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BARRY Manilow, who’s now 73 years old, has finally come out of the closet. And that’s after having a nearly four-decade relationship with his manager, Garry Kief.

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I should open the closets in the room, too, in case some wannabe Manilow is trapped in there and is now ready to come out. But the ones eager to go outta there are the medium and large sizes of clothes that have not seen the sun for many months now. The culprit: my fats. The fats that left and came back. The fats that love to multiply. The fats that I’m trying to get rid of again.

The fats that I feel whenever I walk in a neighborhood that has pedestrian walkways connecting buildings whose entrances and exits have curfews that need to be memorized otherwise I have to go outside of these buildings and cross streets and wait for traffic to clear.

This is one vacation that requires a lot of walking since the distances between the Points As and Bs would be too near for a car.

We walked to the hotel after standing for hours at the Coldplay concert. That kind of walking. With more than 35,000 people looking for their cars or waiting for Grab cars, to join the looking and waiting would take longer than walking to the hotel. So, we walked.

We have this suki hotel nearby but it was fully booked by the time we bought the concert tickets. Apparently, there were people who booked rooms upon learning Coldplay would have a concert at MOA, even before the tickets were made available to the madlang pehpohl.

The hotel we finally reserved is also nearby but not that nearby, thus, requiring more walking.

And each time we walk around here, there’s the resolve again to lose weight. It’s a neverending story, eh?

And then, the morning after, there’s the free breakfast again at the hotel, with the “free” already paid for, of course, added on to its daily rate.

There are only a few hotels left with no free breakfast. At home, we usually have protein shakes for breakfast, so, having a real one for a change is a habit we’re not used to anymore. But we indulge, anyway, because it’s “free.”

This is one “vacation” trapped in quotation marks, with more time for work than a vacation. At night, I have to decide whether to sleep at dawn so I could work up to the wee hours, or sleep early and wake up at 5 am so I could at least rest during the required hours which I guess should be from 10 pm to 3 am?

On Friday night, it was work again instead of a TGIF. Made me promise that the next vacation will be a real vacation, with no work in between the walks.

Grab has made travel easier, though. Simply click on its app and…voila! It’s like having your own car and chauffeur. Suroy-suroy galore.

But traffic is now a given in any place that has “metro” attached to its name. If it’s aspiring to be a “metro,” most probably traffic has also begun to be a part of its daily routine.

The question asked of us is if Cagayan de Oro also has this kind of traffic. And our “yes” answer always inspires shock: Whaaaat?! There’s traffic in CDO?!

Way back in the early ‘80s, the City of Golden Friendship used to be this unknown place to any Manilan or anyone living in Luzon. They’d ask, How did you arrive here? I replied, By plane. Their shock: Nakasakay ka na ng eroplano?! Ah, hello. I wasn’t a Darna even then, so, to say, “Ding, ang bato!,” would have been a dream-on situation.

I guess most Pinoys now know where CDO is. Especially now that we have a president who continues to prefer staying in his hometown, Davao, and with Manny Pacquiao who’s also a Mindanaoan from General Santos City, and Pia Wurtzbach whom Cagayanons love to regard as their townmate.

And thanks to Laguindingan Airport which is where tourists land before going to Dahilayan, Camiguin, or Maria Cristina Falls.

There are still times, though, when Cagayanons are at a loss on how to reply whenever a tourist asks them about CDO’s specialties and tourist attractions. For me, CDO should be known for its lechon and pork ham, since we can’t claim Cheding’s peanuts and Vjandep’s pastel as our own. Cheding is a product of Iligan, and Vjandep is originally from Camiguin. But products do tend to converge in CDO since it’s on its way to becoming a metro city by 2025.

How old will we be by 2025? O my gas. Senior moment pa more.

But being senior has its perks—freedom is one of them. The freedom to not care what people think and say of you. Because by then, you’ll be more concerned about your recovering knee. Or, in Manilow’s case, there’s his coming out of the closet party.

One word from the senior: Keber. You stare with a poker face. Keber.

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