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WHAT STRIKES ME

Don's Surprise

      Those were the yeaars that I remember very viviidly. Not that we were well off and enjoying the world's pleasures and goods. They were the years when we were very poor and had barely enough to live on.They were the lean years. Dad was a good salesman It was only that he was unlucky because all those who worked around him were screwing him left and right and we were sufffering from this exploitation.
     Don was the second to the youngest in our family but already showed signs of entreprenuership that would serve him well in later years. But there was this year when we just moved to a new neighbourrhood and he was the only member in the family who had a sort of income aside from my dad's paltry income. He was commissioned by his elementary school teacher to sell lollies to the other kids and from each sale of lolly Don got a bit of commission. So he always had pocket money and all of us other members of the family were penniless. This gave him an advantage and this was his easy access to the movie house in the neigbouring shopping center which also was the location of the local movie house. My brother used to disappear every afternoon and came home only when it was time for the evening meal. My mum grew concerned that this was becoming a daily occurence and commissioned me to investigate.
   First of all, I thought quickly that if I were to catch Donato, there was only one place to do it. I was hampered from this first option because I did not have the money to go to the other side of the river which was where the movie house was and which was the shopping center. I quickly thought of a second option and that was to go to the bangkas depot and wait for him under cover of darkness. It wasn't long before a dark figure appeared but I thought at first that it was a dog but then I said to myself this is a strange dog because the dark firgure that was approaching me was whistling. As it drew within eye shot I recognized Don who was looking upwards and whistling a merry tune perhaps the music from the movie. I could see that he was a happy little imp and nothing was wrong with the world. Out of the blue I came out from where I was hiding and Donato jumped up as though he had seen a ghost. I grabbed his arm and said Now

at last I caught you, you low sneaking varmint. And Don just stared at me in fright not having a clue what I was on about. I quickly explained to him the situation and the worry and anxiety he was causing all of us especially Mum by his habitual absence and late home journey. Don quickly understood the situation and that was the last time he went off without saying a word to any of us.

ANOTHER YEAR IN MY LIFE

     Another year has passed. Today November the eleventh two thousand and five I am sixty six. The funny thing is that I don't feel a bit older. Probably the secret lies in my having such a varied interest in the things around me. First of all I am passionately inbterested in what is happening around me and so I keep abreast of what is happening by subscribing to a local paper and making sure that I read the daily events and most important I read the opinions of others on the events and make it a point to measure their opinions to my own opinions. In other words I do not just read and blindly agree to all they have to say but I have my own say after they have said their say.

     Another passionate interest of mine is photography. For a long time my interest has not reached the intense heat it has because of the fact that all cameras then had to have film and that seemed to be a hurdle I could not quite overcome. In fact, I was unwilling to spend all my savings on buying one fillm after another. But then voila in came digital photography with very reasonably priced digital cameras and other paraphernalia like computers and printers which provided a much better equivalent to the photographic darkroom which in my opinion was a bit messy and space consuming. Now I can indulge my heart's desire in taking all the photos I like with the least bother and expense. Also I like the quality of digital photography very much. A lot of the quality of the pictures I used to take with film photography was really very low because of the poor quality of the print work of the photo labs. One of the big problems was that I could not control the quality of the enlargements because it was all done by the photo lab and the photo lab staff were interested in only one thing and that was making a quick buck.