Iba Na

THINGS have really changed since when I was a teen ager. That is stating the obvious isn’t it?

But really things have indeed changed. I was listening to a conversation a few days ago. It was Gabo and he was talking with some of his college friends. They were planning a trip. A trip to Sinulog. Whoa!

Miguel is spending this sem break with his friends. They are all going on a trip. To Cambodia. Whoa, part two.

Raphael is saving money because he also wants to go on a trip. With whom I would rather not say but they are planning to go abroad also. Whoa, part three.

See? I mean things have really changed. When I was a teenager a trip meant an entirely different thing, or should I say place. When I was a teenager taking a trip meant riding a car or a banca and going around the city, in the banca or in the car. It did not mean taking plane rides! But I guess that is my Seventies head or mindset talking here.

I mean really, look at the vast difference of our generations.

In the Seventies we only had about four TV stations. No cable. The TV we had had no remote control, it only had the huge knob that you cranked to change channels. Heck, the television was not even colored and if you wanted to have some semblance of color, you bought this screen that you placed over the screen. It had three colors if I remember. Blue on the top, brown in the middle and green below. Ridiculous? You bet your Seventies elbow it was, but it was the only thing we had. The television set itself could pass for furniture itself, it was that big and yes it was brown and had sliders!

For music we had records, not discs or mp3s or Ipods. We had vinyl records. Most of them were black but there were others that were red and blue. They jumped, had lots of scratches and occasionally they hissed. The stereo system could pass for a ship. It had huge speakers and for added attraction they even had quadrophonic sound, That meant it had 4
speakers.

Of course, we had no Internet. The world was a distant thing. Foreign places were well, foreign. If you wanted to do research, you did not Google it, you went to the encyclopedia not Wikipedia. If you wanted to watch a movie, you went to a movie house. You did not download it.

Talking about movies, if you wanted to watch films that celebrated human anatomy ( porn ba!) you went to movies houses that specialized in “singit.” It was called singit because they inserted the porn film in the middle of a wholesome movie! Nowadays you want to watch human anatomy, you just click the mouse. Before if you wanted to watch a film you already watched, you hoped and prayed for a rerun. Today, you download it.

In my time, if you wanted to call outside Davao, you had to call long distance. Can anyone remember the code for long distance? I forgot. Today you have cellphones! The only phones we knew before were those black things that did not have Android! It only had coils! Today? Well you know.

Before going to Manila was a major event. It was also expensive. Now? Almost anyone can fly. You want to go to Manila? No problem. Cebu? Hong Kong? Cambodia? You have so many airlines serving so many routes that the prices have been so competitive. Kids nowadays take a lot of things for granted but one cannot really blame them. They grew up like that. Everything is almost instant. Except of course for the money that the parents have to pay for phones, the gadgets, the trip and the whatevers.

Yes indeed things have changed, but there are things that remain. I think Chona and I will take a trip. Yes, just the two of us. We will go to Tugbok and eat catfish!