Pay Attention!

In last week's post I wrote about how irritable it is to deal with some of those whom Edson and I text message with here. I questioned why it is that one can only insert a single item of information in each text for the other person to understand what information is being conveyed, thus wasting messages and money when several items of information must be relayed.

Last night during conversation over dinner we discovered what is the real problem.

Our conversation was about another conversation he was having earlier that day with someone from the College of Architecture at University of the Philippines. Apparently a couple of the people there felt he had been shunning them the past eleven months because he hadn't come to their office to visit. He had told them both last April/May he would be working in Makati, so he wouldn't be able to teach the twelve credit hours worth of courses they handed him last June three days before classes were to begin (remember: even after he had previously said to them he couldn't teach at all!). And three day notice...yeah, they really think ahead there!

Edson does do research work at U.P. And he also does teach one class a week. But he doesn't spend a lot of time on campus meandering about. The people who felt shunned also don't spend a lot of time on campus, so the likelihood these infrequent campus-goers would ever run into each other there is rather small. It is small enough that in eleven months their paths never once crossed.

Had they paid attention when Edson told them he was going to be working elsewhere, maybe they would have realized he was not shunning them!

So, that's it.

It all comes down to what our parents and teachers have been telling us (if not yelling at us) all these years:

PAY ATTENTION!

But I still don't know if not paying attention to the information contained within a text message is something uniquely Filipino or just related to the act of receiving text messages wherever the receiver may be.

When I was in the U.S. I never once sent a text message. I didn't even know how. Nobody ever did it. That seems to have changed from what we see when we watch Gossip Girl. The characters on that show are constantly texting. I text so much now I hardly know what to do if someone wants to actually speak to me on the phone! Of course, here in Manila, all I can hear is the traffic around me, so the idea of actually using the phone as a phone is pretty ridiculous.

Text me.

You know you love me,

XOXO

"Gossip Jay"