Netnet Camomot
LAST Sunday was the first day of the rest of your life. Well, that’s how it felt.
And on the first day of the rest of your life, you broke three New Year’s resolutions: 1. Post less on Facebook; 2. Healthy lifestyle to focus on fish, veggies, protein shake, sleeping early, and siestas; 3. Read books.
And when I say, Post less, that means, Post nothing. What a waste of time, huh? To force-feed FB friends, who still follow you, with what’s going on with your life. We survived without FB and selfies before, why can’t we now?
But to not post a photo of the yummy paksiw was too hard to resist. It was that yummy, thanks much to my sis-in-law’s yaya. I was having that paksiw up to the second day of the year. Oink.
Yesterday was the first working day of the year, and it also became my first back-to-protein-shake day for the year. Then, there was our EIC Herbie Gomez texting, “Back to normal na ang sked. Column?” Hmmm. His text was not exactly back to normal, though. Usually, he would simply text, “Column?”
Columnists still have to obey deadlines, and holidays may require writing at least two columns in one day. Those could be official non-working holidays, and my own holidays. I have this habit of writing all columns before leaving for an out-of-town trip, to avoid writing, say, while comparing my weight with a whale shark’s at Oslob. Or while wondering if this nativity scene inside Puerto Princesa’s Underground River is simply a group of corporate guys having a meeting.
Besides, the rule for tours is to savor each moment, and to capture that moment with the minute brain’s memory instead of taking videos and missing the sense of adventure such tours offer. You may insert the writing while hopping from one adventure to another, but who has that much energy? Better savor everything, including the scenery as viewed from a plane, chopper, boat, bus or van, since that view can pass by so fast, you blink and, oops, the rural scenery you saw a second ago is now a skyscraper with two words: “Trump Tower.” Wow. You have hopped from South Korea to New York. How about that for world travel?
That tour is only good for the weekend, a week or two weeks, so, better savor each moment. If you’re staying there for six months, then you’ll have time to write in between. But if you’re there as a journalist to cover the tour, then, of course, you have to write about it and e-mail the piece and highesolution photos with captions to your editor ASAP.
It’s quiet here again in the neighborhood. Birds are chirping, someone is sweeping dry leaves off the street. It was not this quiet when the clock struck twelve for the new year. There was the SOP noise—fireworks, firecrackers, honking car horns, and my niece yelling, Happy New Year!
We used to buy 12—or is that 13?—round fruits and display that on the dining table. Until we were tempted to simply buy a bunch of grapes and consider 12 of them as the lucky ones. Nowadays, supermarkets have learned to sell that, all nice, pretty, and cozy in a nice basket. No need to squeeze yourself into the madding crowd at Cogon.
There’s no harm in following traditions and beliefs, but having a family and a quiet place to write in are the best gifts of all, with or without the lucky fruits.
There’s no quiet in other places in the world—families losing members to war and even to extrajudicial killings. 2017 won’t make any difference to their lives unless the whole world will protest and fight for peace.
Fight for peace? Should we plead for peace talks instead? Well, isn’t that fighting for peace, too?
The victims of extrajudicial killings could have avoided their fate had they followed a healthy lifestyle—no drugs. But their families insist they were not into drugs, or have stopped using drugs, and have even surrendered through Tokhang. Ask another family whose member has been in and out of rehab, if they’re absolutely sure he has stopped using. Do they follow him around 24/7?
Last November, Californians in the US voted to make legal the recreational use of marijuana for those 21 and above. Shabu will never reach that point of legalization. But then, people are allowed to eat, drink, smoke cigs—these may not make them crazy, but fat, drunk, and candidates for lung damage. People have the freedom to choose their poison. If they choose shabu and other substances that can make them crazy, people around them should be ready to control that madness.
We’re hoping that madness is limited to vandalizing iconic signs. The Hollywood sign morphed into Hollyweed on the first two hours of January 1, 2017. The guy, who made it possible with tarps, was most probably sober, for he could not have climbed up those gigantic letters if he were dead drunk.
But in New York, before the iconic ball drop at Times Square to welcome the new year, Mariah Carey forgot her songs’ lyrics, prompting people to regard her duh performance as the most fitting goodiddance kick for 2016.
I was planning to spend the last week of 2016 posting photos on our Rotary district’s official FB page. Kind of a looking-back on the year that had been. But, like New Year’s resolutions, that plan went pfft. There’s this meme that says, “The first rule of 2017…never talk about 2016.” So, there’s no use now of posting those old photos. Yes, better start reading books. Now na. But in the next few days, I may post those photos, anyway. Oh, well. Happy New Year!
