Sira-sira store: Overheated eco-system

CEBU City knows no wrath like an overheated eco-system.

When I was yet a wet-eared high school student, my science teacher taught the class that man shows his superiority over Nature by destroying his environment. He who has an ax, indeed, chops his way to the top of the pecking order.

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This statement sounds like the joke that goes this way (hey, when a joke starts this way, you can bet your classic U2 CD it will not be funny): To have peace, man has to make war. To have progress, man has to destroy his environment. To make a joke like this one, just use this drift. But you will still end up with a negative axiom.

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So far, Cebu has had only negative weather. Translation: It is hell-hot out here and so is the rest of the country—no thanks to the El Niño phenomenon.

I can proudly say that I did my homework on the word “phenomenon.”

My ratty dictionary says it means a “fact or occurrence that can be observed.” Of this I have done much lately. In fact, I am all tanned now without even going to the beach because of my daily observance. Am I making sense?

Every day I hike to Pasil Market to buy fish for my Tita Blitte. No kidding—I buy fish! And walk, the old-fashioned way of going from point A to point B under the merciless sun.

I like showing off my biceps, so I wear tank tops. When I take off my shirt, there is a stencil, a patch of pale skin shaped like my tank top. That’s how I know how intense the heat has become.

Phenomenon also means “something that is out of the ordinary and excites people’s interest and curiosity.” I have just become a phenomenon now that you are curious about what I really want to say this week, and I hope you are excited, too.

Now let me take you to another tour, this time around the science of keeping cool in El Nino weather.

My Uncle Gustav interrupts my stream-of-consciousness pretension.

“Excuse me, Obz. The El Nino is not a type of weather,” he says as he pushes his Ninoy Aquino-type of eyeglasses.

“My rattier dictionary says it is a ‘periodic change in the currents of the Pacific Ocean that occurs every five to eight years and brings unusually warm water to the coast of northern South America. It often leads to severe climate disruption.’

Indirectly it causes this unusually hot weather in Cebu.”

“OK, Unca G, but does your dictionary say anything about keeping cool?”

He riffles through the dictionary and then he shakes is head.

“I have my nutty top 10 things that will help keep your temperature down,” I tell him. Here it is.

10. Don’t go out without an umbrella, unless you want to have a stencil of your tank top on your torso.

9. Open the refrigerator and stick your head in for a quick fix. Unfortunately, this will also raise your electric bill and consequently your blood pressure.

8. Soak yourself in a drum of cold water just like that blue kid in a popular telenovela.

7. On a hot day, nothing is more blissful than a frosty glass of fruit juice.

6. Halo-halo serves as a great heat balm although it can wreck your diet.

5. You can have respite from the heat by watching a movie through the last full show. By then you will be colder than an ice pop.

4. Ice cold cola on the rocks. That should cause brain freeze.

3. Refrigerator cake a la mode is great.

2. Cold water with ice kills thirst dead (ungrammatical phrasing borrowed from an insecticide commercial).

And the topper:

1. An ice cream on a cone will make you feel like a child again, and what could be cooler than being a child?