charliephornia

I’m not Morgan Freeman driving a cranky white old lady around.  I’m more like Morgan Freeman driving around WITH a classy gorgeous young woman around.  Except I’m not black. Or a man.  Or a talented actor.  Just Morgan Freeman without the good parts.  You know, me.  Actually, scrap that analogy with the film.  It makes no sense at all except that I used the reference for a cool title or so I think.

For reals though, I am hired to drive around with or drive around for none other than Isabelle Daza herself.  Big fun and big fan!

How I got the job is not as interesting as how I found about it.  Newspaper?  No. Referral?  Definitely not.  How?  Twitter.  Yes, the microblogging/social networking site notorious for its concept of allowing people to bathe and marvel in each other’s self-absorption landed me the opportunity to get a job.  I had no idea of Isabelle’s interest in hiring until Ria mentioned it to me.  Somehow, that particular tweet got drowned in a sea of other tweets by the other 190 people I follow.  Interestingly enough, as soon as I tweeted “@isabelledaza: hai thar! i can has job pleez?! ktnxbai!!1!”, I got a mention from some other shady company offering me to apply as a receptionist for their company.  One e-mail, one quick interview, and four hours later, Isabelle hired me to be her personal assistant-genie/functional companion (job titles I gave myself) for twelve days.  I started Friday, December 3rd and I love it.

                                                Useless.

As her personal assistant, I report to and only to her.  As her genie, her wish is my exact command.  As her functional companion, I try to be useful and keep her in good company whenever I’m with her.  Note the word “try”.  Most people fantasize meeting their idols or admired celebrities and beforehand they’ve always thought about what they are going to say and how they are going to act around them so they can at least give a good impression to people they admire.  Rarely do people realize that fantasy.  Now that I get to (sorta), I get to see myself destroy the fantasy because I’m a complete and total dork. Awkward and self-conscious to say the least.  How am I doing?  Am I okay?  Do I appear over-zealous?  Do I look too eager?  While I was busy with my auto-self-assessment, I forgot one thing— my boss.  D’oh!  The questions I should have been asking were: What does she like?  What does she not like?  What are her hobbies?  What’s her favorite band?  What’s her favorite food? Her favorite color? Her favorite curse word?  But I couldn’t, I’m shy.

                                     Better than Googling.

To illustrate the embarrassment over-self-awareness causes, in the middle of my first day, I forgot my phone in her boyfriend’s pad when we dropped by to meet with a real estate broker.  We had left the building, got out of parking, passed three stoplights, and when she’d told me to get her sister’s number, frantically searching for my phone to discover it wasn’t there.  FAIL.  I wanted to whip myself crazy in front of her as my punishment for being so stupid.  Fortunately, she has no sadistic inclination to watch me suffer.  In fact, she was so cool about it and told me to chill.

Being the multi-tasker as I am, while I was nangangapa with my new job and borderline self-obsessing, I was learning new things about my boss.  Like, she can haggle her way in Divisoria for Christmas shopping almost better than the rest of us.  She got skillz cuz you know how hard it is to get a bargain from a Chinese vendor (not a stereotype if it’s true).  

Isabelle: “Magkano tong bag?”

Vendor (in front of Chinese boss): “350. Pero pwede na sa 300”

Isabelle: “250 nalang, ate.”

Vendor: “Hindi po talaga pwede, ma’am, eh”

Isabelle: “250 nalang at kukunin ko na.”

Vendor looks at boss. Boss says no.

Isabelle (after studying the bag and preparing to leave): “Wag nalang.  Nevermind.”

Vendor (after boss presumably nodding to her seeing Isabelle not giving a rat’s ass): “Ay!  Ma’am!  O sige po.  Okay na. 250 nalang.”

After buying said bag, she turned to me and said, “Alam mo, 200 lang talaga yung bag na yun,”.  Saan ka pa?  Mas alam pa niya presyo kaysa sa nagbebenta.

She also introduced me to a quaint little Thai fast food restaurant in the 168 Mall and it was good.  Friends, you have to check it out.

The last assignment of my first day was attending the finals of Survivor:Celebrity edition in the GMA 7 studio.  She didn’t really need me at all but suggested I should come since I did mention about my media aspirations.  Naturally, I agreed cuz I’m dedicated like that.  Seeing I was grossly under-dressed (short and a t-shirt) for a freezer-like studio (which it really was), she handed me Php1500 in Human Gift Certificates for me to change into something more appropriate. That, I did not expect and seriously I felt like a 7-year-old on Christmas Eve seeing Santa Claus proving that he does exist.  I really am almost out of words to express how genuinely nice, thoughtful, and gracious Isabelle is.  Plus, she’s smart and has a sense of humor.  I told her about my worship for Anne Curtis.  Coincidentally, at the end of the day, the cherry on top my big fat cake day, was Isabelle telling me that we’re going to wait for Anne’s sister outside Anne Curtis’s condominium.  Homaaaaaaaaaaaaygaaaaaaaawd.  I swear I was almost gonna spontaneously combust.  She added, “We’re here outside Anne’s condo.  So, you know, you can act stalker-ish or whatever,”.  LOL because totally!  The only thing more exciting Gloria Diaz, having a photo taken with Paolo Paraiso, seeing Bubbles Paraiso, standing behind Michelle Madrigal, watching Richard and Raymond Gutierrez, getting introduced to Nicole Andersson (who I knew looked hella familiar, that’s why I kept staring, I’m sorry. I watched you on TV when you were younger.), Ervic, Bea Soriano, and Carlos Concepcion, spotting Maxene Magalona, Akihiro Sato, Solenn and Erwan Heussaff, the whole cast of Survivor and a whole lot more, was that I got to wait outside Anne Curtis’s crib.  If I met her, I would probably die or break something just to consecrate the moment.

                                                     Me.

And this is all thanks to my boss.  Pardon my being star-struck when I was more like star-vaporized.

Photo or it didn’t happen:

                      She totes tweeted a photo of that parking structure!

That was just my first day on the job.

(I ripped off Cracked.com’s humor.  Sorta.  I can’t quite capture the timing yet. Or the humor.  I can even get the format.  I suck at HTML  But I can give links to that SNL skit where Sue is soooooooo freaked! here and the hot guy who lip-synched it! )