Supplies!

(Outsourced life chronicles)

Sup-plies! Today I had a client named Ligaya. Worse, the other day, it was Luzviminda, after months and months working with such names as Ahmed or Kuchenbacher or Smith.

Whew. I never expected I’d be working on a draft by someone who might have lived in Cubao or Kamias in her former life as a Filipino (legally speaking, that is).

I am reminded of this play about the call center life, Welcome to Intelstar. I am tempted to greet the online tutee, "Welcome! I am centrally located!!" I am in the middle of that play.

I am also tempted to crack a joke and ask the student where she got her name. Ha-ha! But I am too afraid that would be unprofessional.

How do I play pretend? How do I avoid not outing myself as Filipino? The tutee might even turn out to be a horror story character: someone I know, a relative, or the niece of a friend of my cousin’s fiancée’s dog.

Crazy world. Crazy life. No matter how much you thought you came prepared, life has this innate capacity to still pull off some surprises for a jaded bugger.

So far, I have had a cumulative sum of three clients with undeniably Filipino-sounding surnames. Not bad. But I don’t need surnames, really. Just taking note of the student’s English errors, I would know whether I’m staring at a telling Filipino mistake or not.

Dear life: Surprise me some more.