Nick came to the apartment yesterday to do homework. As he and Mack have done previously, he asked to go downtown to buy specific educational posters for images and captions to use in his homework.

I don’t know why they can’t rely on their textbooks and schools’ library books and municipal library books.I think that their elementary school library’s offerings may be lacking, and the boys likely don’t have library cards from Baguio City’s public library…

I offered the use of my computer, asking, “Can we find that on the internet?” Nick replied, “I don’t know.” Maybe he doesn’t know that almost everything is on the internet (try Wikipedia and GoodSearch).

Perhaps he found searching too much of a hassle last time (food groups), as he isn’t accustomed to using a keyboard or mouse and isn’t internet-savvy. He’s unfamiliar with browsers, isn’t very fluent in English language, doesn’t know how to type the best queries in Ask, About, GoodSearch, Google and Yahoo.

I’m not trying to disparage the boy in public. I’m just saying that he doesn’t know his way around a keyboard, isn’t adept with a mouse, isn’t familiar with a Mac GUI, doesn’t know how to use browsers and search engines well, and he’d rather buy a poster for 6-8 pesos.

Dominic and I had just returned from downtown Baguio City when we found Nick and his friend Pedring awaiting us in the garden. So I wasn’t keen on hiking back to Tuding Road then awaiting another jeepney ride into the city. Dominic went indoors and resumed work on his PC, and I took Nick (and Pedring) to the CID stores along Session Road to hunt for particular educational posters. I bought a couple of posters and two pens.

We ate dinner, then hiked up Session Road to SM City mall to look at the posters in National Bookstore. We didn’t find a ‘Filipino ethnic groups’ poster that Nick wanted to buy. We had seen in the stores two ethnic-group posters, but I don’t think they had all Filipino ethnic groups. One may have been the major races or ethnicities of Asia. I wasn’t looking at all of them; Nick was.

Nick is almost 12 years old (August 2), so he can go downtown alone some day. I want to enroll him in Taekwondo class in Ultimate Fitness Center Taekwondo. He’ll have to travel alone after I take him the first few times.

Maybe on weekends Mack could accompany him to the city if he has to do collaborative homework with classmates in the city. Or on weekdays, perhaps Mack could accompany Nick to home.

These people aren’t big on communication, cooperation and coordination, though. Well, some people. I don’t have any sense that Mack takes Nick under his wing.

I have no inkling that Mack would like to escort his brother to- or from classes, regularly or incidentally. Maybe because they’re ‘only’ half-brothers…?

Nick and Pedring stayed here past 10 p.m. drawing illustrations for their grade-six science class assignment then hustled downhill a mile in the darkness to their homes in Baguio Gold.