New year’s resolution

Netnet Camomot

ON New Year’s Eve, I told my sis-in-law, “Sis, ang akong New Year’s resolution kay…” And she waited.

I then continued my soliloquy: “…kay…wala. Wala koy New Year’s resolution.”

Haha!

Well, there’s the spring cleaning. That must be my resolution now. A friend texted me that spring cleaning sounds sosyal, and the only word he understands there is “cleaning.” That’s exactly what it is—cleaning a.k.a. gapanglimpyo. With Agaton visiting Pinas on New Year’s Day no less, that’s one more typhoon to remind us to adopt minimalism and to detach ourselves from material things.

How many clothes, bags, shoes, etc. do you have? Try counting them. This year, you may decide not to buy any of that anymore. Of course you have to buy groceries, medicines, water, and other necessities. But more clothes, more bags, more shoes—just say no.

As for my piggy collection, well… Will my fondness for cute piggies make me stop eating lechon? Hmmm. I did receive some piggies again for Christmas, but I don’t want this collection to need another house. Yes, there are people whose collections are displayed in another house or building. For example, the Temple of Leah in Cebu.

There are more important things in life than clothes, bags, shoes… Like grapes. Er, no. Wine? Nah. Oh, here’s one: a faster internet connection. Sending email attachments last Monday night was whew! Both the home Wi-Fi and mobile data were crawling. On New Year’s Day. The first day of the year. Yup, they could always blame the turtle pace on Agaton, but this happens all the time, even on sunny days.

For the lucky fruits on New Year’s Eve, though, grapes were a must. Supermarkets have been selling a set of these fruits which they put in a nice basket trimmed with Christmassy ribbons. This saves you from the trouble of guessing which are lucky and what to exclude from the bunch.

Through our chat group, a high school classmate shared this photo of oranges but each piece had the name of another fruit: apple, lanzones, grapes… Again, to save us from the trouble of looking for different kinds of lucky fruits.

There was not much noise on New Year’s Eve in this neighborhood whose residents did go to the village’s rotunda to watch the ten-minute fireworks display which was at 11:30 pm, most probably to give us time to be with family once the clock struck 12.

But this is the first ever Christmas where we heard children singing carols outside my bro’s gate, and we treated that as a phenomenon—we were shocked. This had never happened before. Carollers who do come here would send letters to inform a house owner of their schedule. Well, village life.

Downtown CDO has the most fun with carollers, especially when the kids’ voices sound exactly as off-key—with the same wrong lyrics—as the group that dropped by a few minutes ago. And of course you then realize it’s the same group.

Now that Christmas parties are so over, it’s back to reality. We will now start to notice the effects of the Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion (Train) which inspired car buyers to go panic buying last month to avoid paying for additional taxes.

There was much talk about the price increase for cars, let’s see—pronounced as that Spanish word for milk—if Pinoys will continue to buy cars this year after all that panic buying.

Train is not all bad news, though. It has its charms. Young employees who are exempt from income taxes are now computing and looking forward to their new take-home pay.

2018 is the Year of the Dog. Dog lovers, this can be your year, too.

I gotta feeling a political party in CDO is happy with the color of the year—ultra violet. No, not yellow, not green, not orange. It’s ultra violet. Too bad it’s not an election year, huh? Otherwise, well, sure na!

You can display the right number of lucky fruits on the dining table, read everything on how to be lucky in the Year of the Dog, and wear ultra violet the whole year, but life is way more than all the lucky whatever you can hold on to.

As for your resolutions, how many have you broken so far?