Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas 2010. God, I made it again one more time. Thank you, thank you!

***

Merry Christmas to my bosses for everything. Including for their graciousness in allowing me to overstay.

***

Merry Christmas to every one of my co-workers in this newspaper. Stick around for our 100th year. I’m not saying I’ll be there in spirit. I’ll be there.

***

Merry Christmas, too, to the small but plucky working force of Banat News. As the Bombay money lender would say: “Aish karo.” Enjoy! Not his money but the season.

***

Merry Christmas to my readers without whom only the computer operator and the proofreader would be reading me.

***

Merry Christmas also to “her” who keeps telling me to be strong and have faith in God and we’ll be OK. I mean, I’ll be OK.

***

Like what I said before, it takes all kinds of questions thrown in by readers. Like this latest one: “Why is it that sometimes upaw si PNoy sa news photos and sometimes pod baga iyang buhok?”

***

Answer: I don’t know the answer really. Maybe, just maybe, that’s the result of fighting that national problem through thick and thin.

***

Tom O. says it’s his right to speak against Mike Rama (TF, Dec. 16/10). Mike says it is his right to stick it out with Joy Pesquera (TF, Dec. 16/10). That’s the beauty of living in a free country. We have the right to listen to inanities.

***

It says here that “actually” has been voted as an irritating English word. Didn’t I write something like that in this column sometime ago? (Actually, I did.)

***

But the survey said the most irritating word has been “whatever.” I often hear this said by showbiz people who could not find or are lazy to find the right word to finish the sentence. (Or whatever.)

***

Phrases considered irritating include “to tell you the truth”, “at the end of the day”, “you know what I mean”, etc. Manny Pacquiao’s favorite line “You know” didn’t make it to the list.

Email: [email protected]