THE Cagayanon who loves luxury has to travel to Cebu, Manila, and abroad for five-star hotels and his favorite brands otherwise he will end up buying Gucci Gucci, Pradada, Door, Channel, Luis Button, etc. which may look like they have the correct spelling at first until he gets a closer look and realizes that this saying is indeed true: “God created the world and everything else is made in China.”

Last weekend could have been the best time for the Cagayanon to travel, thanks to the government’s strategy of moving holidays to weekends to boost Pinas’s tourism industry. This time, PBBM moved the non-working holiday for Ninoy Aquino Day from August 21 to August 23.

If this were a comic strip, Ninoy would resurrect himself on August 21, climb up the stairs of the airplane that flew him to Manila, and stay inside that plane until August 23 to reenact the assassination so it would fall on the date that PBBM preferred for Ninoy Aquino Day.

For the Cagayanon, though, it could be a mix-and-match of several holidays, giving him the longest weekend per this Facebook post titled “CDO Holidays”:

August 23 - Ninoy Aquino Day
August 24 - Saturday
August 25 - Sunday
August 26 - National Heroes’ Day
August 27 - Bisperas sa CDO
August 28 - Cagayan de Oro Fiesta
August 29 - Absent (hangover)
August 30 - Sick Leave (pasumangil)
August 31 - Saturday
September 1 - Sunday, Christmas Season

Take note of the Christmas season.

That’s more than one week, with enough time to even see the African safaris’ big five: lion, leopard, elephant, rhinoceros, and African buffalo.

But for me, a long weekend now means indulging in my own version of the big five: reading, writing, exercising, eating, and sleeping.

The “exercising” in that list used to be “malling.”

And talk of malling, a new mall has opened in uptown Cagayan de Oro. Since I’ve not been there yet, I asked uptown friends if they’ve visited the place, and only one answered yes. In describing it, he said only one word: dusty.

Oh. Because it’s not finished yet?

Some uptowners have been wishing for an Ayala mall nearby, preferably an exact copycat of Greenbelt and its luxury stores.

For now, though, there’s SM uptown. Recently, it had a three-day sale where the raffle grand prize was a scooter. Which the winner could then use for fun while driving along the path of the next Ironman much like what that 28-year-old vaping woman did in Ironman 70.3 Davao.

After having so much fun with her stunt, she would “face charges for resistance and disobedience to a person in authority, driving without license, non-wearing of helmet, and other traffic violations” (source: GMA Regional TV News). And perhaps also face charges for incoherence as proven by this: “I’m not here to harm anybody. I’m just a woman. I’m from the poor, we are powerless. I just want to be heard and I just want us to have equal rights.”

Whaaat? Tsk tsk.

She should have followed the example of Alice Guo who preferred the KISS—keep it short and simple—reply: “Hindi ko po alam your honors.”