This Week’s Winner Nanette N. Tabuac is a CPA and currently connected with the Finance Department of an exclusive girls’ school in Quezon City. She finished her MBA at DLSU Manila. She can’t cook, can’t drive and can’t dance. She’s a Harry Potter girl through and through, and loves reading books and writing poetry. Her favorite authors include Marian Keyes, JK Rowling and Carl Hiaasen.
Last December, I went to Dublin, Ireland to spend the Christmas holidays with my family. Ireland. The Emerald Isle. The land of leprechauns and shamrocks. I was excited and looking forward to spending my first weekend seeing fairy tale landscapes and soaking myself in Europe’s dazzling beauty and splendor. I was wrong. Instead, I cleaned the house of an octogenarian, Mr. O’Neill.
The Undomestic Goddess
My sister Laarni asked me to come with her. She had a “racket” — house cleaning. She was to clean the house of Mr. O’Neill, the father of her bosses, Tim and Dan — they were the owners of a middle-class convenience store called Costcutter, where my sister was the shop manager. My sister was an accountant like me.
“How come you’re cleaning the house of your bosses’ father? You’re their manager, for crying out loud!” I asked her, sort of dazed by the fact that she cleaned houses.
“Ate, it was Mr. O’Neill who introduced me to Tim and Dan. My job at the shop, I owe it to him. I’m doing this as my expression of gratitude,” my sister explained. “Besides, this is extra income,” my ever-pragmatic sister added.
Mr. O’Neill was a nice chap with a friendly countenance. He lost his wife to a stroke and all his kids were married. He was living in that house alone. All of a sudden, I wanted to adopt him.
While my sister was busy tackling the laundry, I was busy vacuuming the carpets. At first, I had trouble running the Hoover. My sister and her seven-year-old son, Ronan (we brought him along), taught me how to attach the nozzle to the suction hose and which buttons to press to start and to stop the machine. The house had two stories and an attic. It had four bedrooms, two bathrooms, three sitting rooms (Europeans call living rooms “sitting rooms”), one of which was inside a conservatory or a glass room; a dining room, and a dirty kitchen.
They were all carpeted.
I must have vacuumed yards and yards of carpet, enough to cover the dome of the Araneta Coliseum. By the time I was done, I was utterly exhausted. My arms were sore and my lower back ached from constant bending. I didn’t know how people clean houses. It was the hardest thing to do. As I was Hoovering along nicely, I imagined, who would think that I’d be cleaning the house of an old Irish guy on my first weekend in Europe? I’m a CPA and I earned my MBA from one of the premier schools in the Philippines. That day, I added “hard labor” to my vocabulary of life. It was truly a humbling experience.
Afterwards, Mr. O’Neill handed over a 50-euro note to my sister, which she gladly accepted; he gave my nephew a stuffed toy — a singing donkey — that could sing Happy Birthday and Old MacDonald. He gave me 50 euros, too. The finance person in me did a quick calculation: 50 euros for three hours of work, which is roughly equal to a two-week salary of a saleslady in the Philippines! It was an unexpected windfall, but I refused to accept it point blank. Somehow, I felt that receiving cash from a guy who helped my sister land a decent job was kind of tacky. What surprised me was Mr. O’Neill looked apologetic when he offered the money.
“I know, you’ve never worked that hard in your entire life,” Mr. O’Neill said in a voice laced with honest atonement.
“It’s okay, Mr. O’Neill. I enjoyed cleaning your house. I love your conservatory, by the way,” I answered cheerfully.
“Tita, kunin mo, kunin mo (Auntie, take it, take it),” said Ronan, egging me on to accept the money.
“Ate, it’s rude to refuse,” my sister blurted out. She took the note from Mr. O’Neill, and inserted it inside her jeans pocket. “Don’t worry Mr. O’Neill, I’ll give it to her when she comes to her senses,” my sister assured the old man.
The truth was, I would have gladly dusted every china figurine on his mantelpiece, cleaned his bathroom, did his laundry, and even vacuumed his walls. Every day and free of charge, in epic gratitude for his help to my family.
During my stay, my sister toured me around Dublin’s shopping mecca — The Jervis Street Shopping Center. We had a wander around Reads, Penney’s, Marks & Spencer, and Dunne’s Store. We went to Debenhams and I saw this gorgeous blue-green frock priced at 35 euros and fell in love with it.
“Do you accept dollars?” I asked the cashier.
“No ma’am, euros only,” said the Polish girl behind the counter.
I made a beeline for my sister who was at the kids’ section with Ronan, and asked for money. She gave me 50 euros. I kept the change.
The Isle Of Criminal Waste
Being in Dublin was kind of surreal. I saw abundance everywhere. Huge Georgian houses with multi-colored doors and well-manicured lawns. There were no shanties and no garbage left to rot on the pavements; I didn’t step over hungry, homeless people on the streets of Dublin.
Inside Costcutter, where I worked part-time as an accountant (my sister asked for my help; I updated the books and financial reports and handled the lodgments), was a deli shop. They followed this statutory regulation that all unsold food items for the day should be automatically carted off the garbage bin (strictly no reheating).
Every day, my heart would break whenever I saw loads of fried chicken, tuna casserole, wheat bread, potato wedges, beef sirloin, etc., being thrown away. This was perfectly good food, enough to feed a whole barangay. Any charity in Manila would have been delighted with the leftovers.
I wished I had a portkey like Harry Potter, so I could magically transport them to the Philippines. Throwing away good food was a criminal waste. That’s what it was, criminal.
In Dublin, I saw the huge gap between First World and Third World; it was a Pacific Ocean of difference.
Little Miss Sunshine
I remember this proverb: “The rocks in the water don’t know the misery of the rocks in the sun.” Meaning: one must walk in another man’s shoes to understand him. In my case, it was the reverse. Going to Dublin was not a matter of choice; returning to the Philippines was.
During my last few days in Dublin, Tim and Dan persuaded me to join them. They were adding two more shops and they wanted me to be the accountant for all three shops so my sister could concentrate on the operations. Any Filipino would have seized that opportunity. I would have loved to stay, but I promised my bosses in Manila that I would return.
I declined. Tim and Dan were shocked and crestfallen. Somehow, they didn’t expect me to turn them down. Filipino friends in Dublin were shocked and awed. They said I was the very first Pinoy they had met who had the chance to work and to earn lots of euros, but passed up that golden opportunity and chose to go back to the Philippines.
After two months, I returned to the Philippines. I came back to my country where I could see the sun as early as 5:30 a.m. (in Dublin, the sun rises as late as 11 a.m.), and I could go shopping as late as 9 p.m. (in Dublin, the sun hides as early as 3 p.m. and the shops close at 6 p.m. and on Sundays). It was always raining in Dublin. Every day. It was cold, gray and bleak. When I returned, I was so glad (I almost wept!) to see the sun again in its blazing glory. I guess I was a rock in the sun that sojourned in the waters momentarily, but opted to return, and wrap itself in eternal sunshine.