Netnet Camomot
IT’S the morning after, a non-working holiday, to give us all time to recover from the festivities which will continue until the Feast of the Three Kings.
With offices, clubs, and reunions opting to postpone their Christmas parties after the New Year to avoid the traffic and madding crowds, yes, festivities pa more.
This has been the season of pre-SM CDO2 Premier, the mall that will open downtown in mid-2017. And the fashionistas are already excited—Forever 21! Will Uniqlo be nearby? Yay!
The mall’s name, by the way, is, hmmm, confusing. The kind you have to memorize. SM Premier CDO? SM Premier CDO2? SM CDO Premier? Oh, it’s SM CDO2 Premier! Or is it? Gosh. Please simplify: SM Premier CDO is easier to remember.
But I gotta feeling even the most avid fashionista will avoid downtown a few days before Christmas Day 2017 once the new SM is there. And by “there,” we mean that area where Cagayan de Oro’s malls seem to have a daily convention among themselves. Gaisano, Centrio, Limketkai, and soon to open, SM Premier CDO, er, SM CDO2 Premier, all within that exclusive circle of CDO malls. Ororama should open a branch there, too, to have a perfect attendance in that daily convention.
An elevated walkway, like the one at Limketkai Center, will hopefully solve the traffic jams there. The walkway should connect the four malls so shoppers can park in one area and walk a la Rico J. Puno: “Namamasyal pa sa Luneta/Nang walang pera.” Hehe.
I wrote about that walkway years ago when the downtown SM was still a figment in a real estate developer’s imagination. Now that it’s opening soon, the more the city and the malls’ owners have to consider an alternative to driving around looking for a non-existent parking space. That is, if the potential shopper can drive around. Most probably, he’ll be stuck in traffic for hours until the “potential” in the “shopper” banishes to Siberia.
I avoided downtown last week while other shoppers still squeezed their way into the madding crowds there. If traffic could be horrendous pre-Christmas, how much more on the week right before Christmas Day. But there are people who I guess are much inspired by the Christmas spirit and would love to be in the midst of that madding crowd.
Meanwhile, I can’t even relate anymore with encounters with Christmas carolers. The neighborhood only allows carolers who send warnings, er, who inform a homeowner on the exact date and time they’ll be here. So, we are safe from mispronounced and even wrong Christmas carol lyrics. Your thought bubble must be this by now: Where’s the joy in that? Yeah, exactly. Haha!
Journalist Bong Fabe posted this on Facebook last Thursday: “‘Tis d season of Berting. To every person named Berting or any of its derivatives, enjoy your season as it comes only once a year.”
Berting? Well, a comment to his post explained the whole thing: “Just heard ‘Joy to the world the Lord has come let ev-Berting Berting!’”
Bong continued that song with his comment: “…and heaven and NATURE SPRING, and heaven and NATURE SPRING, and heaven and heaven and NATURE SPRING!”
He added, “Naka-libre og advertisement ang kompanya sa bottled water.”
And the wrong lyrics also happen in the US, based on the piece, “Whoops! Have You Been Singing the Wrong Christmas Carol Lyrics All Along?” by Lynsey Eidell, posted on www.glamour.com on Dec. 2, 2014: “Joy to the world! The Lord has gum.”
For “Silent Night”: “Round John Virgin, mother and child.”
“Deck the Halls”: “Don we now our days of peril.”
These lyrics are for old carols that are repeated every Christmas. How much more for chismis that’s passed around from one ear to another? The misinformation—o my gas. And the people gullible enough to believe in the misinformation—o my gas pa more!
There’s this parlor game called Chinese Whispers or Telephone where a sentence is written on a piece of paper. One game team member is asked to whisper it to the next in his team, who in turn whispers it to the next and so on and so forth, until the last is asked to blurt out the line. There’s a 100-percent chance that last member will blurt out the wrong words. The team who can say the words closest to the original line wins the game.
But chismis is not a parlor game. It affects long-term friendships. Which, of course, would prompt the outsider to ask, If you were friends, why did that friend start the chismis? Hmmm. Good question. But people who listen to that chismis won’t even ask that question. They will simply absorb everything and pass it on to the next, like what they’ll do with the parlor game.
There are people who are known to be the bearer of chismis, the kind who thrives in that, because they can then become the bearer of news, and, therefore, will look powerful to those who listen to their chismis. Facebook Live ang peg. After so many years of being the bearer of chismis, people who know them are expected to avoid them already. But still, people listen to their chismis and will pass them on to the next person. It won’t be a matter of who’s telling the truth anymore. It’s all about kissing a**es, hoping the powers that be will be happy with the chismis.
Christmas is the season of love. If you’re still listening to chismis and passing it on to the next chismosa, love has left your heart a long time ago. Better dig for love before it’s gone forever—now na.
