By Pennie Azarcon dela Cruz, Executive Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

THEY’VE always been known as a gracious people, so gracious in fact that the Thais can accurately boast that they’ve never been conquered by any alien nation. Yup, and that’s because they welcome invaders like farang tourists and proceed to tamp down the enemy’s inner Bonaparte with huge servings of tom yum and phad thai.

So imagine my surprise and amusement when the hubby, in preparation for our long overdue family vacation in Bangkok, fed the car’s DVD player with assorted “Speak Thai” tapes, and the translations turned out to be less than gracious. Well hey, they were downright vulgar! Okay, so the tapes were supposed to be Thai expressions, slang and idioms, but just where did the author get the impression we were going to stay in Pat Pong, Bangkok’s red light district? (We didn’t; too many night markets and too little self control). [Read the rest of this entry »]

By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

THERE are just some words which are downright sexy. Not sexy in the sense that they connote physical urges, but sexy in that they capture your fancy and induce obsession. There are words which are just supple, with the sound they make, even if you have no idea what they mean.

I’ve had that kind of relationship with words for a while now. In the middle of reading or listening, I will encounter a word, familiar or unfamiliar, what I can’t quite forget. Often it is a word derived from foreign languages, but sometimes, it’s just a damn sexy word. A consonant flashes like a glimpse of an impossibly long, graceful leg. The curve of a surprise vowel is like a momentary image of a flawless neck. Some words stun even from afar, their very silhouette evoking desire.

One word I remember obsessing about for a while was “fusillade.” I fell for this word the very first time I read it. It means, according to the ever-dependable The New Oxford Dictionary of English, it’s “a series of shots fired or missiles all thrown at the same time or in quick succession.” I would often slip it into whatever I was writing at the time; it was harder to use in conversation since it was French and I didn’t actually know how to pronounce it. I do now: it’s fju:zi’leid.

[Read the rest of this entry »]