Southern Exposure

Next week is gonna be hectic. Lemme see... week starts on Tuesday (Monday is a holiday, Allah be praised!) where my patience will undoubtedly be tested courtesy of a project I launched. This means half of the lab will be mobilized for one, yes, ONE client. Then Wednesday is specially reserved for the boss, granting him yet again another opportunity to deflate my ego and be aware of my lowly and pathetic place in the food chain. Thursday starts early for that trip to Northern Mindanao, and by Friday night I'd be hopping aboard a bus for Southern Mindanao. That seven-ish hour trip should give me ample time to finish this book I'm reading.

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And speaking of the book I'm reading, by chance, "Songs of Selenda" came into my grubby hands. Too bad for the owner, the subtitle says "blah blah blah Sulu", and being a poseur Tausug of the Sulu archipelago, deemed it my ancestral right to defer the return of the book until whenever. Yes, as my name is my birthright, anything to do with "Sulu" shall pique some amount of curiosity on my end.

So why poseur Tausug? Well, my dad is Tausug. I on the other hand was born in the Visayas, not a word of Tausug in my vocabulary and has only been to the historic island of Jolo only once in my lifetime, staying for only 48 hours. As to the famed bravery and battle-readiness of the Tausug people, well unless the enemy could be maimed and subdued by either a bug spray or my sandals... I prefer to run the other direction. Obviously, the force isn't anywhere near me. I am even convinced that my surname, Junghan, might actually be synonymous with "speeding chicken" in the dialect.