Close friends should always be there in time of needs. But sometimes not all of them are close at heart or readily available. Some friends are complete strangers who could be much closer by association.
This morning I found out that Randy S., one of my temporary workers at this company, is a ‘cousin.’ He came to my desk and revealed he is related by the husband, who is from Cavite of Philippines of my aunt ‘Mal-Death’, whom I’ve blogged about around Mother’s Day.
He mentioned that his grandmother is buried next to my paternal grandfather and that my cousins – ‘Kitty Lee,’ ‘Toy-Rin,’ and ‘Teri-Rin’ – attended his parties. ‘Mal-Death’ drove the boy during high school too. And that he lives nearby in Union City.
When someone marries a Filipino, both sides are already kamag-anak (birth by-child or relative). It does not matter if you are blood related but the fact that both are no longer strangers but related in some special way.
But anytime a couple divorces, almost in all likelihood both sides do not take too much interest each other, by not attending parties, for example or completely ignoring the affected individuals.
Randy S. is truly one of my own because he, like me, does works hard and fast. Two of my other Filipino co-workers, who crossed trained him, know that he understands new data quickly and can navigate through our system with ease.
If I were the hiring manager, I would definitely keep this young lad, who is twenty-five years young and who has lots of working energy. He would make a great replacement for me when my time comes to leave the company.
My recent bouts with flare ups definitely signal to me that desk jobs do contribute to my ‘pain in the butt’. Moreover, I prefer not to do business with relatives. He and I work well together before we learned of our relation.
My problem is that he does communicate with my East Bay cousins more than that of Brat and me from the South Bay. He probably would report to them of my working life and other personal information I might happen to share.
Honestly, this complicates my leaving this company because Filipino who know other Filipinos tend to gossip to the extreme. I prefer privacy and my own relatives, whom I feel are strangers to me at best, should not be too well informed about me.
I know that somehow the world is vast. Yet the smaller ones revolve around the people with whom we work daily. Work is like a second home and this temp already seemed like family to me prior to today’s revelation.
I hope he stays to become my replacement because if he does that means I will definitely leave for my sake. There should no reason to fear or believe my cousins are aware of my personal Yahoo! 360 account, right?
Copyright © 2007 by Fluffy von der Flynn. All rights reserved.
Monday June 12, 2006 – 05:44pm (PDT) Edit | Delete | Permanent Link | 0 Comments
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