No Smoking Joint

Smog-Free. Shiny-White. Clean Lungs.

one of my weaknesses is expressing myself in English. verbally. 

perhaps it can be attributed to my lack of social skill. or anything anthropological. a deficiency I must have acquired after i mushroomed into this world, and derailed a certain aspect of my development.

they say that personal growth is complemented by his/her environs. whatever the society would rear into who you become, it still deserts a minor part of it. however as i trudge on my comfort zone as if it is the 38th Parallel, the dichotomy between my ability to interact and my verbally-limited vocabulary somehow wades on such scarcity. 

what was surprising, in spite of all, was that people see me as rather different. kind of discerning, actually. well, I would probably attest that as being a Filipino in a foreign territory gives you a minute sense of diversity. a racial minority whose percentage rarely equals, as the Beatles would have put it, "the holes to fill the Albert Hall". 

i remember a particular instance in college, more than a decade back. one of my major communications course required us to prepare an oral analysis of what our topic was at that point (what that specific topic was, i could not recall). the professor made us a deal: whoever wanted to go first, can throw the bricks and leave. as simple as that. make yourself heard, get a grade (a guaranteed passing one, he said), and take your early break. as each student stood up, depleted the can. i was aware of the need. but dire, it was not. so i took my time.

a highschool friend once said, "if you want to speak/talk English, you have to think English". i know it's easy for someone to say, especially if their household vernacular does not stray into the pages of a Balagtas novel nor an issue of Funny Komiks. i was somewhat astonished to discover that my preference for a college major settled on a subject that would entail a viva voce ability in that particular language. 

but as far as scribbling my thoughts on paper, i guess the rhetoric is almost, well, apparent. although, i admit that occasionally i am at difficulty in avoiding grammatical solecisms. but as what i had written before, it is the process that makes it all fun. nonetheless, to be understood is perhaps the ultimate objective. and one does not have to employ an ostentatious command of the language for him to be able to convey the message.