Before Venezuela

By Netnet Camomot

FOR a while there, Binibining Pilipinas-Grand International 2019 Samantha Ashley Lo was missing on her way to Venezuela for the Miss Grand International pageant. Gossip about her fake passport and deportation from Paris was passed on from one pageant fan to the next. How could a beauty queen representing Pinas have a fake passport? Hmmm.

Lo eventually posted on Instagram that she was detained at Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport for the lack of a “proper transit visa” and was returning to Manila to presumably secure one. 

To make this potentially long story short, she finally arrived in Venezuela, only to be eliminated in the early part of the pageant as she seemed not good enough for the Top 20. Blame it on the transit visa? Since the detention at the airport, deportation, and extended travel hours shortened her exposure to pageant fans in the international arena. Tsk tsk.

Lo now has the right to ask Pinas’ Binibini organizers, Anyare? As Pinas representative in the pageant, she had to master her signature walk, work out till her curves were in the right places, and memorize answers to possible questions in the Q&A. She was also expected to prepare her travel documents? Eh di wow.

Meanwhile, in Paris, scooter fishing is the new sport. Rental scooters are an easier way to zoom through the traffic in Paris and somehow the discarded ones end up in the river Seine. Gasp! 

That’s the same Seine that served as a romantic backdrop for the 2004 movie, “Before Sunset,” which starred Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy.

Nine years before “Before Sunset,” there was “Before Sunrise.” The sequel made the hopelessly romantic among us to wonder if Paris could inspire Jesse (Hawke) and Celine (Delpy) to finally commit to a long-term relationship since “Before Sunrise’s” romantic backdrop—Vienna—seemed not romantic enough for an and-they-live-happily-ever-after ending. 

Relationship gurus say communication is the key to a successful relationship. With Jesse and Celine always talking with each other in both movies, they already have the main ingredient to be together forevermore. But, are they? 

Wait, where are we? Oh. Scooter fishing. A Reuters piece quoted scooter fisherman Youva Hadjali as he described his new-found sport: “Usually you pull and you get it out.” Pull the scooter out of the Seine, that is, by using “a rope with a metal hook.”

Unilever has also discovered a new way to lessen the trash in Metro Manila’s rivers and creeks. The residents of Tondo’s Vitas are now encouraged to collect and exchange used sachets with products that are also in such sachets, through “Kolek, Kilo, Kita.” A kilo of empty sachets is equivalent to P10 worth of Unilever products that are also in sachets. The Philippine Daily Inquirer quoted Unilever’s Lavin Gonzales as saying that the program aims “to keep the plastics in a loop.” Can that loop include plastic people, too? Imagine them in a loop. 

Well, if scooter fishing and recycling sachets are not that interesting to you, the job of an intimacy director may spark your curiosity. In a Reuters piece, Jessica Steinrock, managing director of Intimacy Directors International, was quoted as saying, “We have stunt coordinators. We really take care of people in those kind of scenes. But scenes of intimacy have kind of been left a little too alone.” The same Reuters piece says that intimacy directors “ensure that actors are treated with respect, whether the script calls for a first kiss or a rape scene.” 

Film producer Harvey Weinstein, who has been accused of sexual abuse and harassment, is not an actor, though. Should a casting couch have an intimacy director, too? Hmmm.

Once upon a time, the joke during an earthquake was, there’s a couple having an, uh, intimate moment that can shake the bed or whatever they’re on top of.

But the recent earthquakes in Mindanao, such as the one yesterday morning, don’t inspire jokes anymore. Uptown Cagayan de Oro sometimes doesn’t feel earthquakes. But when it does, that could only mean the earthquake was strong enough to make that hill or mountain move. Had yesterday’s earthquake lasted longer, I would have stayed out of the house while writing this column.

As if climate change is not alarming enough, earthquakes are also reminders of how vulnerable we are in this tiny planet we live in. Yes, the Earth is cute, a mere dot actually, if viewed from another planet that’s many many light-years away. 

We step on dust that we don’t see. The Earth looks like dust, too, once it’s with the many other planets and stars in space. Imagine viewing our planet from the bottomless pit of the universe, surely problems will immediately disappear as we realize that our trials and tribulations are smaller than dust. As Mad’s Alfred E. Neuman loves to say, What, me worry? Which could have been Lo’s mantra, too, as her travel to Venezuela morphed into a maze.