Mind Your Own Business and Scratch Your Own Galis

As usual, I was again late for my lunch. I was in the thick of my engineering evaluation and also had to wait for lunch buddy, Danny. I went back to my cubicle to get rid of my "cleanroom" uniforms and change to my street shoes.

Wince!

Some of the guys here chose to have packed lunch and decided to have my cubicle as their picnic ground. It certainly left that spicy pungent aroma that hovered for few hours and loathly made everything to smell the same, including me. Wince. Anyway, there's nothing much I can do about it (except to blog) but I'm hoping, though improbable, that they will ban eating in office cublicles. It wouldn't be also wise to tell them off. Firstly, that office cubicle is not exclusive to me, I'm sharing it with 3 of my colleagues. Secondly, it might create unnecessary friction that wouldn't be beneficial at all. And thirdly, I definitely can live with the discomfort.

Me and my buddy Danny (Pinoy rin sya) don’t usually take our lunch with our (chinese) colleagues. Other than we are not usually amenable to their choice of place and food, we prefer our flexible lunch time. It's also annoying that they usually chitchat in their own dialects which just alienate us. It suits us fine to keep our distance, during lunch that is.

Those "picnickers" didn't ask me to join them for lunch at all. Honestly, I wasn't really offended, just can't help to compare it vis-a-vis with our very own culture. Here, it's to each his own. For us Pinoy, no matter what we are munching, it's penultimate to mortal sin not to offer it.

The same is apparent between neighbours. Unless your house is on fire, or stinking because you stop breathing and is on the late stage of decomposure, it's rarely that your next-door will knock on you. Distressingly, they might get a third party to do this, usually the police. The most of the rub that you can get is the casual "hi" or "hello" inside the lift (elevator) or the lift lobby.

I long for the warmth of Pinas!