I’ve always called the twins by their first names ever since they were babies but when DH started referring to them as ‘Abang’ and ‘Adik’ (Big Brother and Small Brother), everyone else followed suit, including me, albeit reluctantly at first.
It was sometime in November 2007 when they started calling each other ‘Bang’ and ‘Dik’, as well. Click here to hear them calling each other ‘Bang’ and ‘Dik’ around that time, with a wee bit of coaxing from their Mama. Quick note: ‘panggil‘ is the Malay word for call.
All these sound clips, video clips and photos of the kids (especially of the twins!) are taking up the bulk of my computer memory now that I seriously need to get an external hard disk ASAP!
I was pleasantly surprised to unearth find recently a poem that I wrote when I was 16 years old, way back when I was a freshman at the Ateneo de Manila University. At that time, we were discussing a poem in English class that had something to do with how people can be classified into either cats or dogs, personality-wise.
The paper is now yellowed with age but what our teacher wrote in red ink on the first page still fills up my heart with so much pride. “Very nicely, done, Mimi” is what she wrote — that is, our teacher, Mrs. Susan Evangelista. She became more than just a teacher to us in the two semesters that we spent in her class. She became our friend and confidante, as we poured our hearts out in the journals that we kept which we submitted every week to her. We read, discussed and dissected unforgettable stories like ‘Flowers for Algernon‘, classic poetry like E.E. Cummings’ ‘Somewhere I Have Never Traveled‘, unorthodox material such as the lyrics of The Phantom of the Opera’s ‘Music of the Night‘. We couldn’t help but have a grand time being creative in her classes. Never mind that those classes started at 7.30 am…
I remember the wacky assortment of truly gifted people in our class — Tatine, Alexandra, Marcelline, Lionel, Nessa, Baybay, Jessica, Mabel, Margie, Richie, Cris, Peds, and many more whose faces remain clear in my memory but whose names escape me right now. [Note to self: Dig up those old photos and Google them up!] They were so gifted that, at more than one occasion, I felt almost unworthy to be in the same class as them. Notice that I used the word almost ;)
However, I cannot, for the life of me, remember the exact poem in question. All I remember is that, after we discussed it in class, we had to write our own poem, classifying ourselves as either a cat or a dog.
Here is the poem that I wrote back then, in its full, raw, unedited glory (hah!), so please excuse any grammatical errors:-
Stumble it!