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In the Philippines, street names and street signs often get changed. I’ve been a victim of this so many times already. Imagine being given directions to get to a particular street and you find out that that street practically does not exist!
Street signs are the same. One time it says “one way” and the next thing you know there’s a tiny line below it that actually says “From 6 am – 6 pm only” and there was no notice before it was changed.
Aside from being sources of frustration, however, street signs have become a source of amusement for us.
One sign here said “PED XING” (Pedestrian Crossing). While I’m sure that this is a common sign in most countries, particularly “XING,” abbreviations in signs are not very popular here. Words are spelled out. It took me a while to figure this one out because it was in the same size and format as those signs on streets named after famous (albeit dead) Filipinos, and it sounds like a Filipino name when you say it out loud. So I always thought it was a person until I stared at it one day and a light bulb went off in my head.
I found myself laughing. When I asked around, however, it turned out that it wasn’t just me. Other people were confused as well. My sisters and I decided to play a joke on my brother-in-law’s best friend.
We asked him if he knew what it meant and he said no. So we said it was the name of a national hero with Chinese roots, and that he was very famous, and didn’t he know that guy? He looked at us and he started nodding his head. He said he didn’t know the guy but as a Filipino, he should. We admonished him for not knowing his heroes, and then moved on to other topics.
We had forgotten about that incident. Recently we received an email from him. He had already migrated to New Zealand and the letter got us all laughing uncontrollably. He believed us all along and he never checked our story out. Imagine how irritated he was he saw the same sign in one of his travels.
We laughed and laughed and asked him another question. Do you know who RR XING is?
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