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Maybebe pays for the house’s rent for three grand.  When she first moved in, the place was empty.  No TV.  No bed.  Nothing.  I moved in to her house last October, 2006 the time I asked her we should buy an electric fan. I can’t sleep without an electric fan.  That was our humble beginning.  We had to sleep on makeshift bed made of cardboard boxes covered with a comforter.  We have no money to buy things.

It’s also her first few weeks in the job as administrator, while I had my at least three months at work as software engineer.

By this month, I borrowed money from my company’s local loan association and started buying our first few appliances.  The watching machine, the refrigerator, tv, rice cooker, and of course, my first chopping board.  We name our applicances like our friendly neighbors.  I call the refrigerator as Banonoy.  He’s a Sharp buddy ref.  The rice cooker is Indira, after maybebe’s friend.  Indira is a freebie when we bought Banonoy.  Tv is aptly named Tebe, and the dvd player is Debede.  The washing machine is Bakekang.  I don’t know how sane it is to be naming one’s appliances, but it sure does feel like you have many members in the family. 

Naming your appliance I guess, is a way of battling the loneliness in this urban jungle.  Everyday when you go to work, you sit beside a total stranger in the bus, or race to the escalator with someone you don’t even say hi with.  In the movie Castaway (2000) Tom Hanks talks to Wilson, a volleyball painted with a face out of charcoal to survive the odds of being in desolate island. 

Or maybe, I just get a kick out of calling cold metal appliances with a name.  I have a motorcycle in our province Cagayan and my friends call him Hulog.  Hulog meaning it is being paid installment for three years at the motorshop.