This terrible summer heat–the type that makes me feel like I will combust in the middle of doing chemo–reminds me of a situation that my friend Mrs. T had found herself in a few decades ago. I asked her if she remembers this phenomenal event, fully expecting with glee that she has buried it in her subconscious. Usually she doesn’t remember anything, and it doesn’t fail to make me feel superior, like I”m the better friend and a better person overall. To my surprise she was able to narrate this event with more details and nuances. Come to think of it, it’s one of those experiences which, if you forget, would be fully diagnostic of dementia.

Way back in 2002, after our dinner in Glorietta, Mrs. T walked along Ayala late at night and took the northbound MRT. She took her seat and cracked open a very old copy of Ken Follet’s Pillars Of The Earth, occasionally looking up from the book to watch the late night passengers on their way home. It was a very humid night, and it didn’t help that there seemed to be no working airconditioning.  She was starting to doze off, until she noticed that the guy in front of her was rubbing his neck. Initially it seemed like he was just scratching his neck. Then the movements became more deliberate, more rhythmic, his fingers now aggressively kneading his moist skin in an upward motion.

It became clear to Mrs. T that moist guy was trying to rub libag off his neck. That he was making hilod, an act that, perhaps, has no direct English translation. Mrs. T wasn’t too grossed out, she was too sleepy to get grossed out. That is, until the guy took out his MRT card. He ran the edge of the MRT card repeatedly against his neck, upwards in a scraping manner, scooping all the existing liquidy libag with razor sharp precision, creating new visible libag where there used to just be dried sweat. Having sufficiently scraped enough dirt that has accumulated at the edge of the card, he then hit the card with his finger repeatedly in a flicking motion, catapulting the hardened specks of libag in all directions.

Mrs. T yelped and covered her face with Ken Follet.

Categories: Blogs