Kaldero

Netnet Camomot .

LAST Tuesday night in Cebu City, the hotel’s resto-bar singer-guitarist was performing “Time in a Bottle” and I couldn’t help notice: Uh, sayop iyang chords. Hehe.

This is what happens to the wannabe musician a.k.a. moi after listening to some of Cebu’s bands at the Carcar fiesta—I was now expecting all other singers and bands in Cebu to be as great.

When we’re too tired to go out for nightlife, we make do with the nightlife that the hotel could offer. By Tuesday, we’ve had enough of lechon, lechon paksiw, humba, hamonada, and chicharon. So, it was fish for lunch and dinner, plus beer and kropek for the nightlife. Ho-hum. No tequila for the senior moment.

And for intermission, while the singer was savoring his much-needed break, we could hear a marching band practicing nearby. Could be for the Sinulog in January 2020?

“Fortune favors the bold”—a Latin proverb quoted by Jim “Miami” Beach in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” It was again uttered in “Camp Cool Kids.” Both movies I watched on Tuesday night via cable TV after the nightlife at the hotel’s resto-bar.

The resto-bar singer-guitarist and the marching band could be described as bold. Mactan Cebu International Airport (MCIA) is also showing signs of being bold as it looks different each time we’re there.

MCIA is undergoing renovation, making the traveler look forward to his next flight to and from there. For last Wednesday’s flight, we ended up buying goodies at Nomad, a new store at Terminal 1. I don’t know if waiting for a flight and shopping at the airport have any connection but haven’t you noticed how you go shopping there even though it’s notorious for charging higher prices? Unless it’s a duty-free store, of course.

As for shopping outside of MCIA, I’ve continued to gravitate towards the usual. A shorter list of stores and brands makes shopping easier for someone like me who doesn’t—hates, actually—shopping for clothes, with the word “sale” as my only motivation to shop.

By the way, Forever 21 is not closing its Philippine stores, which is good news to its fans but they could already sense the ho-hum ambience in its outlets here in Pinas.

Sale or no sale, it’s time to follow Jane Fonda’s resolve to stop buying new clothes. She initiated the “Fire Drill Friday” protests against climate change where she wore a red coat, and in one interview, she said, “You see this coat? I needed something red and I went out and found this coat on sale. This is the last article of clothing that I will ever buy. When I talk to people about, ‘We don’t need to keep shopping. We shouldn’t look to shopping for our identity. We don’t need more stuff,’ then I have to walk the walk too. So I’m not buying any more clothes.”

She credited 16-year-old environmental activist Greta Thunberg for inspiring her to stop buying new clothes.

Each time I’m inside a fitting room where I try to squeeze my fats into some clothes, I remember Fonda and Thunberg as I start thinking, Do I need to buy this black shirt that looks the same as my old black shirt?

Fonda surely has many clothes already, so for her to vow not to buy more, I could almost hear her walk-in closet heave a deep sigh of relief. Phew.

I’ve stored my smaller-sized clothes in travel bags, preparing them for the day when I’ll fit into them again. Yup, wishful thinking. But I can dream, can’t I?

Well, can kikiam help me lose weight? I heard kikiam has become a popular breakfast food at the 2019 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games. Hehe.

All the bad press that the SEA Games has been getting proves that the essence of sportsmanship is lost once politics enters the picture, more particularly the Dutertard-versus-Dilawan kind of politics. Popcorn, please, says the SEA Games’ potential fan as he wonders which news is fake or not.

How to tell if the news is real or fake? That’s the question.

The bad press began with the 2019 SEA Games’ logo that looked like colorful rubber bands. And now, it’s beginning to look a lot like SEA Games’ athletes from other countries may have to stretch their patience as if it’s a rubber band.

And then, there’s the SEA Games’ kaldero, er, cauldron that costs P55 million which Sen. Franklin Drilon said could have built 56 classrooms, with a budget of P1 million each. I wonder if that’s also the construction cost of each of the newly built classrooms that were destroyed in the Mindanao earthquakes. They were supposed to be made of higher-quality materials to withstand disasters, and Agusan del Norte Rep. Lawrence Lemuel Fortun now wants the House of Representatives to conduct a probe on the earthquake-damaged schools. The Philippine Daily Inquirer quoted him as saying, “It is very alarming. How come most of the [newly built] schools in the area incurred damages? These school buildings are supposed to be disaster resilient.”

But for now, Philippine politics is focusing on the kaldero, er, cauldron. Speaker Alan Peter Cayetano said, “While some people may see a cauldron, we see a monument, we see the athletes, we see the burning flames that represent hope and the fighting spirit.” That does change the way we look at the cauldron. But I don’t remember past cauldrons, not even the ones used in the Olympics, and it’s shocking to learn that something I don’t remember could cost P55 million. Que horror.

Well, the government could have used the P55 million for the athletes’ training. These are the athletes who have the potential to win a gold in the Olympics, and who may then deserve a monument to honor them.

But what do I know about sports? The only sport I know is my favorite spectator sport—basketball. I stopped watching the moment Michael Jordan, Charles Barkley, and Dennis Rodman retired eons ago.

And talk of eons, “If I could save time in a bottle/The first thing that I’d like to do/Is to save every day/‘Til eternity passes away.”