Representative

THERE are days when all you wanna do is sleep, eat, play Clumsy Ninja, Pearl’s Peril and WordBuzz. Then, repeat. Of course you wonder if busy people still have that same kind of luxury in the midst of their busy sked which hardly gives them time to breathe, so that when they’re invited to be the guest speaker in some event, they’d send a representative instead.
And sometimes that representative is indeed a representative a.k.a. congressman who at least knows how to speak and bore the audience with his gobbledygook, although he could also be a representative who doesn’t know how to speak and you now have to pretend you’re listening while thinking of the many ways you could banish him to Siberia to save him from further embarrassment. Or is it you who’s embarrassed for him, the representative who has no idea that his audience now feels like they should be anywhere but there.
The best representative for the absent guest speaker is the one who simply reads the speech that the speaker would have loved to deliver personally if only he wasn’t busy fending off the allegations that have been hurled against him while trying to justify his recent resignation from an administration that tolerated his presence in Cabinet meetings in the last, hmmm, was it five years? Has it been that long?
How time flies. Babies who were born five years ago are now going to school. The Terror, er, Torre de Manila that was merely a figment in someone’s imagination five years ago is now acting as a photobomber for the Jose Rizal monument in Luneta. Where was I five years ago? Oh, trying to recover from, hmmm, could that experience be considered as trauma?
The speech should be short and sweet, with some funny lines, and better spoken from memory than read. But rare is the speaker who can memorize his speech and deliver it ever so eloquently unless he devotes at least six months into writing, editing, and practicing his speech, with inputs from the experts, like what some TED speakers do. If you think they were born to be speakers, what you’re actually seeing now could be the result of those many months of preparation to enable them to share their experience, or their expertise in a field, or whatever message they want to impart to their audience. They make it look so effortless because they have already “eaten” that speech for breakfast, lunch and dinner and even the snacks in between.
The emcee somehow sets the tone for an occasion. If his lines are delivered in an informal manner, then the audience can sit back and relax. If he’s reading from a prepared script, then the audience is immediately aware that the rest of the event would be prim and proper, and they better behave, too, or else.
And then, there’s the annoying emcee who loves to listen to his own voice, he can’t stop talking even during those times when the audience would rather listen to the music and dance. The younger sister of a politician is known for this. She’s not exactly an emcee but one of the hosts of a nightly show where she talks like as if she’s entertaining guests in her own house. If someone asks you to define annoying, the best answer could be this TV host’s name.
There are formal and informal occasions. Britney Spears did sing, via her “Ooh La La,” that “You don’t have to look like a movie star/Ooh I think you’re good just the way you are.” But there’s the occasion that requires long gowns and would feel offended if you’re wearing maong. And I’m the kind that’s always tempted to wear maong for any occasion. But a guest has to respect the formality of an occasion so if there’s no long gown in the closet, should she wait for Willie Revillame to say, “Bigyan na ng jacket yan!”?
Dressing up for an occasion can be stressful to the female guest. Long gown or cocktail dress. Heels. Accessories. Hair and makeup. No wonder my blood pressure soared while preparing for one, and I ended up staying home.
The male guest, on the other hand, can look formal in an instant. Before: naked. After: barong. Voila!
But one’s enjoyment in an occasion doesn’t depend on its formality or informality but on himself. If he wants to have fun, then so be it. It doesn’t matter if he feels as detained as Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada, and Bong Revilla while wrapped in his barong or coat and tie. The inability to have fun is not directly connected to an occasion’s stiffness. And girls who wanna have fun while trapped in their long gowns and heels, can always take off the heels, grab that fun, and dance the night away. Well, here’s Britney again: “You don’t have to wear no designer clothes/Just as long as we’re dancing on the floor.” Ooh la la.
In the book “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau, he wrote, “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” Hmmm. And there’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” where the emperor had no new clothes after all, but had to pretend he was wearing one otherwise he himself would be revealed as unfit for his position and “hopelessly stupid.”
Lucky is the woman who simply has to stand in the middle of her walk-in closet while her people are busy dressing her up in her new clothes. Some rich and famous people have that kind of perk. They have fashion stylists, makeup artists, hairstylists, even their own personal beauty salon right beside the walk-in closet. Yes, that’s the same group of rich and famous people who may send representatives if they’re invited to speak on the day that they’re unavailable.