In the Philippines, never try to watch anything that you actually care about seeing in its entirety. This is a lesson that I’ve learned the hard way over the past few months. It is not uncommon here to have cable TV, especially among middle-class families, and while it’s nothing like the 200+ channels we get at home cable here does afford BBC World, Discovery Channel, Disney Channel, HBO & Cinemax. In addition to being lucky enough to have cable at my house, I’ve been granted the extra special privilege of having a small television in my room. (I know, you’re all devastated- thinking I’ve been “roughing it” but I do have some wicked cockroaches that have awakened me by crawling on me while I sleep and there is the mutant spider in the bathroom.) Anyway, even if there was no cable, the television is wonderful. It provides enough of “home” to make me feel a little less like a complete alien here- tonight I watched the premier episode of Grey’s Anatomy, and Desperate Housewives will be on on Sunday (CSI, CSI: Miami & Sex and the City also are on my list of things to do on weekday evenings). It may sound a little like cheating, but once I move out of here I doubt I’ll have a TV and I’m enjoying it while I can.
Back to the point of this whole story, I believe that Murphy’s Law is very much a way of life here. If something can go wrong, it will. If you’re really into a craptacular movie on Cinemax, the power will go out or the cable will get a scrambled or lost signal exactly when you reach the climax. This is guaranteed. Sometimes it will just appear like the guy at the cable station has decided to putz around with the remote control and pushed the wrong button, so you watch someone scroll through various menus in an attempt to get back to what you were watching- but not before switching over to a Korean game show for a few minutes.
This is not just a television phenomenon. Movies in the theater are also prone to interruption. A few weeks ago, when we were in Los Banos for our swearing-in, a large group of us went to see the new X-Men movie. Somewhere, mid-way though the movie the picture went out. It wasn’t until one of the other volunteers got up and went to the booth to talk to the operator, after several minutes of sitting in the dark theater, that any action was even taken. At home people would have been at the manager’s desk complaining and asking for free movie vouchers faster than you could say “hey, wha’ happen?” I can’t remember if this was before or after I heard the cat meowing from the end of the aisle, causing me to lose all interest in the movie and look for said cat. I’ve also heard that it’s very common to get home with a brand new, completely legal VCD purchased at the pirate movie booth in the market only to find that you’ve only got half a movie. This is particularly tragic when you happen to be a very isolated volunteer and the pirate movie booth in the market is the market in the big city 5 hours away!
And to further prove my point, as I type this, I’m glad that I have a laptop and not a PC- because the power has gone out at least 3 times in the last 10 minutes and it doesn’t look like it’s coming back on any time soon. The main tragedy of this situation is that when the power’s out, my fan doesn’t work and I get extremely cranky. And on that note, I’m going to bed and I’m going to think cool thoughts.