A Sheep in the Year of the Wood Horse

If you are a Sheep (born in 1907, 1919, 1931, 1943, 1955, 1967, 1979, 1991 and 2003), you have a reason to rejoice in this Year of the Wood Horse. According to the Chinese Horoscope, Sheep is the luckiest animal sign of the year, “excellent with success all-round” and “blessed with the Golden Deity Star…everything is possible this year!”

But Sheep people should watch out for “hidden conflict stemming from insincere and jealous relatives and friends.” Wealth luck: Couldn’t be better; health luck: very strong; best months: June, August and October; and bad months: February and November.

Richard Yap, “Ser Chief” of the super-hit, oft-extended ABS-CBN soap Be Careful With My Heart (“The only soap without a kontrabida na naging malaking hit,” observed Lolit Solis), is a Sheep born in May 1967 (Taurus in the Western Horoscope) and, being pure Chinese educated at a Chinese school in his native Cebu City, he believes in the Chinese Horoscope and feng shui — “Well,” he qualified, “but only a bit.”

Last Saturday afternoon, Ser Chief and his wife Melody Yap (a former PAL flight stewardess) entertained some movie writers (Lolit and yours truly among them) at Wangfu (along Tomas Morato Avenue, Quezon City), the months-old Chinese bistro that he co-owns with friends Lester Pimentel Ong and Ace Wang (a Singaporean).

“This is a thanksgiving get-together with friends and I want to make it an annual tradition,” said Ser Chief who started it end of 2012 at another restaurant in the Timog-Morato area.

When Wangfu was put up, Lester and Ace consulted a feng shui expert, said Ser Chief who was then pre-occupied with tapings for Be Careful.

“At home,” he admitted, “Melody and I do follow feng shui beliefs. For example, across the street from our house in Cebu, there were two buildings with a gap in-between. Bad luck, said the feng shui expert who remedied the situation by changing some parts of our house. We don’t have mirrors in our bedroom. Bad luck, according to feng shui. When you’re asleep, your spirit daw leaves your body and if there’s a mirror, especially one facing your bed, your spirit might go to the mirror instead of back to your body. Also, no staircase should face the street directly. Nothing wrong in keeping those beliefs in mind.”

However, feng shui has no say on how a couple should be positioned in bed.

“Melody has been sleeping on the right side,” revealed Ser Chief, “and I sleep on the left side.”

So far, good luck. The Yaps have two well-behaved, well-raised children, a 17-year-old daughter and a 10-year-old son.

Fans of all shapes and sizes, all ages and swarming from all walks of life, have become a daily presence around Ser Chief anywhere. Asked if some of them (the matrons especially) have ever fallen in love with him to the extent of making him, ehem, an indecent proposal, Ser Chief blushed.

“Nothing of that sort,” assured Ser Chief. “Most of my fans are decent.”

That should be comforting to Melody who has never been jealous nor possessive.

“At this stage of our marriage,” added Ser Chief, “no more like that. Maybe when we were younger, may konti but not enough to ruin our relationship.”

For somebody who never imagined landing in showbiz (the farthest he thought he would go was “starring” in commercials such as the one for Chowking which made him a household name), Ser Chief has gone a long, long way. Already, Be Careful has been extended indefinitely, with Richard’s Ser Chief character and his former-yaya-now-wife Maya (played with infectious affection by Jodi Sta. Maria) expecting their first child.

Anyway, Kung Hei Fat Choi to Sheep Richard and all the other animals in this Year of the Wood Horse.

(Note: For inquiries and reservation, call landline 410-0304.)

A crash course in English

Here’s an excerpt of an e-mail sent to Funfare by this section’s contributor Edu Jarque (who must have gotten it from the Internet), which should be informative to you and me:

Heteronyms...This is intriguing

Homographs are words of like spelling but with more than one meaning.

A homograph that is also pronounced differently is a heteronym. 

You think English is easy?

I think a retired English teacher was bored...THIS IS GREAT!

Read this (it took a lot of work to put together!). 

1. The bandage was wound around the wound.

2. The farm was used to produce produce.

3. The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4. We must polish the Polish furniture.

5. He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6. The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7. Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present. 

8. A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9. When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10. I did not object to the object. 

11. The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12. There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13. They were too close to the door to close it.

14. The buck does funny things when the does are present.   

15. A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16. To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17. The wind was too strong for me to wind the sail.

18. Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

19. I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

20. How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

Let’s face it: English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren’t sweet, are meat. We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth, beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell.

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race, which, of course, is not a race at all. That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible.

P.S.: Why doesn’t ‘Buick’ rhyme with ‘quick’?

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