Text Discoveries

“Ang profound naman ng discovery mo,” was Pastor Bong’s response to my text message. The limits of SMS messaging is not enough to show the sarcastic tone in his message – though knowing Pastor Bong, I can tell for sure that it was (hehe). But that text was not the discovery in itself – for the real discoveries came in with responses I received. Let me explain.

Having been swamped with so many social gatherings and interactions over the week, I decided to spend time alone in Makati on a Sunday afternoon. While having a solitary dinner at Greenbelt 1, I felt I needed some conversation. So I decided to use the unlimited Globe-to-Globe text promo I availed of the day before. So I typed in this message:

“M here havng diner alone at Thai in a Box in Greenbelt.
Solitude is good, but after a wyl, u realyz havng company is beter. Hehe.”

I then sent it to a dozen of my friends, partly to find out how they would respond to my musings, and mostly to just use up my free alone time and maximize my unlimited Globe-to-Globe text. Here are their responses...

• Four of them thought I wanted company that particular time, and even said they'd join me for dinner had they been free that time. These responses really caught my attention, since I did not intend to invite them to join me. Knowing the hospitable nature of us Filipinos, however, I guess we simply can read between the lines and are gracious in offering our company to someone who seems to need it.
• Three people asked “Why are you alone?” – two of them were simply curious what drove me to spend alone-time on a weekend, while the other one found it unusual for me to have dinner alone in Greenbelt.
• Two out of twelve knew that the text was just one of the outlets of my self-expression: Olive (who, perhaps having known me for almost a quarter of a century, just knows that it was one of those days when I would text my thoughts out loud); and Pastor Bong (whose response made me laugh out loud because of its sarcasm)
  
• And, there was one very different response – Jun, one of my cellgroup mates in IVCF, said: “Hehe… wrong send!”

Now I feel like I have done a text survey. I guess, I now have shifted to the researcher mode, and published a small research work on my blog.

By the way, it might interest you to know that I did a quota sampling of the respondents who were chosen based on their level of intellect and profundity (read: those whom I texted are people whom I consider intelligent and profound). And of course, they have to be a Globe subscriber. Hehehe...