Last week, local airline Cebu Pacific sent a press release for publication at my Dad's newspaper. The title of the item was "@cebupacificair 2nd Most Tweeted Airline." I placed it at the paper's last page.

When my father got hold of the printed paper today, he immediately called me up.

Dad: "Did you forget to edit the news stories again?" 
Me: "No, I didn't. Why?"
Dad: "Coz the title of the Cebu Pacific story is gibberish."
Me: "What? Wait, let me check my copy."(I grabbed the paper and flipped to the back page where I placed the airline story). "Uhm, no, Dad, that's not gibberish."
Dad: "But what is that first word with the symbol? That doesn't look right."
Me: "Yes, Dad, it does. That story is about Cebu Pacific being popular in Twitter. You know, like Facebook. That's how Twitter addresses are spelled."
Dad: "Oh ok." He puts down the phone. 

After a while, he calls me up at work again:

Dad: "I looked up twitter in the dictionary. It means 'to chirp'. Is that what Twitter is?"
Me: "Uhm, yeah, sort of."
Dad: (sighs) "I think I have a headache now." He puts down the phone. 


Like most of his age group, my Dad is wary of technology. He refuses to accept my offer of giving him a cellphone because he says he won't be able to use it anyway. He refuses to touch a computer because he says he doesn't understand what it does. 

The first few weeks after we got digital cable were torture for him and my Mom. They would end up bickering as they argue over which buttons to press and who pressed the wrong button. They both ranted for days about why our cable station had to switch to digital when the analogue was doing perfectly fine.

He, however, knows the website addresses of the news stations on TV, since the newscasters always say them at the end of the news program. 

He'd also make jokes out of them, like making up his own website addresses. My favorite is when I'd ask him what's the website add of a certain news program and he'd jokingly say: "WWW dot ipotkabayo dot com."Never fails to make me laugh out loud. 

If you're Ilonggo, you'd know what it means. For my non-Filipino readers, ipot kabayo literally means horse's poop. Ipot=poop. Kabayo=horse. 

Poor Dad. I can only imagine how strange the world is becoming to him. 

3 comments:

  1. Lol yeah, tell me about it. My dad doesn't even know that I created a Twitter account for him and it's now collecting dust. :/

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  2. Haha! You just gave me an idea. I could create a Twitter account for my Dad too and tell him that he's now "chirping" online. That would freak him out I think lol.

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  3. If you have a family-dedicated laptop / computer at home, you can set him up on TweetDeck for ease of use. :)

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