oh, and another

        One more thing, I forgot, in the other blog, when it was just starting, a blogger/ emailer/ viewer named “stuart-santiago” asked why the pseudonym “chattel” was used there and asked whether it meant “slave” because she said that’s what she saw in the dictionary, and also, movable property. (I couldn’t answer it then without giving away that  I was a lawyer, etc. and when you start answering questions you’ll be  giving away details when it was supposed to be an anonymous blog). So now, here it is. I forgot about it.      

    Answer:

            I wanted to use a legal term that was monosyllabic or maybe of two syllables; really short; so, I thought of all those words that, when i was a freshman in law school, i didn’t know of, and came up with that:  it’s Title XVI of the Civil Code (I copied and pasted it here, I visited the chanrobles virtual library for the copy-paste);

Civil Code of the
Philippines

Title XVI

Chapter 5

CHATTEL MORTGAGE
Art. 2140. By a chattel mortgage, personal property is recorded in the Chattel Mortgage Register as a security for the performance of an obligation. If the movable, instead of being recorded, is delivered to the creditor or a third person, the contract is a pledge and not a chattel mortgage. (n)

Art. 2141. The provisions of this Code on pledge, insofar as they are not in conflict with the Chattel Mortgage Law shall be applicable to chattel mortgages. (n)
   

        Not only was it a small word, it also sounded like a name. and you could play around with it, like “chat” “chatting” of course those are entirely different, but most laypeople didn’t know what it meant…so they’d look it up, etc… and my real name has letters ch__.

        Also, in law school, I had a professor who taught Legal Bibliography (at that time , that was what it was called, I don’t know what they call it now, I’m sure it’s been updated to Legal Digitized Bibliography, something. Anyway.) Prof. Myrna Feliciano brought the old books to class, she put them in a cart, the really old, dusty ones, Corpus Juris Secundum, etc., to show us what they looked like (when I think about it now, that was such spoonfeeding, she should have just whipped us to the library everytime and made us locate a particular topic in a particular book.J she has an Ll.M from Harvard so maybe that’s how they did it  there). At the end of one class, I forgot what the topic was now, she said, “in the olden times, women were considered property — movable property…like so much chattel….” then she chuckled/ laughed/ snorted the Myrna laugh then walked away with her cart of books. I don’t know why I remembered it then, I just did (it’s funny the things you remember in law school) so there,  “chattel”.