Where'd my voice go?

I woke up this morning to find out that I don't have a voice. My voice was already hoarse yesterday but I never expected that today I won't be able to make a sound louder than a whisper.

Major dilemma!

I had no problem riding the bus ... the bus conductor collects fares by approaching each new passenger. I could whisper and he'd still understand that I'm headed for Makati. When my stop was near, I raised my hand when the conductor asked if anyone would be going down at Buendia ... I was seated at the front so he saw me and told the driver to stop.

The problem was with riding a jeepney. I had to wait for someone to pay so that I could include mine with his/her fare. Then I had to hope that someone would be dropping off near Tordesillas St. which was my stop. All that just to avoid speaking. It hurt to speak and it's bordering on comical to be whispering.

When I entered the computer room at Ateneo for the CSST exam, the proctor asked my name, I motioned that I had no voice so he had to wait till I reach the front for me to whisper who I was. Comic relief before the exam, thank you very much.

According to Ben Gomez, who's always been the proctor for the BAP certification exams, statistically none of the first three to finish the exams have failed. I finished early, but dreaded to be among the first to stand up ... people notice that. During the FX exam in 1997, I waited for Cris to finish and then we left ... being among the first to leave. We passed and everyone had the impression that we were very confident to leave without waiting to hear the exam results ... er, we didn't know we were supposed to wait.

I decided to note down the gist of the exam questions instead as I bided my time. Very naughty, but at the time I thought it was something to do for kicks. When Ben decided to walk around, I packed up and hit the "finish" button on the computer then left.

Everyone in this week's batch passed. Irma of Bank of Commerce and Linda of BPI invited us to eat outside to celebrate. Pia had a lunch date, and I declined, foreseeing the probable difficulty I would have ordering and engaging in conversation without a voice. Iris didn't want to join them on her own so she also declined.

I headed home immediately and checked up on my SIMS .... did I mention that eversince buying that game last January 10 I had been addicted to the SIMS? So far I've got the "House Party", "Living Large", "Hot Date", "Vacation", and "Unleashed" expansion packs. I want to buy the "Superstar" and "Making Magic" expansion packs but I think I don't have enough gigabytes to spare the game from crashing.