian Faulks on “unread”.

I was too lazy to update my blog after reading Alone, Alone! Then last weekend I finished reading Engelby in 17 hours minus the time I took to prepare and eat three meals, bathe, and did some house chores—did the bed, wash plates, etc. (I know, I know, I am a slow reader, can’t seem to do something about this sorry state). But hey, that’s 350+ pages, so not too bad really. Started reading Scoop the other evening and I finished reading it last night.

Not bad for a month’s accounting of time, huh?

Alone, Alone! was very interesting because it talked about women in literature, women's movement, painting and others, women who never really managed to become a star not for lack of talent and skill but for various reasons. Gwen John because her work was seen as less brilliant than her brother’s. Margaret Oliphant “who wrote and wrote not only because it came naturally to her but because she was the sole source of support of seven people” She muses comparing herself to George Eliot: “should I have done better if I had been kept, like her, in a…mental greenhouse and taken care of?"....And many others you don't often hear of or discussed.

Some books are just too easy to read while others, despite the interest, are just too difficult to get through.

How do you account for your time?

2010-03-08T22:24:00.000-08:00

There is a popular Catholic anecdote that once a person dies and he goes to heaven, he will be interviewed by St. Peter at the Pearly Gates. He will be made to account for his time on earth.

Parents would probably say, they've taken care of their children; teachers that they've given education to people; doctors that they’ve healed the sick. And others might say they've created something – painting, great story or poem, etc.

When it is my turn, provided I go to heaven considering, I cannot possibly claim I’ve read the great literature of the world. I have nothing to show for it but the books on my shelf which is not really an indication that I had read them. I had not done any good deeds. I had been living my life as solitary and as away from human contact as I possibly can.

Then it occurred to me, I have my drawings. They’re not great work of arts. But even in their simplicity, each one of them took up at least two hours of my time. Several insomniac nights in February had me taking my colored pencils. Two hours later each sleepless night, already sleepy and right hand bones slightly painful from the unusual exercise, I have a colored pencil drawing of a flower.

Pathetic claim to life lived I know but it’s so much better than “I had gone to college and had a career”. Because I might also be told "of course you did, but did you shine in college or in your chosen career? Have you changed someone or something while doing your job? Anyone can go to a job everyday and plod on. But other than that, what had you done with your time?"

Well everyone can go to work and plod on maybe but not everyone can draw certainly. So there you are St. Peter.

Philippines. Commission On Audit

2010-03-03T20:56:00.000-08:00

One would think that somebody like me will not be involved with COA. There is money involved in my line of work but only as far as the imposition and the collection of fines is concerned. And I can say with complete pride that I had been very honest with this transaction.

About two years ago, the COA had asked us for a list of library collectibles. What is a library without unpaid fines? So we gave them a list. Every end of the semester since then, they have asked for an update of this collectible. And we had always provided them with one, like the good government employees that we are.

Last January, they had once again asked for an updated list and an explanation or certification why we have not been able to collect these unpaid fines.

My letter to COA:

January 18, 2010

Mrs.

Office Head, Commission on Audit

___________________

Dear Madam:

The library would like to inform you that the students on the attached list of students with library accountabilities of long overdue fines are not currently enrolled in the ____________. Some of them had not even enrolled as long.

We do not know of their whereabouts at present. We have no way of knowing how to collect these fines. We feel we cannot run after these students through legal means as these are not debts incurred from not paying a monetary capital owed to the library or to the government for that matter. These are merely fines imposed for not following a policy, in this instance that of returning a book on or before its due date. We could just as well waive them in favor of the students. Or allow these fines to be paid by other means such as donation of a book of the same value as their fines. Unless they come back for clearance to secure university documents as some of them had, these fines shall remain uncollected.

Please note also, that the students with unpaid fines, dated last first semester 2009-2010 are still officially enrolled in the University for the second semester school year 2009-2010. The library will see to it that these students will settle their accounts before final examination of this current semester.

We hope this satisfies you. Thank you.

Very truly yours,

Noted by:

Maybe my ignorance is showing again. Someone should enlighten me. But I had always thought COA is only involved and concerned with the money collected by the Bureau of Internal Revenue and other revenue collecting bodies which are in turn disbursed by the Department of Budget and Management and other disbursing bodies.

I had wanted to receive a response from COA citing such and such Executive Orders or Republic Acts or to say the least their own accounting and auditing rule, disproving my statements:

1. We feel we cannot run after these students through legal means as these are not debts incurred from not paying a monetary capital owed to the library or to the government for that matter.

– I wanted a statement perhaps that of course we have legal means to run after these people especially if we have the signature of these people on their unpaid fines then citing whatever statute and rule they had to.

2. We could just as well waive them in favor of the students.

– Librarians have the discretion for this, don’t we? Like for instance a student who borrowed books was involved in an accident and had to stop in the middle of the semester because she had to have her broken leg operated and mended. We are human enough to understand such cases aren’t we?

3. Or allow these fines to be paid by other means such as donation of a book of the same value as their fines.

– And librarians are reasonable enough to accept these kinds of payment as long as the book is relevant and new.

4. Unless they come back for clearance to secure university documents as some of them had, these fines shall remain uncollected.

– What if the one of the unpaid fines is merely PhP15.00 (there are fines that are only PhP5.00) and we decide to pursue this. How much do you think will it cost the library to send out collection letter to one of them? Ordinary postal mail alone costs PhP20.00? Perhaps we can pursue this matter through text message? The time involved seeking for their contact numbers must also be counted in terms of expense and I’m sure one text message will not do the job.

I realized of course that these people were simply doing their jobs to the utmost of their abilities. As I have honestly with mine. The amount involved in the collection of fines is but a small one but it matters in the larger scheme of things, whatever scheme we are looking at; ethics, redemption of souls or the Philippine coffers. I only wish they are as tenacious and persistent in accounting and auditing large amounts of money disbursed to, who else the politicians.

High School Librarian

2010-02-09T18:22:00.000-08:00

Our high school librarian had retired in December 2009. I am supposed to report to the high school library in January of this year. And I did, for half a day for about two weeks. There were still many things to finish before I can report full time to my new post. Then I had to remain at the college library full time, to help prepare for our AACUP accreditation this week and, to assume my old post for the accreditation because we are short of two librarians. The other had retired in 2008 but her post is yet to be filled-up.

I have yet to fully grasp my new title-High School Librarian. I know it's a whole new mind-set.

The environment is different, more relaxed it seems. The high school students give the impression of less competitiveness than the college students. I had handled a quiz bee for them in Book Week last year and I had to remind them there were prizes at stake.

Intellectually, the population is almost homogeneous. They had to pass the entrance exams. They are better mannered and more malleable too, as the former school librarian said. So far I agree with this assessment. They don't look at you in a "what-do-you-take-me-for-stupid?" way if you offer them your assistance. And they know better than call the school staff neighbor “ate”. One had called me “ate” and she was chastised by her classmates: “Hey, call her ma’am. She’s the librarian not your neighbor.”

One thing I had to scramble to relearn fast is the DDC. DDC was only in my mind for about four and a half years. Three and a half years in library school and one at a former workplace. For nine years and eight months, it is the LC I know. But the students did not mind my asking them to point out the book they wanted from Reserve. Sometimes my mind refused to work fast to remember that language and literature have different classifications in DDC.

There are tentative plans for the school library but I can barely execute even one of them. There is not even a computer to work on. One of the things I had to finish at the college library could have been done sitting in the high school librarian chair had there been one.

I found a site that could help me with some of my functions as school librarian. You ask everything about libraries and librarians and they have an answer.

It is time to express gratitude...

2010-01-24T17:30:00.000-08:00

I had always written as if there was only my brother or my brother and an imaginary friend reading me. Even when Mr. Totanes and Ms. Gagatiga had put a link to my blog on their blogs, and the reader counter on this blog has shown a big increase in readership, I still maintained that I write for my brother alone. That way I could pretend that I am only boring my brother or the imaginary friend.

This blog was started as a way to expend utter boredom and maybe express some of the anger too but as Mr. Totanes made a special feature of two of my blogs, I thought maybe there is something here after all. Maybe I am giving voice not just to my own unique experiences but that of my fellow librarians’ too. And maybe this is one way to show the world that librarians are no longer the stereotypical bunch of boring and dumb professionals but in fact are very creative and intelligent.

During these last two months the blog counter still continues to rise even when I am not blogging anything new anymore. So to my readers, thank you. I hope you had learned something from this blog and I hope I am being truthful to the voice of the librarians, the thoughts of readers and the sentiments of lovers of books.

To Ms. Gagatiga, thank you for adding a link to my blog.

And to Mr. Totanes, my gratitude for hearing me and letting others hear me too.

Do you have a privilege card, ma'am?

2009-11-03T02:46:00.000-08:00

Women’s rights have come a long way from its beginnings and struggles at the start of the 19th century. Yet a large population of women is still struggling for their rights and privileges. While those who have come to their own rights and privileges through the efforts and sacrifices of the pioneers do not appreciate and can not seem to understand what they have.

I know of librarians who do not attend council meetings because they think they do not get anything from these meetings. They call these meetings a waste of time and financial resources. They do not know or choose to forget perhaps that had it not been for these seemingly wasteful meetings, librarians nowadays would not have enjoyed the privileges of being a “professional librarian”. Someone even went so far as to say she won’t attend meetings anymore because she is no longer an officer.

Far worse than these kinds of librarians is the librarian who thinks her co-librarian is wasting company time and resources when and if that fellow librarian is performing council officer’s tasks, duties and responsibilities during work hour.

I ask then, when is the proper time to be president, secretary, treasurer or even a mere member of one’s council? After 5 p.m. and before 8 a.m., when offices are closed for the evening? Had the librarians’ early movements been successful because their supervisors and employers forbid them to use typewriters, telephones, fax machines, etc. during office hours?

Maybe I am just an ignorant fool who does not know the ways of the world. Maybe PLAI is what it is today because the pioneer Filipino librarians did what had to be done for the profession and the association after 5 p.m. only; diligently, conscientiously never using company time and resources for personal gain such as pushing for the professionalization of librarianship, and working for the establishment of the PLAI and its regional councils.

The fight for our rights does not end. We have to be always vigilant because there are those who wish to bring us down and sometimes they are our own kind.

Now for the money

2009-10-25T20:02:00.000-07:00

A room of one's own is a book by Virginia Woolf. This is one of my favorite books. It is doubly treasured because it is the only book I have that has a dedication—from my brother. It can be downloaded subject to copyright; you might like to read the whole book.

The book is basically about: "a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction." But it could be about women who love to dance, paint or cook, become a lawyer, doctor or first-class pilot. Women nowadays are better educated and have more options in life than in her time, but there are still girls left behind. As with any era, it is the women from wealthy families that are able to explore themselves for talents and abilities and are able realize their full potentials if they choose to do so.

The poor girl who is able to enroll in college could have excelled in academics but we’ll never know because she has to work for her living too. She maybe able to earn a degree but she has deferred other dreams for herself because she had to support her younger siblings through school if not become the breadwinner for the whole family. Or she herself has become a mother and if she is the kind of mother Virginia Woolf talked of: “What had our mothers been doing then that they had no wealth to leave us? Powdering their noses?", then the cycle of women poverty will continue. The glimmer of talents she may have could never be developed because she does not have the time or the money to enroll in extra classes and extensive trainings: ""then the thought of that one gift which it was death to hide—a small one but dear to the possessor—perishing and with it my self, my soul,—all this became like a rust eating away the bloom of the spring, destroying the tree at its heart." Most of them do not even have a space of their own to relax, think, or just be; they have to share rooms with other women in cramp lodgings.

But for the exceptionally talented, she does not have a hope because our nepotistic system forbids her to. Sometimes even outstanding talent does not bring her anywhere without endorsements.

Saddest of all reasons why some women do not realize their potentials is not the patriarchal society that some of them still has to live in, but that some women just absolutely detest other women and will do anything in their power to put down possible contenders: "To begin with, always to be doing work that one did not wish to do, and to do it like a slave, flattering and fawning, not always necessarily perhaps, but it seemed necessary and the stakes were too great to run risks."

Librarian: idol, star, hero, etc.

2009-10-13T17:55:00.000-07:00

Twice this semester I inspired awe, the positive kind, which usually isn’t. I felt like an idol. A fraction perhaps of how idols all over the world felt but I must say it was uncomfortable.

As it has been impressed on me time and time again by some librarians and by other people that my being a librarian and a reader and a lover of books do not make me special, that a well-trained librarian could do what I am able to do just a well. I never say I am exceptional, only that my being a reader and a lover of books make my job as a librarian all that much easier. I’d rather everyone; students mostly go on taking my particular and personal help for granted, something that I do because I am trained to do it. But some people are more impressionable than most.

When students come to us asking about particular authors and titles, our standard answer is “have you consulted the card catalog?” Our next action depends on the answer. But what if you are pre-empted by the statement, “I have checked in the card catalog but have not found what I am looking for”. Sometimes we searched the card catalog ourselves to make certain at other times we say “if it’s not represented in the catalog then the library does not have it”. But what usually do we do when confronted with: “I am looking for this chemistry book whose author I do not remember but its cover is blue”. I am sure any librarian would have launch into a lecture regarding the merits of remembering a book by its cover, shape and size alone.

This was somewhat how the cases of hero-worshiping came about.

One student was looking for Machiavelli’s The Prince. He said he had searched the card catalog but had not found both author and title. I know. So I did not have to consult the catalog thinking he might have gotten the spelling of the author’s name wrong especially since he pronounced it as “me-tsa-veli”. But I know too that we have this set called “Great Books” by Britannica. It is a 60-volume collection. I directed the student to it. Individual authors and titles in the collection which includes more than fifty authors and their works are not represented in the card catalog but I had read some of them and I was certain Machiavelli was in it. Like they said a well-trained librarian could have found the book just as well, but it is my being a lover of books and a reader which made my job in this case very, very, very easy.

The other case came to me like this: “I have seen this book a few weeks back but I did not borrow it because I was busy. I can remember its cover which is red. I can’t consult the card catalog because I can’t remember its author and I only remember a fraction of its title. I have looked and looked for it at the shelves but it is not in the “P” section anymore”. So I asked the student if she was sure it was a book that belonged to the “P” section because sometimes books are misplaced. She was sure because it was a collection of short stories. I asked next what the fraction of the title was and she gave it. It is a book some of our staff are reading and re-reading and which I have read too so I was able to give the girl the author and complete title: The next 500 stories by Frank Mihalic. Had I not read the book it would have been very difficult for me to help because the fraction she remembered was the 500 which is in the middle of the title itself.

It was the start of the bowing and the endless looks of idolatry and the ever grateful smile that is star-struck in essence. I noticed because like I said students more often take me for granted or pointedly ignored me.

I may not have even noticed the hero-worshiping look, had it not been accompanied by a slight pause and a bow. I could take star-struck smiles thrown my way maybe. It was the bowing I can’t handle. And bow they both did every time they met me in the lobby or anywhere else inside and outside the library. I know they were responding to the excellent librarian they saw in me in those instances but it was only so because of my being first and foremost and always a reader.

I’m glad the semester is over. I hope the break will cure them.

Digital divide: I, on and have the smaller portion

2009-10-06T21:58:00.000-07:00

You may remember me blog about job interviews.

One of the questions of the interview I had in Cebu two years ago was about digitization. I was asked what would I say or do if my chief librarian would tell me that for the next ten years she plans to entirely do away with books and to digitize the library 100%. After the interview I felt such a total idiot for the answer I gave especially since it was suppose to be a job making electronic abstracts and providing electronic news, newsletters and such to executives and other people online. The feeling of being an absolute ignorant persisted longer than it should because one, I did not get the job and two, I immediately researched online about digitization and read about the collaboration between Google, Stanford and research libraries in the US and UK.

This is the gist of my idiotic answer: “I would tell my boss that first she has to send us or provide us her librarians with trainings and up-to-date education regarding computers and computerization, the internet and digitization in general. But a ten-year digitization plan might be too ambitious because of the reality regarding digitization efforts that are going on in the world. But let’s just say that a country like the United States is already digitizing old titles and old editions of books and publishes books in the traditional forms yet at the same time putting out the digital form, I can say with conviction that Philippine publishers are not doing it. And unless there is an equal effort in the Philippines for the next ten years to digitize then the library digitization plan will be a failure because Filipiniana books and journals will not be represented. Philippine publishers may not be too keen on publishing the traditional and digital forms of a book because of the very limited market of both forms. Ordinary Filipinos can not afford to buy the hardware to make e-books and digital books readable.” I said more of course but I really forgot.

On page 11 of Newsweek September 28, 2009 issue, there is an information aside that says: "The percentage of books in European National Archives that have been digitized: 1% (one percent)."

Some of the books in these archives might already be represented in the libraries in the US and therefore may already be digitized, but countries in Europe are publishing their own literature in their own languages which may or may not be translated into English and therefore may or may not be digitized and it is a very controversial and complicated issue besides…. What I am trying to say really is that Europe is rich and we are poor and they are yet at 1% or 5% Europeana.

I feel a little validated in my views regarding the digitization efforts in the rest of the world. Then too the Newsweek article says much on the availability and affordability of e-book readers. And really I should not have felt such idiocy because I was giving an answer basing from my situation and my experiences.

____________________________________________________________________

Still seeking validation and yes I was not too far out after all. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google laments: "But despite a number of important digitization efforts to date (Google has even helped fund others, including some by the Library of Congress), none have been at a comparable scale, simply because no one else has chosen to invest the requisite resources."

I am making it clear though, I am not against digitization. I am all for it. What I am seeking validation of was my view of the digitization efforts in the world.

Mga Kwentong Barbero

2009-09-10T21:56:00.000-07:00

There is a popular belief that we tell our barbers everything. In barber shops everything and everyone are discussed and in some areas of the world barber shops are even the primary sources of news, not just gossips. Maybe it’s about trust, if you can trust your neck to a person with a sharp scissor why not your secrets, eh? Try to watch the old Johnny Depp movie Sweeney Todd if you do not agree with me.

It is the time of the year to have my hair cut but I’ve been putting it off. I’m afraid to lie to my barber again. Not that I have a regular barber but the thought of telling tall tales to such nice people with sharp scissors make me wary. The lie I usually tell the barber is the reason for my not so secret life. It’s not so secret because you can actually see my head. What’s secret about it is the reason behind the balding spots.

Anyway, most of them immediately conclude upon seeing my thin hair that I suffer from falling hair. I just agree with them. And then they recommend all sorts of hair gels, hot oils, scalp lotions, hair treatment processes, switching to a gentler shampoo, etc., to repair the problem. The funniest if not insulting conclusion is about dandruff. Dandruff is supposed to make hair fall because as the dandruff grows thicker on the scalp, the hair has less hold on its roots. Then the spiel about dandruff shampoos. There is also the advice on how to massage the shampoo on the scalp versus scratching the scalp while shampooing which aggravates the problems with the scalp and hair roots.

To the hair dresser who bothered to ask why my hair is damage, I tell the half-truth. That I shampoo twice a day, but it is only half the reason why my hair is brittle. And why my head has stumps and little stubby hair underneath the longer hair. Which leads to the advice that I can never seem to remember, that shampooing one’s hair is supposed to be done only twice a week or three times was it? Shampooing once a day is even disastrous for the hair and one must absolutely moisturize the hair at least once a week. And one must pat not rub the hair dry, do not brush or comb wet hair thoroughly, etc.

The color of my hair which is a dark brown is also attributed to the constant shampooing, damaging its supposed beautiful black color. Ah, well what am I suppose to say to that? That some members of my family have the same if not lighter hair color so why can’t I. No one would believe me. I just meekly say to the really nice man or lady with the sharp scissors and really big and broad hands some of them have, yes I will come back next week for the hair spa and meanwhile I will follow all your advice.

My family and some friends who know better think that if my mania will just be cured, then everything else will follow in the cure. The dry hair will become shiny again. The thin hair will become thick and the brittle hair will become strong again. And the premature white hair will stop growing until the right time for it to be on my head. My hair is on a protest for maltreatment, they say.

I am thinking that maybe the next time I am going to the hair salon which I must soon, I will tell the truth about my very bad habit. That way I could educate some hair salon worker who might become sensitive and perceptive enough in the future about this particular subject. It is said that people with this disease usually try to keep it a secret. They cover it with scarves, funky hair cuts, etc. But for the really extreme cases it can be. And when it can no longer be, some of my kind withdraws from the public. When it comes to that, I may just go bald and become the first bald female librarian. It might actually go well with a digital library.

My crowning glory for the moment to the rest of the public is not so glorious simply because of bad genes, as in tsk, tsk, tsk, maybe it is her genes to have thin hair. So the public will just have for the time being go on tut-tutting over my poor hair.

As for the cure maybe I am on the right track. Without knowing it, family and select friends have already made some sort of patrol as to where my hands are when I am with them. But then I am not with them 24/7. And then also some people look better bald.

Meanwhile I am fortifying myself. Or maybe I will give a seminar about this topic to all hair salon workers in exchange for a lifetime of free haircuts or until there are no more hair to bother with.

evrlibrarians.blogspot.com, GONE!

2009-08-26T17:38:00.000-07:00

We can no longer open our evrlibrarians blog. It has been used in a reprehensible way by we know exactly what kind of people. The last time I and the evrlibrarians blog administrator opened it was sometime after July 25, when were thinking about a possible blog entry. Two weeks ago when I made my “out of the blue” blog, I noticed on my dashboard that the other blog is no longer there. It was only this week that the administrator of the blog has time to check on what happened.

We hope everyone will remove their links and bookmarks to evrlibrarians.blogspot.com as soon as possible.

The lure of librarianship

2009-08-19T20:21:00.000-07:00

My brother, my number one fan, has a mathematics degree. He is at the moment a lowly cook, lowly meaning long and hard hours and small pay, in a Condé Nast type cruise ship but he feels he’s at the end of that particular road. He plans to enroll in library science when he comes home this September.

I have discouraged him.

I’m sure my brother would make a fine librarian. He is very intelligent and has become very good with people, what with his experience in open kitchens. Am I afraid my brother would make a better librarian than I? No, certainly not. I already know he is a better person than I am. So what’s with this feeling of sadness every time I think about him being a librarian?

Mostly I think it comes from my general experience as a “stamp-in, stamp-out” kind of librarian. I don’t know if the term is understood by everyone, I just made it up. Or it is an approximation of the term my brother’s Sociology professor in college thought about librarians. That all day long librarians do nothing else but stamp due dates and stamp returned on books. And it has been my life for the last five years of so. The bulk of my job is exactly that, that when I was interviewed for the supposed promotion, one panel interviewer seemed shocked at the kind of work I do. She said it is all mechanical and routine that it could be assigned to a student assistant. Unfortunately the reality of being a librarian in a government owned university is so very different from all the wonderful theories learned at library school. For student assistants in a university such as ours do not have any other compensation but the hourly rate they would earned at the end of the month. They are not even obliged to end their one semester contract if at the end of say two months they feel they can no longer fulfill their duties. So the librarians in our university do the actual circulation procedures, unlike in other universities.

One time when my brother visited me at work he saw exactly what I do. He laughed and reminded me of his professor’s sarcastic comment, that librarians can even stamp books with their eyes closed. My brother said “you may not be closing your eyes but you’re certainly not looking at what you are doing and yet you seemed to be doing it right”.

And this does not discourage him. He thinks that librarianship is still at its infant stage in the Philippines and he wants to be in the forefront of its development. He talks about what his mathematical abilities might bring to the library profession. He says he knows there are already dozens of kinds of library databases and other computer software dedicated to making library work and research easier and faster, but he knows too that he can improve upon them and maybe even come up with an original program of his own.

Maybe I do envy him for being able to easily shift between worlds. Because had I the ability I too would want a mathematics degree.

Whatever else I feel or think about his plans, I am utterly certain he would be an excellent addition to the rooster of librarians. And whatever type of library he will end up working for, he would definitely have to grow back the hair and lose the nose ring.

Out of the blue

2009-08-13T18:04:00.000-07:00

I’ve been in a funk.

I have been a member of Facebook since early last year. But since I am not really a very sociable person and the few people I know were not on FB, I sort of abandoned that pursuit. Then sometime this year I found out that friends and acquaintances are already members of that social networking. So I started adding friends one at a time, deliberating for a very long time if it is good to add this person and that former classmate.

Then the paranoid thing I did on FB.

I opened two new gmail accounts. I added one to my sister’s account. I made the other a friend of the first account. It made that second account two friendships away from me. This second account is used to check if from that separation my profile and my wall postings are visible to the general public. The wall postings are. Then I realized why do I care if my wall postings are accessible? I am blogging aren’t I? They are more a window into my mind and heart than these wall posts, so I sort of forgot about those accounts.

Then an unexpected thing happened, somebody requested to be added to my list of friends. I did not know that person but he’s a friend of an acquaintance so I accepted his request. It was also around this time that I remembered those new gmail accounts and lo and behold when I checked the second one, two requests for friendship. The slide into the funk began then because I actually know those persons who requested to be added to that made up persona while there was only ever one request for friendship to the real me and that from somebody I did not know.

This certainly made my cynicism rose to the surface. It was partly my fault of course because I also did not put my real name on that profile (or I change my real name after it received no requests for friendship) but it has at least more personality because of the wall posts but nary a request from really literally dozens of people I know in that social networking. It was I who made all the requests. While this made-up name with a beautiful photo and zero posts received requests from friends. So what’s the draw? Aside from the beautiful photograph attached to the made-up name there was nothing on that account, therefore to my book boring. Maybe those girls think that he’s lonely with only one friend ever on his list? Or maybe girls on the prowl for boyfriends and husbands are hoping to make this beautiful male one of their prospects?

I was actually repentant for a time, not using my real name on my real account, until I recalled all the one-sided friendships I’ve made all these years. You know the kind—a friend in need is a friend indeed or whatever that cliché says. And it was never I who was in need, rarely ever. And so I said to hell with friendship.

Ironically, it was the unknown person who requested to be added to my list of friends who took me out of the doldrums. Rather it was a post on his wall, directed to who knows whom but it made me laugh out loud. It made me realized there are people who have greater relationship problems than I ever had and that sentimental and romantic outpourings if not constructed with correct grammar become ridiculous.

Imagination running rampant

2009-07-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

The three weeks that my mother visited me with my four-year old nephew, nothing else was being shown at home but Cartoon Network. One of the shows that interest me was Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends. As the title implies it's a show about abandoned imaginary friends adopted by the Fosters. According to pop psychology children abandoned imaginary friends for real friendships, because I think based on the same pop psychology again that if a child has reached a certain age and he still have these imaginary friends, then there must be something wrong with him.

Or maybe I am just reading the wrong kinds of books or admiring the wrong kinds of authors and artists and being friends and mixing with the wrong people.

The Dominatrix, one of my favorite Philippine authors certainly has imaginary friends galore. She even has an imaginary husband--Conan O'Brien. But then she never really put too much weight on people who defined themselves normal.

In Saul Bellow's novella The Actual, the main character Harry Trellman imagines a lifetime of conversation with his high school girlfriend whom he reconnected with after several decades. I'm wondering what happened to the character's imagined world. Was he able to turn away from that world which he carefully constructed for so many years? Can the mind immediately turned itself off from that? Does the reality of his marriage and love to Amy able to stand up to this other reality?--"Half a century of feeling is invested in her, of fantasy, speculation, and absorption, of imaginary conversation.”

I do like to read a good love story every now and then. But I am rather of Kurt Vonnegut's school of thought about love story in that: "I try to keep deep love out of my stories, because once that particular subject comes up, it is almost impossible to talk about anything else. Readers don't want to hear about anything else. They go gaga over love. If a lover in a story wins his love, that's the end of the tale, even if World War III is about to begin, and the sky is black with flying saucer."

Alejandro Sanz, a spanish composer and singer said to a girl, who may or may not be his real girlfriend: Me paso el día planeando (I spend the day planning) Nuestro encuentro imaginario (Our imaginary encounter). So why would he say our imaginary encounter if she is already his girlfriend who's just on a really very long vacation? Shouldn't he say instead I'm imagining our re-union? Or maybe she's a former girlfriend whom he has no hope of ever reuniting with so he imagines maybe he'll bump into her in the mall...

And some Hollywood artists do admit to having imaginary boyfriends and such. And imagined love after all is a Hollywood B movie stock for obsession themed films. Usually people get hurt in these kinds of imaginations but who cares really if it is his reality?

Vladimir Nabokov said about reality: "Your use of the word "reality" perplexes me. To be sure, there is an average reality, perceived by all of us, but that is not true reality: it is only the reality of general ideas, conventional forms of humdrummery, current editorials. Now if you mean by "old reality" the so-called "realism" of old novels, the easy platitudes of Balzac or Somerset Maugham or D.H. Lawrence--to take some especially depressing examples--then you are right in suggesting that the reality faked by a mediocre performer is boring, and that imaginary worlds acquire by contrast a dreamy and unreal aspect. Paradoxically, the only real, authentic worlds are, of course, those that seemed unusual. When my fancies will have been imitated, they, too will enter the common domain of average reality, which will be false, too, but within a new context which we cannot yet guess. Average reality begins to rot and stink as soon as the act of individual creation ceases to animate a subjectively perceived texture."

This is why I read because my own imagination fails me sometimes, so I borrow or enter into the imagined worlds of others. Authors who I admit have more vivid and rich imagination than I have or if not because they are better able to put these rampant imaginations into words.

"Efforts at self knowledge"

2009-07-08T20:40:00.000-07:00

I've just finished reading Billions and Billions: Thoughts on Life and Death at the Brink of the Millennium by Carl Sagan. It is quite an interdisciplinary book or transdisciplinary as the epilogue says. I am reminded why I read and try to take interests in all subjects, even if some of them are beyond my immediate grasp.

The book reminded me of a conversation overheard a few weeks back. Two girls were complaining about the heat. One girl wondered if there are planets that are not as hot as the Earth. She'd rather live there. Maybe she'll go to Mars or Pluto. The other girl as clueless as the first said, Pluto is a planet? Where is that? (Maybe all this was said in jest but that's another matter and another subject altogether.)

This conversation also reminded me of the why of the service courses in college. But I wonder if everyone understands the reason for these service courses because most often than not, the complaints about them are how they could be useful to one's life or one's professional undertaking. It's "what do I do with an algebra or biology subject for when my course is English?"

These subjects are taught in high school and required in college so that when we complain about the humidity and heat of the Earth we won't want to relocate to Mars or to Pluto. Or that if we are the nursing student who complains about Algebra (another overheard conversation) we won’t kill our patient when we are already a full-pledged nurse because we can differentiate a milliliter versus a fluid oz. of drugs, maybe we won’t know its exact conversion but we would know what to do.

The world has changed from our parents’ days when we are very good just at either Maths or English. Now the world requires us to have at least a basic understanding but more than rudimentary knowledge of every possible subject in the world.

Smart Asterisk

2009-07-02T22:21:00.001-07:00

During the orientation, there were two classes I've handled all by myself that reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's drawing of an asshole, in the Breakfast of Champions, which looked so much like a giant asterisk.

I don't know why the asshole has become an analogy for a person's generosity or selfishness but there it is, the behavior of these two groups of students has brought to mind an asshole.

One group is a tight asshole, unable to produce anything, while the other group is a smart asshole giving but one has to figure out what it is that is given.

It's a sad fact that majority of students who come from public high schools have not had any library experience, so to make the orientation about the card catalog a little lively, we usually asked the students what authors and titles of books they know. Most groups give the standard authors they've encountered in high school: Shakespeare and Rizal and Harry Potter and Twilight.

Now when I was giving the orientation to this one group, not a squeak came out. I had to prod them and challenge them and nothing. Of course there was a student who gave an answer which he obviously got from his syllabus because it was the name of a freshmen psychology book author so I had to discount that answer. I wanted an author that they know, not an author that they know of, because surely Shakespeare and Rizal and other authors have been discussed and whose works (some of their works anyway) were read or discussed in high school.

The other group was a delight because no standard answers or authors were given. One student answered Charles Dickens, it was unexpected so praises were given (and it became the signal for the smart assess too.) I told the group that some Dickens are in the library. They'll just have to learn how to use the card catalog to find him and his works. Encouraged one student said Bob Hope, taken by surprise this time, I said I was not sure if the library has any Bob Hope but if they really are interested in him, they could just check the card catalog later.

Guffaws and catcalls and all sorts of noise. I would have been insulted but everyone had their eyes on one classmate.

"Me: well what's so funny about your classmate?"

"Them: his name is Bob Hope."

"Me: so you're calling him Bob Hope because he is funny? That's good! "

"Them: (Guffaws again) no, his name is Bob Pag-asa and we call him Bob Hope, you know hope equals pag-asa."

"Me: oh I thought you're all calling him Bob Hope because he is funny."

"Them: he is funny but his name is still Bob Pag-asa."

So there I was trying to calm the class down and at the same time trying to explain who Bob Hope was and trying to move the orientation along despite the occassional snickers.

What's in the broth?

2009-06-30T17:21:00.000-07:00

For the last three weeks, I have been trying to read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. It is an interesting read but I always seem to find myself drifting, contemplating. So in effect I'm barely one-fourth of the book.

As far as I've been able to read in the book, its main theme is the survival of the gene. Human beings are just but survival machines for the gene. Almost always it is the gene that dictates our action in its effort to preserve itself. While other survival machines may have managed to rebel against the designs of the selfish gene, the gene somehow always manifest itself in other ways.

Take for example people like me who have not reproduced any offspring, so my gene will not get passed on, but the gene recognizes (?) that it has kins, so in its effort to replicate itself, it will take care of its kin. Its effort to maximize itself does not necessary mean its passing on the "good gene", it just means that it is able pass on the gene that makes a prefect copy itself.

Had I read this book two years ago when I first took interest in it, I would not have put much thought to this premise or thesis. Two years ago, I was contorting myself to avoid any sort of responsibility for my nieces and nephews.

But now, I am taking care of a nephew because somehow his mother is not psychologically or emotionally able to take care of him or so I let myself believe. But in all probability it is the selfish gene that is dictating this odd behavior.

Or maybe not so odd, I have after all been taking care, in one or other ways, of my younger siblings since they were in grade school then in high school and even now when they are all grown-up themselves.

Dictates of society and humane behavior and religious beliefs probably have nothing to do with why people take care of its own; it's the gene pure and simple.

How do you want to be addressed, Ate.

2009-06-29T21:08:00.001-07:00

Filipino customs and traditions dictate that we address anyone older than us, people we deemed to have high social status, strangers and family with terms of respect. We call members of our family with whatever is deemed appropriate, taking into account rank in the family, dialect used inside the family, etc.

In a more formal setting I call strangers Ma'am, Miss and Sir. I never call anyone Ate unless invited to do so in as much as I never want to be called ate because it is an intimate term to me, a term that signify friendship and trust.

In our university, the people handling the dormitories are encouraging the students to call them ate's and kuya's. It's appropriate because they are after all dealing with student security and comfort.

However, the custom has spread out to other offices. Older clerks (of retirable age), professors and phd's unknown to some students are called ate's and kuya's. Maybe they don't mind. But I do because it always evokes in me a feeling of intimacy which neither I wish nor have with any students. Being called ate makes me feel like lecturing and hectoring students about proper behavior which if I do would just get me another nasty title, that of an interfering librarian.

There are some instructors who encouraged their students to call them by their first names. I rather prefer this kind of practice; it is more egalitarian, more in tune with a university setting, supposedly liberal. Maybe their is a contradiction here somewhere, but my point is the intimacy of the term. It makes the hairs on my nape rise, every time.

Do we have to...?

2009-06-28T22:16:00.000-07:00

My mother is reading again. After so very long she's picked up a book again. The last time I saw her read was when I was a teenager. Now I could already have a teenager of my own or been a teenager twice over.

The first books she's read is The Great Gatsby. And what did she do the moment she finished reading the book was discuss it and I have completely forgotten the details of the book so I was in panic but then I did not have to because all she wanted was to be listened to. Although her discussion bored the hell out of me first then annoyed me later, I am still thankful that she's reading again.

Wretched daughter that I am what bored me was her discussion about love. Nothing to get my hackles rising but make the idea or concept of erotic or romantic love an excuse or the reason for everything evil or good in the world. Or having that kind of love the only reason why human beings are alive and life as it is is worth living for. What a lot of crap!

But still whatever make her read again and whatever make her believe in her intellectual abilities again. If I have to read all the romantic nonsense in the world I'd do it just so I could keep my mother reading again.

Selling the Library 2

2009-06-24T20:48:00.000-07:00

It's been four days of almost non-stop library orientation. English instructors have alloted an hour of their classes for library orientation.

My part of the one-hour orientation is usually to talk about the Circulation unit and its resources and the Borrowers Card. But this week I've changed my tactics somehow. I've emphasize the importance of library and its resources to the students' life than on how to acquire and how to use the borrowers card.

And I am hoping that they have actually listened to me talk on and on about how they could actually learn more from the library than from their instructors. It's not that I was putting the instructors down but that an instructor's time is limited in a classroom setting.

I am not tired, just very tense. You have to be very careful regarding the information you try to impart.

Selling the Library

2009-06-07T21:14:00.000-07:00

The CHED memo regarding the postponement of the start of classes came late so the university has started on its annual freshmen orientation. The usual university wide general orientation was changed this last two years to college wide orientation. Instead of just the university librarian to attend and speak at the university orientation, all of us, librarians now have a responsibility to speak at the different colleges to introduce the freshmen to the library services. Aside from this college wide orientation we also conduct a one-hour orientation arranged by the freshmen English instructors.

This has always been one of the ways on how we sell the library but I feel that it is not enough. During English class orientation I always emphasize the role of the library as support for their class instruction. That classroom instruction is just but a small percentage of the bulk of a particular subject or knowledge. And instructors can’t be expected to discuss everything in a semester and that students owe it to themselves to research and read on their own to supplement classroom instruction.

We find ways to attract students to library. We modify personal attitudes and change our demeanor to be more welcoming and approachable but at the end of the day, however proactive librarians are, whatever librarians do to sell the library and its services, the library is just but a passive function and service. It’s not like we can put sanctions to the students for not using the library resources. But even then, sanctions are still ineffective if students do not value their education. Penalties have not stopped students from skipping classes and/or failing exams or entire subjects.

Feel free to air your thoughts if you disagree with my conclusion.

My cave dwelling

2009-06-02T00:35:00.000-07:00

I and three others live in a basement of a government housing. Each one of us occupies only a single room but the whole place is bigger compared to the rooms upstairs because we have our own common sala and kitchen and individual cr/br.

The problem with our accommodations is that every now and then creepy crawlies visit us. There have been several times snakes were killed in our cave and the latest was last night. I did not sleep the whole night watching the snake, afraid where it might crawl and hide next; however come daylight I lost sight of the brownish/reddish snake.

So tonight it would be the 'lantay' in the sala for me. I would not dare sleep in my room again until that snake is killed or removed from my room.

Censoring myself

2009-05-30T05:41:00.000-07:00

I've been composing about certain topics these last two weeks but did not post them in the end because once again training and inclination forbid me to.

I've been trained by my parents and paternal grandparents to step back and observe before making any comments or decisions about things. And if silence is better for everyone involved then silence should be the proper option. Inclination to be cool and sometimes even cold about things on the other hand is something from my maternal side.

So there it is, after I wrote about something I just keep it to myself for fear (?) of offending more people than I already offend in the normal course of day. Life as it is is already very difficult without me satirizing people in a very public blog. I know I have very few reader, but who knows who might stumble into this blog one of these days.

What does not kill me... etc.

Talk about mastering the alphabet

2009-05-24T17:54:00.000-07:00

I’ve finally finished reading Nausea by Albert Camus and it is suppose to be the diary of a M. Roquentin. The setting of the supposed diary is 1920’s France. In one of his entries, he wrote about an acquaintance the Self-Taught Man who he noticed reads books according to how the books are arranged on the shelves, alphabetically by the authors’ family name. The Self-Taught Man was already going through the "L" when this was noticed by the diarist.

It made me review my history of classification and cataloging. I know for certain that LC and DDC were developed in the 19^th century but can’t be sure of the years. I know too that before standard classification systems were developed there were many ways of shelving, storing and stacking library books, one of which is arranging the books alphabetically by author. Somehow an account of a library setting from the perspective of a library user rather than a formal historian is more appealing and oddly more believable.

But in my daily library functions, I can't say I've really mastered the alphabet. We are using the LC classification system and when arranging book cards or arranging books on the shelves I can't automatically say that PG comes first before PJ. I always seem to go back to basics and think G, H, I, J...

Dashed dreams of public librarianship

2009-05-19T17:39:00.000-07:00

While still in library school, a family friend came to visit me in Cebu to borrow my notes on library science. He was appointed by their town mayor as municipal librarian with a salary that I, even now is not earning. He stayed with us for a few days because he also wanted some instructions especially on indexing which at that moment was mostly what he was trying to do in his library. I told him to enroll in an MS degree in library science so he could have the post permanently. He was not interested, he felt too old at 36 to get another degree, and he already had two besides. He said instead that he'll hold the fort for me until I'm able to take over and he'll be just as happy as my assistant. He died of heart attack (may he--André rest in peace) even before I graduated.

A classmate in the review for the board, who heard of the post from her sister who married somebody from that place, applied for the post but she never heard anything from the town officials. The post died with him I suppose. Or until such time as the town officials become politically motivated to resurrect the position which by law should be available.

I still had two years to finish library school when I first heard of that post and I somehow built a dream of public librarianship based upon the ideal public librarianship learned in library school. Even now I still dream of that dream--the things I could do given the right support. It is such a culturally diverse and resource-rich place, but at the rate public librarianship is going in the Philippines, there might never be a public library in that municipality.

The bubble bursts

2009-05-14T18:25:00.002-07:00

I've only just found out during the last two years that when you are applying for a job, certain SOP's are to be followed. There is generally an interview process, a standardized IQ or psychological exams, and an imperative skills test. It was in my management class in graduate school that I learned about this. I cringed when I first heard of this because in all the jobs I applied for I never went through a skills test or an IQ or psychological exam. I've only ever been employed as a professional librarian in two institutions and in both cases I was only given an interview. On my first job, it was only the chief librarian who interviewed me and on my second job interview (my current job) I faced a panel of interviewers who if I remember correctly had not asked any difficult questions. Although I did apply for another two posts during my first job, I only ever went through an interview process.

In the past couple of years I have applied for two different jobs because I thought I would relocate. In one institution, the formal interview and the skills test were scrapped because the librarian knew my academic performance personally, but had I completed the whole list of human resources requirements, I would have taken a standardized IQ exam just to comply with requirements so the librarian said. In another job I applied for though not a librarian post I took a two-hour grammar and composition skills test, waited a week for a call to interview if you pass that exams and managed to go through a grueling 20-minute interview for each of the five individual interviewers and wait another week for the interview results. It was the first time I ever experienced that kind of procedure and it was nerve-racking. I realized then that the process I was going through was what my management professor was talking about. Even if I did not get the job I want to believe I went through with flying colors because the last time I heard from them after that difficult interview was that they have already contacted my reference persons and that I should wait for their call within the next three days. I don’t know if they did call but it was also during that week that my phone went dead. Or maybe I flunked that interview.

At the moment three of us in the library had finished with two of the three processes or procedures to a new job. There is supposed to be a promotion for one of us. We had the panel interview three weeks ago. The skills test—classification and cataloging and indexing were administered by one of the senior librarians yesterday. Within the next week or so we will take an IQ or a psychological test to be administered by human resources. Everyone in the library is surprised by this process because not one of them it seems has undergone the whole standard procedure but it seems human resources department is cleaning its act as per civil service hiring regulations. I have no big hopes for this. I got very low scores for my academic qualifications being a non-MSLS or its equivalent degree holder. But it is nice, painful but it lets you grow, to be once in a while shaken out of your complacency and taken out of your comfort zone.

Premium Services

2009-05-11T20:23:00.000-07:00

Republic Act No. 9485--AN ACT TO IMPROVE EFFICIENCY IN THE DELIVERY OF GOVERNMENT SERVICE TO THE PUBLIC BY REDUCING BUREAUCRATIC RED TAPE, PREVENTING GRAFT AND CORRUPTION, AND PROVIDING PENALTIES THEREFORE. This is also known as the Anti-Red Tape Law.

One of the provisions of the law is: "to set up their respective service standards to be known as the Citizen's Charter in the form of information billboards which should be posted at the main entrance of offices or at the most conspicuous place, and in the form of published materials written either in English, Filipino, or in the local dialect, that detail: (a) The procedure to obtain a particular service; (b) The person/s responsible for each step; (c) The maximum time to conclude the process; (d) The document/s to be presented by the customer, if necessary; (e) The amount of fees, if necessary; and (f) The procedure for filing complaints."

The thing was, before the seminar-workshop, we were already told to prepare and make our own Citizen's Charter, present it during the workshop and expect it to be reviewed by the whole seminar-workshop attendees. While I fully appreciate their efforts to edit my presentation grammar-wise, it was weird and somewhat demeaning to be questioned about the necessity of your own procedures. As if you do not know what you are talking about or that you've been doing the wrong things all these times. I understand where they're coming from of course, nevertheless the feelings of inefficiency the nitpicking has brought on persisted. They’ve trimmed and snipped and compressed as many office procedures as allowed by the respective person in-charge. It was a good thing my boss attended the workshop with me because she had been able to defend our procedures and our Charter calmly.

The concern is that the government is not giving premium services to the public hence this law which would guide the citizens of the republic; However, changing an accepted standard of borrowing procedure or any office procedure for that matter just because an office wanted to present an efficient looking Citizen’s Charter and a seemingly short and red tape free service is not only undermining the whole service itself but its people as well. An efficient looking, seemingly red tape free Citizen’s Charter yet not a real and true to form procedural Citizen’s Charter is to my mind just as criminal as bureaucratic red tape. But since presenting a long Citizen’s Charter is viewed as another bureaucratic red tape (the citizens shouldn’t spend more time than necessary reading anything that might tax their minds) you are left to choose between the lesser evil. Any kind of Citizen’s Charter besides the real step by step, procedural one could land you in a hot seat because if the service provided is not what is stated in the Citizen’s Charter, the citizen concern could sue the office for red tape.

Book Acquisitions and the Bangko Sentral

2009-05-07T00:41:00.000-07:00

This is how I understand our long-time secretary’s explanations of a book acquisitions practice abandoned long before I was employed here.

Our library used to purchase books directly from foreign publishers and jobbers but stopped the practice sometime in the 1990's. The reason was about a Central Bank Circular regarding the bringing in or out of the country beyond a certain amount of money. Every time we pay for the books ordered in the UK or the US that amounts to more than what is expressed in that Central Bank Circular, which was always, we asked permission from the Central Bank for such transaction. The nearest Central Bank Offices from Leyte is Cebu, if you limit your purchases to four times a year that’s also a four-time trip to the Central Bank.

There was also the added burden of keeping up with the fluctuating peso-dollar exchange rate. Between the time a specific amount is requested for the ordered books and the time the money for a bank draft is released by the accounting department to the time we go to the bank, the exchange rate has changed a hundred times already. Your peso may become lesser than or bigger than your dollar account. If you find yourself with a lesser peso value, you go back to accounting to request for additional funds again. So you hope that your peso on hand is bigger than your dollar account when exchange is done. It came to a point where the banks refused to sell or change our Philippine peso with dollars anymore. The banks’ reason was that when they make the payments to the foreign publishers; the constant exchange fluctuations had them saddled with paying for the difference if their client's bank draft is smaller than the foreign account.

I suppose big libraries can resort to this if the current problems of book importation are not resolved. For us who recently have been buying mostly reprints because of budgetary constraints, this would not be feasible. All the intricate business transactions to be handled and dealt with regarding a direct importation are just but added burdens to a cash strapped library—budgets if not slashed are maintained at a certain amount without regard for the increasing value of books and government employed librarians had to justify every title acquired as essential and must have a concerned faculty’s endorsement to say the least—burdens that are lessened by jobbers and distributors.

Central Bank Circulars that might be of help.

House of 2½ Monk, CSI, New York

2009-05-04T22:02:00.000-07:00

I rarely watched Philippine TV shows and sitcoms. I watched news; I also watched some talk shows from the ANC. When my siblings start to talk about entertainment gossip, one of my nieces would say that they need to make a sort of backgrounder because a foreigner is listening. Most of those who came into the Philippine entertainment scene in the last 10 years are unknown to me.

The TV shows I watched are the kind that validates my slightly abnormal psychology. I watch House. In one of "House" episodes, he said something about his not wearing a lab coat has nothing to do with how he diagnosed diseases. It is presumptuous of me to even compare my case to "his" but I hate the uniforms the government prescribed for us. Or in our case what our own uniform committee has chosen as uniform. They seem to always choose cloths mostly made from wool or synthetic fibers. They are hot and uncomfortable to wear. They are the kind of cloth meant to be worn in an air-conditioned room with nothing to do but file papers, write, type, the kind of work that does not make you sweat. They are not meant to be worn if one is suppose to carry and shelve heavy books or do housekeeping sometime in the day. Other people may equate uniforms with efficiency and effectiveness but in my case, it does not.

Another show I watched is CSI. I like gore and mayhem. I also like to guess who the culprit is. Last week's episode of CSI: New York features the New York City Public Library as the scene of the crime committed. A rare book "The Tibetan Book of the Dead" was treated with Thallium which causes the death first of the Librarian of the rare book section. The death of course was murder or rather euthanasia according to her husband who administered the poison through that book. He made other deaths occur to make his claim valid—that the librarian job was hazardous—so he could collect the insurance. He would have represented the other victims in a legal suit against the library and therefore collecting another fee, a settlement fee or whatever. I never thought a librarian's job could be exciting in that way. Imagine your library being the scene of a crime and if you're not the victim, you could be one of the suspects. I always thought the most exciting thing that could happen in a library was if an angry client would go at you with a heavy book or skewer you with an umbrella. Or a book would suddenly turn into a monster ala Harry Potter episode and would attack the librarian.

Last evening’s episode of Two and a Half Men (a rerun of season 3, episode 12 I suppose) had Alan in a grip of panic inside a bookstore. He has always wanted to read it seems, but never had the time to do so and he is in a panic because to him there is no more time to read the classics, biography, geography, etc. Charlie, his brother told him he could read while he is using the comfort room and Alan replied there are not enough bowel movements in his lifetime to read all the best books. One’s bowel movements, for those who read while pooping or one's lifetime may never be enough to read all the good and not-so-good-but-entertaining-all-the-same books but one could try. If we spent our time just thinking and planning about reading then we may even never get to read even one good book. Anyone can start reading at any age. Some started while they were still young but that does not automatically mean they are the best reader. There is no age limit to reading just as there is no age limit to learning.

And Monk. Monk is another TV character of course. He is the most or rather he has the most abnormal psychology and he makes me feel the most normal person in the world.

Movies, uncut

2009-05-03T22:51:00.000-07:00

Our province does not have any movie theaters. I am only able to see movies when I go to Cebu, that is if the films showing are to my liking. If there is a movie I really like, I resort to buying a pirated copy; I shouldn't even mention my culpability in the piracy industry but heck... However, since I discovered a channel on cable that shows new movies I've stopped buying them altogether. At first I thought they were old movies or movies I missed altogether, even their thrillers on TV, but then I would read a review of it on Jessica Zafra's blog and realize otherwise.

The first of these movies was Russel Crowe and Christian Bale's movie 3:10 to Yuma. When I saw it, I was flabbergasted; however did I miss any Russel Crowe movie, I researched it the next day and found out that it will be shown in Philippine theaters in a month's time. The next was Christian Bale's The Dark Knight which I already knew as new so there was just the thrill of knowing that I've seen it even before the rest of the Philippines do. Slumdog Millionaire is another one. I've seen it before the Academy Awards in February and it was shown here just this April. The latest of these movies is Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, I saw it a long time before it was shown in Philippine cinemas, so long ago that when Miss Zafra blogged about it a few weeks back my reaction was--huh, it's a new movie?

On April 30 the X-Men Origins: Wolverine was supposed to be the opening day of the movie but I have already seen it on cable on May 1. I don't know where our local cable operator gets their copies of these new movies but I am not complaining. Not even if the Wolverine who was thrown into the air by Sabertooth was just a computer animation or that when Deadpool landed on his feet some strings were still attached to his back, because so far this was the only one yet to be polished. A thought though, what if some authority would decide to investigate this transgression? Nah!

Own the Knowledge, Buy the Book--Validated

2009-05-03T20:22:00.000-07:00

The anecdote is second hand but I want to believe it for my validation and for shelving of my cynicism even for a little while.

I have always been against the faculty competing with the students with the few library resources we have but so far been unable to get other people to see my side. If I get to make people agree with me, it is always with reservations. They have their own views regarding faculty access to these resources.

Now I have authority to validate my stand. Towards the end of March 2009, CHED personnel came to our library to check on the books they have donated to the Engineering program of the university. As they were browsing the books they had donated to us, they noticed some missing titles and asked the librarian who accompanied them on their inspection tour where the books are, one faculty who was also with the group answered that the books are with them, the CHED authority supposedly said "Those books are not meant for you. They are for the students; you the faculty should buy your own references".

I am aware of the limitations of my principles regarding faculty access of library resources of course. Limitations with regards to resources that are very expensive or difficult to acquire, but for the most basic resources that are very much available in the local bookstores and inexpensive besides, it is beyond the pale if faculty would still have to compete with the students for these.

Starter Book on Politics

2009-04-16T19:42:00.001-07:00

Not just your everyday political democracy but royalty descended from divinity.

This started as a thought on the first book I ever purchased then went on to the first book officially owned all by my bratty self, without share of bragging rights with my older siblings.

It was a book entitled "Ang Masasayang Bata = The Happy Children", a requirement book in grade 1. The book was about happy children who are virtuous or about virtuous children who are happy. It was big and every page was illustrated with a well-fed, smiling boy and a pink, happy looking girl overlooked either by a proud parent or an angelic angel every page of their virtuous life. At the top of each page a virtue: ang masasayang bata ay matulungin. In the middle, the illustrations: of the boy helping the girl cross the street with the ever present angel at their backs. At the bottom the translation: happy children are helpful.

Then I have an epiphany, the images of the angel, parents and children were the images of the "divine Marcoses", back when they were at the height of their delusions of grandeur. When they make believe they were descended from the gods and the Filipinos were their subjects. Anyone who has read Imelda's books would know what I'm talking about. That "royal family portrait" in one of her books was all over my bilingual first book. Of course no one in my hometown ever saw that portrait until after they were kicked out of Malacañang and the treasures in it were revealed to the public for the first time. But I'm pretty certain everyone saw the ubiquitous first couple portrait so I wonder now if my parents and teachers saw the similarities of the book illustrations to the Marcoses and what did they think when it occurred to them that the father in the book looked a lot like their president or prime minister or whatever Marcos called himself during his dictatorship. Whatever they thought they would have kept quite unless it was a practice in ass licking kind of thoughts.

If they could have a great painting of their divinity, why not make a book about it too and feed it to the innocents. Start them young on the proper reverence for divinity and royalty. The book is somewhere at home in my province. The details of the Marcoses's delusions of grandeur are rarely mentioned in Philippine history books and it should be because it was part and parcel of that whole era.

Secrets of a trim and slender librarian

2009-04-14T21:57:00.000-07:00

In an ideal setting, a librarian do not have to mop her floor; never dust her bookshelves; hardly ever lift, carry and shelve books; rarely run around searching for the suddenly invisible book; but since most libraries have few staff, a librarian does all that and so much more besides being the accomplished and unflappable librarian. The process of being accomplished alone burns more calories than anything else.

So a brisk walk at high noon (i swear i see people do this) is not necessary, nor a badminton match in the middle of a blistering afternoon. Depriving oneself of the much needed fats, protein and carbohydrates, etc. is also out of the question.

All in all, librarians have toned muscles and neurons.

Great Moment As A Librarian

2009-04-13T22:23:00.000-07:00

On my second year here in my current place of work, I was given the extra responsibility of manning the computer room as per client request or use. My main responsibility was in the technical section. We only had two computers then and they were not connected to the internet. The references the students could get from it were from two encyclopedias, some cds from FAO, and the TEEAL (The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library).

Some students who requested the service do not know how to use the computer so it was up to me to give them a little instruction or to actually do the research myself but still teach them the use of the computer at the same time. A student one day requested the use of the Britannica. He knows how to use it already he said, so I left him alone and did my own exploring of the encyclopedia. After a little while he requested to have his research printed.

The next day, the same thing happened. Then the next day. Confused, I asked him why he is researching the same topic and printing them for the third time. It turned out he was doing research for his classmates who still did not know how to use the computer. Really annoyed I pointed out to him that one of the services offered was a tutorial and besides his attitude is not helping his classmates at all, it was in fact making them get stuck in their ignorance of the use of the computer. Instead of researching for his classmates he might as well teach them how to operate a computer. I told him that if he had no legitimate requests, he can't use the computers anymore. After a few days, the same student came back, with two classmates in tow. So I ended up teaching one and him the other, of the basic use of the computer. This went on for several days, with him bringing along two friends, one for me to teach the other for him. Suddenly it stopped, he must by then discovered he had ten hours free internet use at the university cafe.

He was freshman when this happened. Then I was transferred to the circulation unit and I noticed him as a regular library goer and borrower. He absolutely availed of all the regular services that could be had. Including the not regular ones like asking us if some marine biology books have been purchased recently but yet to be brought out to the circulation unit. And to request first chance at them.

Not only did he borrow reference books for his major, he was also reading literature. He discovered one Vonnegut in the literature section. Interested he checked the card catalog but found nothing else. It was a good thing he was the way he was because he asked if there were other Vonneguts in the library. Two of our Vonneguts are classified under fiction. Unfortunately some of them are not represented in the card catalog, especially the older ones. When he was done reading the last Vonnegut in our library and if I remember right it was Dead Eyed Dick, he voiced his sadness over our lack of good books. I disagreed with him of course, I gave him names of authors he might enjoy reading, he said he'll check them out. When he said there were no more good books, he probably also meant at that time, of our loss of the third book of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, our having not acquired the latest Harry Potter book. Whatever he meant, I offered him my own Vonneguts, my own copy of the Return of the King and the latest HP book which actually was my nephew's.

Then years passed. He was the same pushy kid and I was the same stressed librarian but we had an easy and rare librarian and library client relationship. All too quickly he was processing his graduation clearance and I reminded him our first encounter and had a quiet laugh over it.

On the day of the graduation ceremony, we at the library were listening to the radio broadcast of commencement exercise as always, and I was surprised to hear he graduated Magna cum laude. It was a proud moment for me, realizing I have helped him with his pursuit of knowledge even just a little.

I still try to recommend books and authors to a few students borrowing literature, but most of them just goggled at me. It's also sad to be looked at like the ignorant librarian recommending newer edition of the zoology book when the instructor specifically say this edition in his syllabus. It's my nature to kibitz and my profession to recommend books and authors so I'll just have to deal with the odd looks--like I lost my mind--some students are giving me when I do this.

Trash literature?

2009-04-13T02:00:00.001-07:00

There was a period in my life where my father was absolutely livid and frustrated about my choice of "trash" reading materials, he meant the romance novels/love stories of course. I was in my teens and he was probably afraid of what I might learn from those explicit romance novels. My explanation to him was that most everything is romantic novels. Some are just disguised as a spy novel or a horror story but they are basically about a search for love or redemption.

But one very good thing came out of it. It made me want to read Shakespeare again. Even the worst of these trashy novels mentioned Shakespeare. I've read his poems and sonnets before the trashy period but not his plays. So when I abandoned the romance novels to read Shakespeare's plays, I found out I was correct about the main theme of the world's literature, but the difference lies in how great literature made you think. Or rather how your brain works. With romance novels, one understands the sentiment, empathize or sympathize but one does not delve deeper either into the psyche or into the human heart. They do not give one more complex than one already have nor they do ease one's angst. One just cruise along when one is reading these paperback romance novels, they do not require one to think more than one should.

I still read novels but I've since learned to choose only the better kind. The ones that make one questions one's existence. The ones that paradoxically eases some of my mental burns.

My father said during this period "some novels pretend to be high brow but in the end, they do not bear deeper examination. They made reference to all sorts of theory and schools of thought, but why not read these theories and schools of thought yourself?" And this was what my father wanted me to understand. He said, "you may be enjoying that book right now but will you still enjoy that plot when you're older, more mature, have seen much of the world?" He wondered why I came to that point when I've actually had a very good start with my reading habit. My answer so far though not very convincing even to myself, is that there was a dearth of good reading materials in my hometown.

The romance novels I've been reading may have been labeled as trash by my father and probably by some people, but to others, these are all they can afford to read, literally and figuratively. It is so much better than without any interests, skills, hobbies or creative habits at all.

Bookmarks

2009-04-01T21:40:00.000-07:00

I think I have a unique collection of bookmarks. I used to buy them, but then I found out I could collect them another way. In library books, in the books of a second hand bookshops, in books donated to our library there bound to be bookmarks left there by the last reader or the former owner of the book.

I appropriate them for myself. But not all. I only choose those I think are creative or unique. I don't filch those that have Bible quotes, I'll just as well read the Bible. And I don't take those bookmarks that have syrupy sweet and trite quotes on them.

The most cherished "find" so far are a brown leather one that used to have but since faded, a gold logo of Reader's Digest, the head of Pegasus. A thin cartoon one that says "Stacey's Professional Bookstore", I love it because it has the self-portrait of Da Vinci on it. Another one is a 1/4-sheet of bond paper with a love letter or maybe it is a love poem written on it, I don't know if it is original, but it is sweet.

I have discovered some things inserted in a book that may not have meant to be a bookmark but it gives you a window to the life of the former owner or reader of the book. So far there was that love letter, then a fancy restaurant's meal coupon, a Canadian train ticket, a brochure to a spa in New York and a discount coupon for a tomato sauce.

There is quite a number of collected bookmarks already, someday I'm going to gather all of them and count them. I like doing this not because it satisfies my criminal mind but because they are somewhat similar to books, they've touched another life. They may have been left there unintentionally but they're in all sense abandoned and I am rescuing them.

The next time I found another one, I'm going record their history, which book I found it from, when I found it, such things. I am also going to record my thoughts and speculations about their former owners.

There is cause for celebration...sometimes

2009-03-31T22:39:00.000-07:00

I've stumbled upon a paperback of Henry Adams's Mont St. Michel and Chartres in the Booksale bin priced at a lowly P15.00. It is my second copy of the book but it saddened me to see it there in the "below P35.00 bin" probably written off by the people at the second hand book shop as unknown, so I bought it.

My first copy of the book is from my mother. She won it from some contest on the radio program the Voice of America. It was from that book that I've discovered Henry Adams so that when I discovered his autobiography work at the USC library, I read it like a supposedly long lost niece should read about a long lost uncle. And it was exactly how I read his autobiography book, as his niece, still his niece, because when you read his book Mont St Michel and Chartres, he invited you to pretend to be his niece or nephew accompanying him in his tour of the Gothic churches of France. The copy I bought recently do not have accompanying photos in them unlike my old copy which had black and white pictures of the exterior and interior of both churches. I have since saw several colored pictures of these churches but when I read the book, I wished that the reference photos were colored so I could not just understand but would actually see what he meant when he described the beauty of the large rose stained glass windows of Chartres.

And if you are the kind of niece or nephew who happened to love architecture or if not, a devotee of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the book is an absolute revelation. It made you love ancient architecture if you're not an admirer of its grandeur yet and it made you revere the Blessed Virgin Mary more if you've already loved her and if not yet the book made you understand to say the least the devotion of Her followers.

The education of Juana Taspukan

2009-03-25T01:16:00.000-07:00

This phrase "the education of" has been used and abused by many, including me obviously, but as far as I am concerned the original of this came from Henry Adams’s The Education of Henry Adams.

This book is rated as the number one non-fiction work of the 20th century. It is autobiographical. Henry Adams is the grandson of the 3rd president of the USA John Quincy Adams. Being a progeny of the elite, he was given a classical education. Classical education in the 19th century means Latin, history, the arts and literature. As he became mature he realized he was not equipped to deal with the technological and scientific advancement that had happened in his lifetime.

The book may have been written a century ago, but its main theme resonates in the present Philippine education system. What we learned at school is not viable in real life. At school, we are trained to be pen pushers when the work in the real world that awaits us need us to wield a wrench, climb ladders and work under the heat of the sun, crawl under things, and be dirty. Industrial revolution happened more than two centuries ago but we still have not caught up.

Or perhaps, we have actually caught up with the technological advancement of the world, only that we are in self-denial. We wanted to believe we all have potential to achieve greater things. We are ashamed to be seen enrolling in a non-BS degree because it might be misconstrued as sign of low intellect. Our parents worked themselves to death and amassed toxic debts just to send us to acquire a degree because they too do not want to be seen as a failure. Then too, if we are lucky enough to enroll in college, sometimes we do not take the courses that are suitable for our talents and capacities. We study the subject our parents, uncles and aunts wanted us to study. So instead of acing the course, we just get by with passing grades; thereby making us the least choice come seeking for employment time. And in the end, we end up underemployed or worse yet unemployed.

I should know this because I have been there. I wanted to enroll in carpentry or dressmaking or cooking, I wanted to create things, but my parents wouldn't hear of it. Celebrity cooks was unheard of then. There was not even a culinary school in Cebu in the 1990’s. And the likes of millionaire dressmakers such as Louis Vuitton and Chanel have not reached the ears of my provincial parents. And forget about women carpenters, it was and still mostly is the field of men. I could have enrolled in Fine Arts or Architecture where I could learn dressmaking and carpentry, but classes especially service courses, not college per se, was as boring to me as rubber slippers.

There will be thousands of new graduates this March and April. Where, I wonder will they go to find employment. Some of them will be our former students who transferred to other colleges because they’d rather take Banking and Finance and Nursing and Political Science and other such glamorous sounding courses than finish a degree in agriculture and its allied courses.

Everybody wants to work in an air conditioned office. Nobody wants to break their bones in the field anymore.

How do you sit while reading.

2009-03-23T00:21:00.000-07:00

In grade school there was this poster on the wall on how to read properly. One of the steps to reading properly is to sit up straight, feet flat on the floor, back straight, etc.

Some have become most comfortable lying down while reading, others in a reclining or slouching on a sofa. I am most comfortable reading sitting with legs in a lotus position, book held on the top edge while the spine of the book rests over the lower arm, back curved and body hunched. But these are done in the privacy of the homes.

In a library, at the main reading rooms, the straight back chairs encourage the correct reading position, which everyone assumes, inspire and promote scholarly activities. At the serials section and in some cases at the lounging areas, there are sofas where magazines and newspapers are read. In this case, it creates a relaxed atmosphere. Unfortunately, in this leisurely environment some readers have taken the extreme step while reading. They not only recline on the sofas, they also put up their feet, shoes and all, on the table. Some would even kicked off their sandals and would sit on their feet on the sofa. This is maybe forgivable given the invitation the sofa represents, to sit back and relax, but to do this in the main reading room is inconsiderate given the limited space and number of chairs any and all library have.

However, they are all bad behavior, bad form and unsanitary besides.

OCness

2009-03-21T04:53:00.000-07:00

I am OC sometimes so I count things. There are 12, 300 people who listed Alejandro as their favorite music, 105, 000 who listed museums and libraries as their industry and only 271 people whose occupation is preoccupied which makes us a very rare group.

The shape of things to come has arrived

2009-03-19T19:35:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that books are a representation of serious thought. Whatever its content and subject is about, it is basically a product of long hours of thought and creativity. However, creativity has always been limited to the content (obviously) and the cover of the book (despite the cliche do not judge..., etc.). What's on the title page and verso usually do not need creativity, they just need the editors' and publishers' eye for detail and everything is good to go. For a cataloger the verso of a book is always serious matter. For any other reader, the verso is of no concern to them, they are taken for granted as nothing else but what are usually on it.

The book by Dave Eggers, A heartbreaking work of staggering genius, however, is another matter. For starters it is a 2-in-1 book. What is usually the back cover is actually the front cover of another book. And for another, its verso is a reminder to read everything even the microscopic prints if possible. Go see for yourself.

Read me to sleep.

2009-03-18T00:02:00.000-07:00

It saddened me to hear people say that they used reading as narcotic. They do not read to gain knowledge, to live a vicarious life, or even to read to be taken as an erudite. They read to welcome boredom and tiredness so that sleep comes easy.

Of course there are people who also can not go to sleep without reading first, but their reasons are different. These people read before going to sleep because their obsessive-compulsive brains tell them to; it reminds them that it has not learned anything new however trivial it may turned out to be.

Featured in the BBC a few weeks ago is a hotel that offers a read-me-to-sleep services to its patrons. Judging from the advert shown, the reader does not stop reading until the client falls asleep. If I were to become one of their lucky customers, the reader would read himself/herself to hoarseness or she may read herself to sleep first before I would in the silence of the dawn.

Where does your money go?

2009-03-12T21:48:00.000-07:00

A big chunk of my budget goes to the purchase of books. It came to a point that my parents where wondering why I seemed to be wearing the same shirt every time they see me, but that was when I was still a new income earner. I was dazzled by my ability to buy books, so I bought all the books I've always wanted. Now I am reasonably well-dressed. I can now allocate some of my money for clothing because my brother is now also buying books for us.

When I travel, even if I thought there might not be time to read, I always carry a book or two or three with me. I do not know how to travel light. Except for the cellphone, I do not have any other hi-tech gadgets. They do not attract me as much as a nice book does. The only hi-tech gadget that has me drooling at the moment is the Sony e-book reader. It could store as much as five books at a time and if one brought it along for travel, it could make the travel easier. It would also make saying no to your uncle who always wanted to borrow your books a lot easier.

I can afford this gadget but what keeps me from having this one is the thought of what do I do with my e-copy of the books i have purchased. They can't line my wall. They can't give me the kind of comfort a hard copy does.

Own the Knowledge, Buy the Book

2009-03-12T00:18:00.000-07:00

My brother, my number one fan, always laughed his head off every time I narrate to him incidents in the library that put me and in all probability my profession in a bad light. He rather liked me being notorious. It is exactly opposite to my stereotyped librarian image--quiet, timid, mousy. He always tells me that for as long as I am fighting ignorance and injustice I should not be afraid to be labeled "malditang librarian". "Your being a librarian is just incidental to your principles." I know I am not liked by some people because when they have business with my unit, they looked for another staff even when I am already there ready and available to provide them with a service.

The incidents I told him about are when faculty complained about the due dates and the overdue fines imposed on them. They want semestral borrowing "rights" to their reference book/s. I have always thought that a faculty must have at least one, the most basic reference book of his own on the subject he is teaching. Owning your own reference book is as basic as your knowledge of your subject matter. What does the cost matter when your whole professional career and your means of living rest on your teaching that subject? And what does the cost of the book mean to a professional being paid to teach the subject compared to the cost of the book to a student?

For others this attitude is putting librarians in a bad light. For me it is simply protecting the interests of my primary clientele, the students, who mostly are coming from low to middle income families.

Ironically, this could be a cycle. These students could be children of teachers who also do not own their own reference book. Then here is the vicious cycle of injustice and ignorance should end. In The Library.

Honoring Mrs. Honoredez

2009-02-26T22:08:00.000-08:00

Our history teacher in first year high school was also our school librarian. She was hated by everyone because she always gave "coffee break", meaning a 10-item quiz every meeting, before classes began or right before classes ended. A quiz which had 30-second answer time per item.

But I loved her despite my inconsistent quiz results. It was not her fault after all. I loved her because she was very warm and welcoming every time I went to the library. I was borrowing Nancy Drew or Hardy Boys every other day and Mrs. Honoredez recommended to me the better stories in the series. She also advised me to prepare a notebook where I could list the words I've encountered but did not understand. It will help me build my vocabulary, she said and it did.

Subconsciously, she may have been one of the reasons I become a librarian. Our library have very good books most probably because our school was run by the Irish (James Joyce and all) Sisters, the St. Columban Sisters. (Some may wonder what has being an Irish to do with it, well plenty because I've been sent to another high school in another place, run by another order of nuns and we did not have that many books in the library. The library was bare) I do not know if she was a trained librarian but as much as I can remember she may have been because she always materialized at my side every time I was in front of those shelves of books, asking me what I was looking for. And if my memory is correct it was she who discouraged me from the books with pictures and drawings, it doesn't helped the imagination was what she said. The only pictures she encouraged me to look at are the portraits of the people she discussed in history class, and she gave me the encyclopedia for this which I was so afraid to handle because of the thin and fragile paper. I was so afraid that if I accidentally tear those pages I may not be able to come to the library again. The library was my sanctuary.

Most of all I loved her because when PTA came she told my parents that I was a good and diligent student (although after my parents told me this, I had to consult the dictionary first before the diligent part sank in, I was that ignorant). What Mrs. Honoredez said was really absolutely high praise from one of the teachers because I was following in the footsteps of a consistent first honor while I never even made it to top 10 of the class.