Ambience

By Netnet Camomot

THE Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology did warn that last month’s earthquakes would have aftershocks till Christmas.

Monday night’s earthquake, however, was not an aftershock. The ground shook. It didn’t sway. And I hid under my desk for Duck, Cover, and Hold for a few seconds while the Earth shook. Then I ran downstairs when the shaking stopped and stayed outside the house’s main door for a while, only to realize we were the only ones who panicked in this neighborhood. The rest were either asleep or too confident that there would be no aftershocks.

Well, panic is a strong—or weak—word as it removes the minuscule intelligence still left in the minute brain. But since I managed to Duck, Cover, and Hold, I guess that wasn’t panic but instinct?

The earthquake did make me wish that Apollo Quiboloy, “The Appointed Son of God,” could indeed stop it.

With Christmas almost here, as evidenced by photos of fruitcakes already appearing on Facebook News Feeds, earthquakes and aftershocks are reminders of how fragile life can be in a year that passes by so quickly. It’s November—what have we accomplished so far?

In this world of influencers who post anything and everything on social media, including each of their daily meals, and while they’re devouring those meals via Facebook Live and YouTube, savoring a simple life away from cameras has become as rare as a blue moon.

Even Duck, Cover, and Hold has morphed into Post, Duck, Post, Cover, Post, Hold, and Post. Well, better that than F*ck, Hover, and Hold.

“Linog” and “Earthquake” were again the most popular posts at least in Cagayan de Oro on Monday night, as if the Cagayanon who didn’t post about the earthquake had to be reminded that there was an earthquake. And there’s the Cagayanon who slept through it all, waking up on Tuesday morning to a Facebook News Feed filled with photos of damaged buildings in Bukidnon, while his thought bubble asked, What happened?

If you’re now thinking of the Big One, para que? Should you now immigrate to a place with no earthquakes, no floods, no disasters of all kinds? Where is that place, by the way? The Garden of Eden?

Life is seldom a bed of roses, seldom served with a silver spoon on a silver platter. But living a simple life can have the closest ambience to that.

We were talking about ambience one day. The ambience in a house, in a condo unit, in a resto. It’s the one ingredient that can make a difference in one’s surroundings, and people are willing to pay for it. Some places are built like palaces but they have no ambience, or it could be this: your heart is not in there. Blah.

Ambience can be expensive if you think it’s dependent on the location, construction materials, furniture, decor, lights, and all the other physical features of a place.

If expensive is the only description for ambience, then a bahay kubo won’t have any ambience at all. But a bahay kubo is the ultimate home for simple living, and some social media influencers have even shown their bahay kubo where they eat their meals kamayan style with their family.

There are Erap jokes heartily dedicated to former President Erap Estrada, and one of them is this joke about him and his bodyguards having dinner at a classy resto. He then asked the wait staff for the bill, and upon seeing it, he asked, “How come this meal is so expensive?”

The wait staff replied, “Kasi, Sir, you’re paying for the ambience.”

After paying the bill, they left the resto, and that’s when he asked his bodyguards, “Sino ba sa inyo ang nag-order ng ambience?”

December is known not only for fruitcakes but also for floods in CDO, with the trauma from Sendong remaining as a painful reminder of the December 2011 disaster. The Cagayanon learned from that lesson and has since either built a two-story house in his flood-prone compound or transferred to an uptown address.

Can a bahay kubo withstand floods and earthquakes? Because if it can, then it also has resilience in addition to ambience.

Building a house is expensive even if it’s a bahay kubo, depending on one’s budget. Some families settled in CDO’s low-lying areas, confident floods would never reach them, but Sendong changed that.

Well, floods now happen even in uptown CDO, add to that the earthquake that affects all areas, both downtown and uptown and every place in between. Don’t worry, be happy, is a bit of timely advice amid the disasters because, well, s**t happens all the time. So, life moves on, we move forward, and that’s how it should always be.