Netnet Camomot
NO work today as Pinoys go trick-or-treating.
The long weekend, though, is not there for Halloween but for All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, with Pinoys traveling to their hometowns where they light a candle or two for their dear departed.
This is also the time when Pinoys look forward to feasting on biko. I haven’t asked my sis-in-law yet if she will continue experimenting with her biko recipe. If she will, then, sure na ang biko for tomorrow and the day after.
For now, I’m feasting on protein shakes, with chocolates as snacks whenever I’m home. So deprived. Huhu. This is the alternate diet: feast today, fast the next day, feast on the third day, fast on the fourth day…
At first, I blamed the occasional mild headaches on work and deadlines. Until I saw the protein shake—voila! My tummy now has tantrums. All the works—bawling like a baby, demanding, I want food, now na!
The weight loss challenge is real, the struggle constant and never disappears. I search for food in the room’s fridge, hoping to discover a pleasant surprise. Instead, I find two packs of choco-coated cookies, only to realize they’re both expired. Darn. The only food left there now is this can of SwissDream chocolates. Not as yummy as Royce, but they can silence the tummy’s tantrums.
If ever trick-or-treaters will knock on our door, we’ll give them, hmmm, protein shakes. Won’t exactly make this world a better place but at least will make this world’s inhabitants slimmer.
With Christmas merely 74 years away as of Oct. 12, the more the resolve to lose weight before Christmas parties start to…
Wait, 74 years? Gosh. But GMA 7’s tweet that day was indeed this: “Mga Kapuso, 74 na taon na lang, Pasko na!” Wow. How old will we be 74 years later?
Of course, GMA 7 made a mistake. It should be “araw,” not “taon.”
Typos are an editor’s worst enemies, and for that typo to be tweeted and shared, and go viral is worse than gaining a pound after a night of feasting on kare-kare, lechon kawali, pinakbet, iced tea, rice, blueberry cheesecake, and salted eggs with a dash of tomatoes. Yum!
The editor can be the nicest person in the world. He will make a byline look perfect with nary a complaint from him. If ever editors are like diet gurus who take before-and-after photos, a writer’s piece may resemble a page of war before, and peace after. That’s how bad the original piece can be. But you, the reader, won’t see that at all. All you’ll see is the finished product edited by the ever patient editor who sits in one corner with his laptop, and forgets about his life, family, and friends the whole day as he focuses on trying to make a byline look great.
Feasting on kare-kare, lechon kawali, etc. on a Friday night, however, will always have an obvious effect on the writer’s body. Editors won’t follow him around with a Photoshop machine, ready to “edit” his body from the harsh realities of weight gain. The mile-wide hips are now snugly contained in the XXL jeans that were kept in the bodega, with the hope they would never be worn again. But here they are. Again. Making a comeback a year later.
When celebrities hibernate, there’s a possibility they would live in a cave forever, never to be seen again. The comeback may happen many years later for, say, “Star Wars,” and their once younger role needs to resurface as its old version in the sequel. But the mile-wide hips love to hibernate only for a year. After that, good luck na lang!
Pinoys have no choice—hehe—but to hibernate through the long weekends that the Philippine government loves to declare as holidays. Today, Oct. 31, for example, is sandwiched in between a Sunday and Nov. 1, thus, holiday!
With last Friday as the last working day for October, business owners were rushing in and out of banks to ensure funds could cover payments due today. But there are no bank transactions today. So, why the rush? Hmmm, for their peace of mind. So they could enjoy the long weekend, confident the funds are doing fine, thank you.
The long weekend, though, means work for me. Unlike funds that could be gathered at a moment’s notice, editing contributions and preparing newsletters require more than a moment. And a lot of patience. Whenever I’m editing a piece, my thoughts are always with our Editor-in-Chief Herbie Gomez, on how he can edit all the pieces emailed to him daily.
Still, an editor should smile and not complain. I’ve accepted this responsibility and, therefore, I’m expected to deliver.
But the newsletters have to wait because writing this column has become my fourth priority, next to self, family and friends. This is how I breathe. If I don’t do this, all the other areas in my life will go as crazy as the mess in this room, the mess that remains messy because, in my list of priorities, the newsletters are above the mess. Once the newsletters are finished, that’s when I can sort through the mess.
Hmmm. I now understand why there are writers who write the way they write. Lack of time to sift through their first draft as they rush from one priority to the next. Here’s hoping I receive at least the second draft, the one whose apostrophes and commas are controlled, where present tenses don’t morph to past tenses and vice versa, and the date of the event is stated as is and not as “today” or “this afternoon.” It’s complicated already. Please don’t complicate pa more.
