THURSDAY last week the PLDT WiFi in this corner of the world went pfft. I suspected the culprit was Milton.
Milton was in Florida, but with the world reduced to Six Degrees of Separation, the Category-5 hurricane must have damaged the submarine fiber optic cables snaking from right under the eye of the storm to the Pearl of the Orient Seas a.k.a. Pinas.
With no PLDT, I switched to what I revered as the next best thing: mobile data care of Globe. Whose on-and-off signal in this corner of the world always requires loads of patience while watching a Portishead video.
Portishead. I had already forgotten I used to listen to them way back in the ‘90s.
The ‘90s that still seem like ten years ago.
Anyway, a gym friend posted Portishead’s “Glory Box” video on Facebook on that same Thursday night just when my Globe mobile data was going ever so slowly like Slowpoke Rodriguez—the cartoon character, not the Cagayan de Oro representative. Besides, the CDO representative can never be Slowpoke, he’s more like Speedy Gonzalez.
So, there was Portishead, and there was me trying to recall my favorite Portishead song with the help of Google. But with the Globe mobile data going ever so slowly, I would have been better off looking for my Portishead cassette tape, and buying a cassette tape recorder to play the whole tape until I’ve found that song.
While waiting for Spotify to load, I read Giles Coren’s “How to Eat Out.” As if I needed pointers on how to eat out. Haha. Coren is a food critic, surely he has pointers on the topic, huh?
As each Portishead song went on and on via Spotify, I began to suspect this was not the band that I liked in the ‘90s. And then, it hit me—it was Radiohead!
The woman of a certain age—that’s moi—has to go back to the good old days if she wants to remember the good old days, because trying to remember them while living in the present is now becoming a major challenge for her minute brain.
And she has to strictly follow the diet she has committed to. Build muscles through resistance training. Sleep early, preferably slowing down by 8 pm so that she’s asleep at 9 pm. Avoid dinner parties and the morning-the-night bar-hopping nightlife. Rest if she’s tired, therefore, no gym if she slept after 3 am.
What a boring life the woman of a certain age has, says the woman of a younger age, who still has the health that allows her to eat anything she wants, who sleeps after 3 am and goes to the gym three hours later, hops from one dinner party and bar to another every night and goes to work the morning after. The woman of a certain age has been there, done that, of course, and now says, Ho-hum, to the younger one’s FOMO—fear of missing out—habit.
FOMO could also be the secret behind the political candidate’s passion to run for office. FOMO on the chance to be relevant. FOMO on the commissions. FOMO on hobnobbing with the rich and famous. Because who has FOMO on hobnobbing with the poor and infamous? Better rich and infamous, or poor and famous.
