Vocabulary #1.

re·sil·ience  [ri-zil-yuhns, -zil-ee-uhns]

· ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like; buoyancy.

They say that Filipinos are resilient people. Whether we face the wrath of nature or disastrous family feuds, we immediately smile, pick ourselves up, and move on.

Thank goodness my belongings are resilient, too.

The Nokia

I swear, my phone is dying on me. However, no one will believe me anymore--because I've been saying this for at least two years now.

At first, the problems were simple. I couldn't call. It was nothing that repeatedly restarting the phone couldn't solve.

Then, my phone decided that it wanted to die every single time I got a phone call longer than two minutes. The solution was a no-brainer: Get a new battery.

For a brief period of time, there was a phase wherein I thought I had sent a text message, only to find the message in my Draft folder hours later. No wonder no one would reply to my text messages--no one ever received them. I don't know how this particular problem fixed itself, but thank goodness it hasn't happened in a while.

One afternoon about two months ago, an annoyingly loud beeping sound came from my phone. I checked to see what was wrong, and I saw an extremely threatening GENERAL SYSTEM ERROR message repeatedly flashing on the screen. After taking the battery out and putting it back in a number of times, the phone finally worked again--contacts, messages and photos all still intact.

Since then, I have only been encountering minor problems, such as the phone's memory card not reading properly. It's no biggie. Restarting the phone or taking out the battery always seems to solve the problem.

Maybe my phone knows that I have no money to replace it? In a way, my Nokia seems to be doing its own version of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, except the wolf doesn't ever seem to arrive. Phew.

Considering that I've had my phone since 2007, and that I've dropped it at least a thousand times, I'm not surprised that it's acted the way it has--but still. I'd rather it not die just yet.

The Nike

Now, the life of my rubber shoes is nowhere as long or as dramatic as my previous story... but my shoes deserve just as much credit for their wonderfully long and persistent life.

I don't remember the year I got my rubber shoes, but I'm pretty sure that they've been hitting the pavement for at least four years. No, err, not exactly regularly--but just the same, it's been a pretty long time.

Lately, I've decided to use my shoes again. However, it seems that they don't want to be used anymore.

My shoes have finally decided to cry out for help. Their cries are now getting so loud, that both the left and the right shoes have ever-so-slightly opened their mouths in despair. There they go, flapping their mouths open and close, gasping desperately for air with every step I take.

This brings me to my second vocabulary word for the day:

Super glue 

–noun

Trademark. a brand of glue, containing a cyanoacrylate adhesive, that is quick-drying and strong.