From biko to Bikoy

Netnet Camomot .

COPE with jet lag by going out almost daily. Eating, window-shopping, watching movies, bonding with family and friends.

It’s now window-shopping when an item doesn’t spark joy. Even if you’re buying a gift for someone, the item should also spark joy in you otherwise its negative vibe will be felt by the recipient.

A movie’s ability to spark joy, however, is realized only when you’re already inside the theater watching it and it’s too late to ask for a refund for the ticket.

Well, I haven’t watched “Pokemon Detective Pikachu” yet but AP has already released a review and it says, “You’ve played Pokemon Go, right? Call this one Pokemon Don’t Go.” Oh. It doesn’t spark joy? Darn.

I gotta feeling, though, that my curiosity will win in the end because Pikachu is too cute to ignore.

This must be the same as voting for Bong Revilla who was detained for his alleged involvement in the pork barrel scam, but the Pinoy still voted for him anyway because he’s too handsome to ignore?

In other words, his fellow alleged pork-barrel scammers Juan Ponce Enrile and Jinggoy Estrada, who were also among this year’s “senatoriables,” are not handsome enough? Ouch!

Despite the trio’s detention once upon a time, there’s at least one Pinoy politician who will still dare to steal from the national treasury, kind of, “To see is to believe,” as the saying goes.

Like the illegal drug industry, for example. Despite President Rody Duterte’s war on drugs, those drugs continue to enter the country since, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” as another saying goes.

The latest drug raid yielded P1 billion worth of shabu in Malabon.

P1 billion. Wow. How many vacations in Europe can that cover? Hmmm. Ka-ching!

Or should that be, Achoo, now that the weather-weather-lang combination of sun and rain is inspiring the Pinoy to sneeze pa more. Add the ongoing constructions in the neighborhood to that, and… Achoo! Nasal spray pa more.

A vacation requires the vacationer to be right there at the moment, to savor the sounds and sights at the moment, and if photos and videos can help remind him of those moments, then, the more photos and videos, the merrier his memories will be. Leave the long list of potential pasalubong recipients at home—surely you’ll find gifts that spark joy for you and hopefully for them, too, even without that list. Because you’ll remember them once you see that particular item that’s meant for them.

My most cherished memories of Europe are the holy masses at Saint Peter’s Basilica and Our Lady of Lourdes, and our Padre Pio visit. And all along I thought those memories would focus on the usual tourist spots that tourists, like me, would want to see.

A friend did ask her bro on which for him was his better vacation—El Nido or Europe. His answer: El Nido. That should be a lesson learned to the Pinoy who has been around the world but has not yet discovered Pinas.

We have a beautiful country with 7,641 islands where we can make muni-muni. Which is what a vacation is for: to make muni-muni at Camiguin’s White Island, to have a staring contest with Bohol’s tarsier, to answer a business phone call while hopping from one El Nido island to the next as huge waves try to test your nerves and the boat’s strength on a rainy June day. All that happened to me during vacations in Pinas.

The best vacation is the one where we can stare blankly at nothing (or stare passionately at him—ooh la la). That’s probably why I’m now looking back to the masses heard in Europe, because that’s when I had the time to make muni-muni.

Both the winning and losing candidates should make muni-muni, too, now that the election is so over and the winners have been proclaimed, with the winners planning on how to earn more “commissions” to recoup their campaign expenses, er, the losers analyzing why they lost, although, there’s at least one loser who’s already convinced that it’s due to vote-buying.

But the Pinoy should be the one having the deepest muni-muni as he ponders on why plunderers, narco-politicians, and questionable party-list groups still manage to win.

A loser’s esep-esep blues could be similar to jet lag: cotton brain, wide awake at night, sleepy during daytime.

Well, like the jet-lagged vacationer, the election loser should go out pa more. And that’s probably why he lost—he didn’t go out and knock on everyone’s door while campaigning.

Meanwhile, the breaking news is about Bikoy. Change the first letter of that to P, and it becomes pi…, the Cebuano term for a guy’s below-the-belt asset. Remove the Y, and it morphs to biko, which was supposedly banned in Pasig during the campaign period allegedly because a politician didn’t want Pasig residents to vote for Vico Sotto. Yup, what a wonderful world we have here in Pinas.