Maybe You Should Have Slashed Your Wrists

However I forgot that the hub was in Dubai and the majority of the OFWs (overseas Filipino workers) were stationed there. The duty-free shop was overrun with Filipino workers selling cell phones and perfume. Meanwhile, I wanted to slash my wrist at the thought of being trapped in a plane with all of them.

While I was on the plane (where the seats were so small I had bruises on my legs), my only consolation was the entertainment on the small flat screen in front of me. But it was busted, so I heaved a sigh, popped my sleeping pills and dozed off to the sounds of gum chewing and endless yelling of “HOY! Kumusta ka na? At taga saan ka? Domestic helper ka rin ba?” Translation: “Hey there? Where are you from? Are you a domestic helper as well?” I though I had died and God had sent me to my very own private hell.

On my way back, I had to bravely take the economy flight once more. This time I had already resigned myself to being trapped like a sardine in a sardine can with all these OFWs smelling of AXE and Charlie cologne while Jo Malone evaporated into thin air.

All in all, it’s been a pretty good summer. Jetting from the Aegean Sea to the Pacific may sound a bit pretentious until you wake up in economy class smelling like air freshener.

The open-minded writer who made the tolerant statements above has finally resigned from her job, after doing what only Ninoy Aquino and Manny Pacquiao were able to do in the recent past - unite a horribly divided people. Unlike the latter two, however, Malu Fernandez was able to do just that by directing the collective ire of Filipinos everywhere towards herself, and may have actually accomplished what only one person since 2003 has accomplished: become the most hated woman in the country.

She initially tried to answer the negative feedback by dismissing the backlash as the result of the failure of the reader to "get the meaning of [her] acerbic wit." She also said that she was only being true to herself.

The bottom line was just that I had offended the reader’s socioeconomic background. If any of these people actually read anything thicker then a magazine they would find it very funny…I obviously write for the certain target audience and if what I write offends you, just stop reading.

(Obviously, she assumed that the people asking for her head on a plate are all idiots, and disregarded the possibilty that they may have, in fact, read more than the usual fare of Hi! and Yes! magazines. Bad move.)

Fernandez later admitted being insensitive and offensive, as she apologized to the OFWs for whatever she had written.