Wrng Speling

Now, I'm sure reading that gave you a headache.

As I write this, I have heaps (well, just a small heap) of unwrapped gifts waiting for my attention in our living room. Talk about procrastinating at Christmas time. These are gifts for inaanaks and relatives who I'll see tomorrow on Christmas day. Also bunched along with the unwrapped gifts are gifts I bought for my other inaanaks, already wrapped but I haven't written on the card.

Some of the gifts I bought from Rustan's, and so I had to take out that small piece of paper on which a description of the gift was written. Here us just some of what they wrote, I'll see if you can guess what the gifts are:

1. berr
2. gerup
3. cup O.C. - the box is a rectangular one which in no way would fit a cup
4. cuplings

Anybody hazard a guess what the gifts are?

Okay. Not to prolong your agony, here they are:

No. 1 is not an alcoholic beverage (wala nun sa Rustan's) but a fluffy animal, usually brown, and Mr. Bean has one;

No. 2 is also a stuffed animal with a very long neck; and

No. 3 is a beret, which is not even a cap.

No. 4, you have to guess. Really.

I couldn't help but roll laughing when I read these. How on earth will I be able to know which gifts are for whom if I had not remembered what are the stuff I bought. I particularly had a hard time figuring out No. 3. O.C. stands for Oleg Cassini, by the way.

My friend also told me that he went to Powerbooks and asked the customer service to search for books about the Supreme Court. He got into an argument as the girl spelled "Supreme" as "Supream." Sigh.

Come to think of it, this is really not a laughing matter. Considering that most of these stores hire those who are at lease high school graduates, it is alarming that they were able to finish 10 years of schooling not being able to spell "cap," "bear" and "giraffe" correctly. It makes me wonder if these people are able to read, or maybe reading is easier to learn than spelling. I'm not nitpicking at English skills as they could very well be bright and smart but not good in English. The thing is their lack of proficiency speaks of the quality of teaching they receive. Who knows if they are being taught proper math? No wonder less and less public school student are able to pass the UPCAT. This is really bad.

Last kuwento. I was following up the repairshop on the repair of a friend's car. When asked, the account officer told me that the car has already been brought to the "tint mint." Not being too familiar with car repairs, I asked her to repeat to me where the car has been brought, and also asked her what a "tint mint" is. Yun daw ang tawag nila dun. Hmn... Okay, since I was gonna email the update to my friend, I asked her to spell for me "tint mint." Exasperated, she nonetheless indulged me in my request. So she goes:

T-I-N-S-M-I-T

Huh? There seems to be something wrong, so I asked her to spell it again. She does but she helps me a bit by saying, "yung sa latero, Ma'am." Oh! Tinsmith! Geesh. She gave me the number of the person in charge of the repair, I thanked her, put down the phone and started laughing. I'm so bad! When I called the guy who was in charge, he said that indeed, the car was with the tinsmith.

Oh well...

Hey, Merry Christmas everyone!!!