ONCE September starts, it’s natural for the Pinoy to wait for a hint of a Christmas song via the radio, TV, Facebook, malls, etc.
And I was “lucky” enough to be at Cagayan de Oro’s SM uptown on September 6 when the muzak was “Come they told me/Pa rum pum pum pum/A newborn King to see/Pa rum pum pum pum.”
I wanted to jump with glee: Yay! Finally! A Christmas carol! My first for this year!
I was actually expecting Jose Mari Chan’s “Whenever I see girls and boys/Selling lanterns on the streets/I remember the child/In the manger as he sleeps.”
But the song that it’s in my Ms. Behavin’ draft, where I write all my ideas for future columns, is Gayle’s “abcdefu”: “A-B-C-D-E, F-U/And your mom and your sister and your job/And your broke-ass car and that sht you call art/Fck you and your friends that I’ll never see again/Everybody but your dog, you can all f*ck off.”
If only I can remember why I was interested in that song.
No wonder cashiers, wait staff of restos and cafes, and retail salespeople now ask for my senior citizen ID: as if the turkey neck and the white hair growing out of my nose are not enough evidence, my selective amnesia now registers on my face? Hmmm.
But there’s this resto at SM uptown where the wait staff has never mentioned the word “discount” in my presence. Instead, he says, “Dugay na lagi ka wa kabalik diri, Ma’am.” My reply is always, “Daghan na man gud restos sa CDO.”
One Thursday afternoon when I was there for brunch, they played jazz music, which inspired me to stare at the view that provided blow-by-blow updates of the rain outside. I mean, jazz is way much better than Air Supply which a downtown cafe had as muzak when we were there. Oops. Air Supply was one of Dad’s favorites, so, bawal ang judgmental.
Anyway, this old-ish uptown resto had been our favorite since forever, and we had already memorized its menu. But with so many new restos and cafes sprouting here, there, and everywhere, the foodie’s nature is to try them all, of course.
After brunch, I stayed for a while at the resto and started writing this column. I didn’t want to waste such a soothing muzak by leaving immediately as if I and the resto have a walang pinagsamahan. Hugot yarn.
It was a rainy afternoon when I was there. I wanted to have brunch at a new Japanese resto at a downtown mall, but when climate change caused the weather to suddenly morph into raining cats and dogs, resulting in floods as usual, I opted to go back to uptown CDO and drop by the SM there. This has become a hard habit to break for uptowners now—rushing back to the uptown area once it’s raining, and perhaps SM uptown has been thanking the weather for that.
Since this column is about muzak and the weather, there’s this Yoyoy Villame song whose lyrics start with, “In every afternoon/Three o’clock I read your letter ahay/Sa may bintana ahay sabay ang luha.”
I thought its lyrics were these: In every afternoon/Three o’clock I check the weather ahay/Sa may bintana ahay sabay ang baha.
