A book: Alamat ng Gubat

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This is the book that I bought when Sister and I went to the mall for lunch while taking a break from LTO duty. Well she had lunch and I had a coke. I can’t stand fast food burgers, blech.

Anway I’ve always wanted to do my part and help where I can in our neglected pretty little country and I intend to pay particular attention to non English speaking, poor but brilliant students in the future when I have the means. I doubt I’ll accomplish much if my Tagalog’s less than stellar so I better get started. I chose this book because the cover looked friendly enough for me to read without the aid of a dictionary. A bit of a blow on the ego but the other books on display seemed to be serious literary works, too serious for me, and upon leafing through them, they contained too many words that aren’t familiar enough to me. Boohoo. I like to think that I am conversationally fluent and I can hold my own when engaged in an argument or playful banter with better Tagalog speakers. It’s a shame that my reading comprehension is piss-poor and that I can’t express myself formally and with precision, without shifting to English. But that will change and I’m setting a 12-month goal for it. Basically I want to sound clever and educated and not so much like a clever and educated fag hag. Well, not just.

It is a lovely little tale by Bob Ong, author of ABNKKBSNPLK. I’ve been reading it aloud to myself for practice and to my mom for word emphasis correction and so far we both think it’s rather funny. The story, not my reading, you asses. Our protagonist is a crab named Tong (…tong tong tong pakitong-kitong) and his dad the King Crab is ill and the Queen says that Tong needs to go to the forest and find a banana heart so his dad can get well. Nothing too original there but it’s clever the way the author addresses that thought. Tong encounters several animals along the way and they help and distract him in turns. You can’t miss the analogy between the story’s forest life and Philippine life, it’s so good. The crocodile Buwaya is too much like a traffic cop asking for a bribe, and it’s hilarious how he does it blatantly.

It’s not a very long story and I don’t want it to end so I’ve been forcing myself to read it in installments. Anyway it’s alright as I get tired of talking aloud after a while. It costs only 100 pesos and the paper it’s printed on is quite nice, none of that newsprint crap. And there are lovely illustrations every other page or so. Oh and it says on the back cover that royalty of the sales (I assume a fixed percentage of sales profits?) will go to the National Center for Mental Health. Nice touch.

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