I SAW Larry Gadon once at a mall in downtown Cagayan de Oro. At first, I had to search my minute brain for why he looked familiar. It was only days later that I got it: Aha! He’s…! But I didn’t know his name. Only his face was familiar.

Now, he’s in the news again. Disbarred by the Supreme Court but appointed as Presidential Adviser for Poverty Alleviation by BBM. How lucky could a guy get? And how timely the appointment. Just when he was about to lose face, he regained it back sans any effort.

Really? No effort at all? Hmmm.

It takes a lot to be noticed by the country’s president who most probably has tall piles of appointment papers waiting for his precious signature. You need powerful backers for your appointment form to reach the top of the pile.

Gadon is used to making lots of noise. That’s how he became famous. Or, depending on your point of view (POV), infamous. He supported the right people at the right time, a talent that only a brilliant political analyst can possess. Had he made noise about losing political candidates, where would he be now? Oh, he could be a noisy critic—at least that’s not in his pro-BBM agenda for now.

Making noise is a good strategy for anyone who wants to be noticed. People may react with irritation but the goal has been achieved—they noticed. I would not have recognized Gadon had he been quiet and silent and hiding in one corner. Although I couldn’t remember his name then, I still knew he’s somehow popular. And if I had my usual curious self with me then, I would have approached him and said, You look familiar.

Which almost happened when I saw a city mayor at a resto. He was right in front of me, all I had to do was mention some names of our mutual friends, and I could have started talking with him. But my sis said, Don’t! Haha!

That mayor, however, is not the type who makes noise. He stood quietly at the resto’s entrance, waiting for a table for him and his family. It was only when my sis and I left the resto that we saw his entourage, what looked like a whole platoon of soldiers.

So, if the politician himself refuses to make noise, it’s his bodyguards who are more than willing to do that for him? Hmmm.

There’s this Pinoy proverb, “A fly that lands on a carabao feels itself to be higher than the carabao.” That’s why there are times when the carabao has to remind the fly about POVs which, by the way, is a song by Joey Albert and Pops Fernandez:

“Points of view
We’ve been there once before
And kept our points of view
It doesn’t really matter if they’re never quite the same
We have our rules in different ways
We play the games of different folks with different strokes
And keep our points of view.”