Communicating

Netnet Camomot .

TODAY is the last working day before the long Easter weekend. Do you know where you’re going to? That’s four days of uninterrupted swimming, diving, eating, sleeping, island-hopping, with water as your best friend. The water that rehydrates and refreshes, not the one with coliform.

If you’re in the middle of a major decision-making process, this is the best time to ponder on its pros and cons, and internalize if indeed the feeling is right. Wrong choices will always feel heavy, dragging you endlessly on a rollercoaster ride you haven’t signed up for, until the aha moment appears: you should have listened to that initial gut instinct that said, No, in so many ways.

There are choices that feel light, so that the question hovering overhead is always, Okay, what’s the next step? This may need blinders to keep your focus on the goal at hand.

Success never happens overnight. Usually, it’s the result of many sleepless nights filled with toil, ensuring all the i’s are dotted and the t’s crossed, with the commas, colons, and semi-colons adhering to the rules for real estate investment: location, location, location.

There are many forms of success—the most popular of course is money.

You can also sit on the bathroom’s throne and shout, Success!, after each morning ritual.

When people begin to recognize you, is that also another form of success? The recognition depends on what you’re now known for. Many Pinoys can recognize Janet Lim-Napoles for the worst reasons. Notoriety is not the kind of infamy people prefer.

“Notorious/Notorious/You own the money, you control the witness.”

Duran Duran sang that, by the way. The millennial may ask, Duran who? And that’s how he learns about the first step to success—by being curious about history.

The generation gap is alive and kicking once the music plays but there comes a time when the favorites of parent and child shall meet. For me, that happened while listening to a new version of Air Supply’s “Two Less Lonely People in the World” being performed live by a singer in Cebu.

Air Supply was one of Dad’s favorite bands, we had no choice but to listen to their songs the moment we woke up. Who would have known then that many years later, his daughter would finally learn to appreciate one of their songs. “All Out of Love,” the musical featuring Air Supply’s songs, is coming soon to a theater near you. Daddy would have loved to watch that.

Music is one of life’s simple pleasures, with some songs evoking memories unless you now have selective amnesia. A few weeks ago, on my way to an office in downtown Cagayan de Oro, Rivermaya’s “Himala” was on the radio, and that’s exactly what I needed that day—a miracle. I’ve learned, though, not to force things to happen. If it’s meant to be, it will happen.

Unless you’re consciously avoiding something before it can happen. You reach a certain age when no one can drag you to a feast of ampalaya omelette, which is the perfect recipe for Good Friday—no meat! But for one whose dinner is almost always tinolang manok or tinolang isda, the required diet for Lent may no longer apply. He’s already abstaining anyway.

It’s a four-day vacation with a limited menu on Good Friday. Therefore, no lechon, even if you’re in Carcar, Cebu. But no Facebook is the ultimate sacrifice.

There’s now a #leavefacebook movement after the shocking reveals on how the social networking site became the source of the campaign team of then US presidentiable Donald Trump in extracting data on potential voters, which was done through a personality quiz app that might look as innocent as your sweet sixteen-year-old cousin.

I’m a fan of grammar quizzes—I don’t think these are used to analyze political leanings, unless they’re for the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) whose latest boo-boo was the grammatically wrong press IDs for the Malacanang Press Corps that of course saw the errors and posted them on social media. Few days before that, they released the transcript of a radio interview of one of President Rody Duterte’s impersonators and presented it as, yes, the president himself. Oh, my. This is one communications group that has to learn more about communicating. Four words for the PCOO: You had one job!

The grammar police panics when he sees a misplaced comma or a lost semi-colon. He hyperventilates when the word “last” is attached to a complete date—i.e., last Dec. 31, 2017. Or when a piece says, on 2017, when it’s supposed to be, in 2017. Or it says, in Tuesday, instead of, on Tuesday.

Let’s try the last one: We met in Tuesday. By merely listening to that, you already know it’s wrong. Brrrrr. So, for Malacanang’s communications team to commit mistakes in the grammar department is simply, whew, there’s no excuse.

A column doesn’t happen overnight, too. The writing may take a maximum of one hour on good days, but it’s the result of life’s ups and downs. You can’t write about what you don’t know. And that’s perhaps what Trump’s campaign team was also thinking as they tried to gauge a Facebook user’s character and personality through a quiz app, convinced that your answers would reveal who you are.

Mark Zuckerberg has apologized for Facebook’s failure in preventing the use, misuse, and abuse of its users’ data. And he’s referring to 50 million users. That’s already the population of a country. Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben once said, “With great power comes great responsibility,” and that’s so true for Zuckerbeg, for Facebook, and for Malacanang’s communications team.

Pieces that end up looking easy have actually undergone several drafts and rewrites, and only a deadline can stop the writer from revising it further. That’s why authors would stay in a place far, far away, so they can write without the distractions of daily life. Since most of us can’t afford such luxury, at least we can ensure we’re writing “in December,” and not “on December.” These are simple rules. No need for a doctorate degree.

Wait, why are we talking about grammar this Holy Week? We should focus on sacrifice instead. Hey, priorities!

And my priority for now is still spring cleaning. Ho-hum. Let’s not talk about that anymore.