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Traits of a Leader

In the Philippines, several new words have been coined, words that have gained national attention and usage, and most of these slangs are formulated by gays no less. The typical Filipino gays are primarily those who rampantly do neologisms, fabricating words that do not only entertain by the comical tone or sound of them but also to serve as word codes, esoteric to their advantage, so to conceal the words that may be so offensive or disgusting to the other listeners, as Filipino gays, the typical ones, tend to be very vulgar and uninhibited.

Pilar Pilapil for pills…

Karmi Martin for karma…

jombag for punch…

tsugi for dead…

echosera, an interjection…

and char, a yet another trivial interjection…

Gay as I am, I admit there still are gay slangs that I don’t quite understand. But there are those that I frequently use. Like the two last gay words above. And mind you, I didn’t expect that the last word can enthrone me to become a president.

Thursday afternoon, by 1 PM, we pulled out from our hospital duty to attend a meeting by all the hospital trainees in Davao Regional Hospital. The meeting was called for to have an election for the new set of officers for all the trainees for this batch (3-month training).

Our presider, a nurse training officer, asked for someone to act as the temporary secretary to assist her in the election. My co-E.R. trainees raised my name, and it really would be a shame if I would just take it up as my the nurse training officer was my former teacher in college. So I took the job.

The position of president was then officially opened by her. To my surprise I was nominated by my friend. And there were five of us nominated, with me the second one. Madam presiding officer requested every nominees to introduce themselves. There were those that gave speeches, long and short, and as the third one to introduce myself (as one nominee readily volunteered to introduce first), I also gave my speech, but it was rather short, after saying who I am, where I graduated, blah blah. So what was the speech of mine that paved way for me to become the president?

“All I can say is char!”

Those were the words. I don’t know if those words made me win the position, or plainly my being comical, or that they see a leader in me (is it that obvious because I really was a leader at school several times), I really don’t know. All I know now is that it’s funny they voted me on for the position. Are leaders born or made? Does leadership reflect by itself on you even when you do not tell the people of your previous leadership careers? Ah, too many questions about leadership. too many answers to search for.

And as for the gay words, yes, they are powerful. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have been widely used by Filipinos by now, girls, boys, females, males, the young and the old…