JANINA SAN MIGUEL
(An article written by my sister's friend, Januar Yap.)
MEANWHILE/SunStar Daily March 15, 2008
To Janina
They was enjoying you, but when I see you butcher the English language like dead pig, while you were all smiles and happiness and joyful, I saw disposition. I were clapping because you are heroine. They was seeing the laughing side of it, but I saw the bad Indio who use English as ruler for brightness. It is, as a matter of in fact, darkness. Very, very darkness, indeed.
You are at least exotic and original. Never mind the English, you are not hard working anyway to the call center. When you're in the world contest, you can bring translator, bring Budoy because he can English the word sigbin, which is very hard. And beside me, you are seventeen years of young age. You have all the excuse me. Blame your teacher everything about your linking verb and all. And all the man and woman who are laughing will be realize their wrongness.
For all they are knowing, you are also best in math or physical education. That is talented enough. Forgetful English, anyway. The Japanese do not make hara kiri because they are poor in subject and predicate. Including german, French, and more other country. Never mind. Be like you are, smiling while they laugh at your answer that is following Erap's instructions carefully.
Just tell them who you are in the language you are most comfortable with. At your age, you should begin to realize how pop culture pushes the disoriented into the height of absurdity. I do not blame you for being there. You are a misguided little soul, pushed by unimaginative souls who think the only use for your looks is amusement. I am not suggesting anything, but in a community with a distorted view of itself, you can be a suicide bomber--a devastatingly enthralling detonator of mass destruction. If there's any place the world will be better without, it's this one.
Where are they coming from anyway? And what are beauty contests, but tools to rob the different and diverse of their cultural capital. So they can sell you skin whiteners and rebonding, and make you feel small the farther you deviate from the beauty they have defined. That's simple marketing move, because we have a market that's forever doomed in antiquated world views.
In today's flat Earth, the Third World learn English not because the language places a citizen in a position of worth in the retable of the elite. It is not a measure of intelligence. That had been proven in a UN research; competency and literacy is rather slow in countries learning abstractions in a second language. Learning English is more of accumulating political quantity, an economic tool, to be functional in a fastfood lane that uses the language.
But, yes, Janina, they was wrong and the song “I Started a Joke” is the theme song of your life's movie. It started the whole world laughing. But the joke was on they.