Over Here

Taking a break from last week’s hectic workload and schedule, I decided to have dinner by myself at a Japanese fastfood in our building. It was already close to 8pm, so there were no other customers in the place when I arrived.

I was happily eating a bowl of something-don (I forget now) when two women entered. One of them ordered for take-out. Then the two of them proceeded to sit at the table immediately next to mine, going against the Law of Empty Seats At A Public Place. The LESAAPP states that in a roomful of empty seats, two strangers will occupy seats that are far apart from each other. Normally I’d ignore them but then they started talking, not bothering to adjust the volume of their voices.

I soon gathered that one of them (the one who ordered take out) was seeing a married guy who’s separated from his wife. She recounted how she struggled with seeing this guy. I didn’t really bother to catch the exact words she said, but the following line she uttered so caught my attention that I had to pretend I was sending an SMS to someone when in fact I was saving her quote in my phone. She said: “We’re Christians so we live by the Bible. But we’re mature adults too, so may mga pangangailangan din.” Then she proceeded to tell her friend how she justified going with a married man by saying that the man’s wife also fooled around.

While she was blabbing, I kept thinking, “Is this for real? Is this a set-up? Am I in Wow, Mali!?” I tried to keep a straight face and avoided looking at their direction.

Then her take-out arrived. They both stood up and left, leaving me wondering and with a blog entry.