Filipinos are Efficient

I wear a hearing aid.

These things pick up a LOT of stuff you wouldn’t know I can hear. They sometimes don’t pick up what the person I’m actually talking to is saying, but some of those low key secretive murmurings amongst yourselves from somewhere behind me? Blackmail time!

Recently, there was one such “disturbance in the Force” I picked up from somewhere behind me at the mall: a woman sneezing.

There was nothing really out of the ordinary about it. It wasn’t even that close by. But there was definitely something unusual about it, cognitively dissonant enough to catch my attention, breaking through my constant state of awe and wonderment at how many people just hang around the malls here at all hours of the day.

Her sneezes sounded somewhat normal. But there definitely was something off about them. Something … weird. So I listened more closely.

She wasn’t sneezing the Filipino ah-ching! Nor was it the American ah-choo! Then she let out one large loud one, and I finally figured it out:

Ah-BLESSYOU!

Makes sense and works for me, actually. I think I’ll start doing that now …