i have been a stranger in a strange land.

Most of you who's been around me the last couple of weeks know this. But listen anyway.

There's this girl at the office, (No guys, this is not that kind of story. No girl-on-girl action happening here. At least not until after the coming weekend.) and we're not friends or anything, just the usual hi-hello when we meet through the little hallway leading to her cubicle and my office. (Ha, that sounds I'm the boss of her of something, which is not true, but it sounds good. My "office" is a tiny room filled chest-high with papers, and I cannot even enjoy one good swivel on my chair without bumping into a desk, a filing cabinet and the computer table.)

Enough asides. There's this girl. We are not friends. We don't talk. We smile, nod, say hi, etc. One day, we caught each other at the rest room, (get your minds outta the gutter!) and smile to each other on the mirror. The out of nowhere, and of what context, I have no idea, she asks me:

Are you Filipino at all?

[Significant pause here.]

It took me a while to realize I was holding my breath, and to let it out, then whoosh out a very breathy "yes!". Actually it sounded more like a "huh-yeesss...???" Because all I could think about that moment was, "Oh, she so cannot think this is my natural hair color..."

Don't get me wrong. I've been through this all my life. I've been Indian, Arab (and therefore terrorist), Portuguese, Turk, and the topper, Japanese(!) at one time or another. My best friend in high school, so unconvinced of my having no Arab ancestry, even invented a whole history where my ancestors in my father's side in Spain lived in Granada during the years of the invasion of the moors and someone must have fallen in love with someone from the other side, got married and begot mongrels, and thus my looks. But yes, I've been through this so many times that more often than not, I recognize a certain look on people's faces they get just before they ask me that particular question.

Case in point: I was talking to this old lady once, you know, things-under-the-sun conversation. Then she gets this awkward, speculative look on her face before she starts with the usual, "Can I ask you a question?" And I just get it. I say, "Let me guess. 'Are you Indian?' No. No, I'm not." And I just smile a bit to take the sting out of my impatience. I've had this conversation so many times that, as you can see, I can hold both sides of it by myself.

So what was wrong with that question? Why was I so out-of-whack? Well, it could be I was just having a bad day--it sounded so like the go-to-your-own-corner-geek playground tortures of my elementary days--but then I was mulling it over and mulling over it and mulling over it and it comes to me. Of all the this conversations I've had, all my life--Including the one that went like this:

Japanese DOM: Firipinjin desu ka?
So Mistakenly Happy Me: Hai! Hai! Sou desu.
DOM: Sou ka. Ee, Omise ha?--

this is the first time I've been asked if I'm Filipino AT ALL. I mean really. AT fucking ALL??? Really! What gives?

(Quick English Lesson. The use of "at all" in a sentence: (a) "If you were thinking at all, you wouldn't have said that." (b) "Do you have any manners at all?" (c) "I didn't like that at all!")

But see, I don't have a stupid pretentious highfallutin accent. I don't have the Tagalog accent either, because fuck it, I am not Tagalog. I have semi-red, semi-blond (I can't say orange. I won't.) hair now, but Hell-o! The roots are so showing and I need another trip to the salon soon, except that I'm broke, so how much more obvious can it be that my hair color came from a bottle? I didn't grow up in the States, only to return and become a pop idol, much to my regret (Another story for another day). So what is it? Whaaaaaaat?

If you figure it out. Let me know. At all. Duh.

*****

Here's a funny story.

When I was 15 or 16, my mom asked me to pay our phone bill at the local Iloilo PLDT office. This was my first time to do it, so I was a bit insecure about what to do. When I got there, I went to the end of the first line I saw, which took forever to get to the counter. Unsure and impatient to get it over with, I asked a lady beside me if this was the line for paying bills. Nothing wrong with that, right? Wrong. Whenever I'm in this weird situation where I'm insecure or a little lost (or spitting mad), I usually speak in English. Don't ask me why. So anyway, there I was, Indian looking Ilonggo little girl, asking this Ilonggo woman in English, if I was on the right line. The poor woman took one look at me and started sputtering, "Ah, no, no. This line, no. See that woman over there? Yellow dress? Woman yellow, go, go. There," then sighed in relief. I was so mortified, I forced myself to speak in English the whole awful transaction, because God forbid if that old lady found out I could speak Ilonggo. She would have blistered me with the best swear words anywhere in this country--cursing me, my mother, my father and their genitals, for having had the gall to have sex and create such an arrogant moron.

*****

Hmmm. Are you Filipino at all? Did she have a point, after all? Ay, lilinti-an.