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Netnet Camomot .

“BUILD, Build, Build” is alive and kicking in this corner of the village, with the sights and sounds of construction from 8 am to 4:30 pm Mondays to Saturdays. Sundays can be eerily quiet once village residents become used to the noise.

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There’s some sort of a debate on whether to rent or buy or build a house. Or buy or rent a condo unit. When you live alone, a condo unit is considered practical. For a family, a house is the wiser choice. Renting, buying, or building depends also on the budget. A home, anyway, is not the house but the people who live there.

There’s now a trend for small houses since they’re, of course, cheaper compared to mansions, they’re easier to clean and maintain, and the smaller space encourages in-your-face, er, face-to-face interaction instead of texting, calling, and messaging even if there’s only a one-meter distance between you and them. The limited space also discourages clutter, requiring each possession to spark joy.

The dining table may morph into a home office, though, in between meals and snacks.

A friend told me that the only request he asked from his contractor was for the master’s bedroom to resemble a nice and comfy hotel room because that’s where he spends most of his time when he’s home. Oh, same here!

But a hotel room doesn’t have my piggies and books.

I’ve been trying to declutter for more than a year now. Operative word: trying. Much like my operative word for diets: trying. People who have adopted the no-rice diet are losing weight. And then, there’s me. The advice is to not compare ourselves with others but with our past self. That’s easy since I note down my weight daily, and that historical data reveals I’ve been gaining and losing and gaining and losing, a vicious cycle of a weight loss program whose title could be “Bil Bil Bil” or Desperately Trying to Lose 45 Pounds. Which is way much harder than Desperately Trying to Avoid Toxic People which may only require an armor a la “Game of Thrones.”

I now let people be who they are because that’s who they are. In other words, I better stay home and read, because that’s who I am—I love to read. Haha.

But reading newspapers can be tricky with all the bad news in there—red-tagging of journalists, freed heinous crime convicts, rice crisis, traffic, extortion, graft, plunder, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. Whew.

Fiction books are lighter fare unless they’re written by Stephen King. In case you’ve watched the “It” movies and remained clueless about their history, they’re based on King’s 1986 novel.

I don’t like horror movies, but I’ve read horror books that kept me awake the whole night. That’s why I’ve chosen not to watch the film versions of “It.” At my senior-moment young-once age, a sleepless night is like a young one’s post-Tequila hangover. I’d rather watch “The Angry Birds Movie 2.”

There are other books whose details are alive and kicking in movies and theme parks such as Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park.”

The “Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge” at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and Disney World in Orlando, Florida, however, have not met Disney’s expectations of ka-ching attendance, and Disney is blaming that on lack of rides since “Galaxy’s Edge” has only one for now, the “Millennium Falcon: Smugglers Run.” Coming soon, though, is “Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance,” which is expected to attract more fans.

That’s the US version of a vacation—theme parks and rides galore. And climbing to the top of skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty. And shopping at outlet stores. Hehe. No, that’s not all there is in the US. You have to visit the place if you want to savor the whole cake and not only the cherry on top of the icing on the cake.

Being Pinoy is the kind of citizenship that requires a visa for visits to the US and other first-world and even not-so-first-world countries. Which is unfair. Pinas allows all sorts of people to enter the country, and yet when it’s the Pinoy’s turn to go abroad, he has to enter the eye of a needle.

A visa can also cause headaches, much like the headaches that toxic people can give you.

A visa requires documents that prove you’re coming back to Pinas ASAP and to convince the foreign embassy that there’s no place like home for you but still, you’re curious on how the other side of the world lives, thus, the tour.

It’s almost natural for the Pinoy to allow foreign countries to treat him like a slave. That’s supposed to be the result of his colonial mentality, and Yoyoy Villame’s song: “On March 16, 1521/When Philippines was discovered by Magellan.”

But it’s also after visiting another country that the Pinoy realizes that Pinas needs a lot of improvement since he now has a basis of comparison. Hmmm. Good luck na lang with the “Build, Build, Build.”

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