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Monday, January 30, 2006
Rama: Homecomings
By Karlon N. Rama
Stage five
I HATE (the more appropriate term is despise) reunions.
Getting to see how people have made names for themselves while I still bum around in a newsroom staffed with reporters young enough to call me kuya, does nothing positive to my self-esteem.
A chance meeting with a friend from high school while walking out of my favorite hardware store at the Ayala Center two weeks ago reinforced the neurotic aversion.
“Hey, remember that guy who couldn’t even speak a decent word of Cebuano or English? He owns a plastic-making factory now and is making a killing,” he told me.
In response: a polite nod of acknowledgement, all my strength to restrain the urge to call lawyer Gloria Estenzo-Ramos and all my other friends in the pro-environment community. That guy should be brought to court for all the environmental degradation he is causing.
“And Kenneth, the guy sitting ahead of you in Physics class with Mrs. Torda? He’s a doctor, I hear. How about you? Still working in...what’s that newspaper again?”
Breathe in, breathe out...relax, rest... usssaaaahhhh...uuuuusssssaaaahhhhhh...and a nice excuse to mask a hurried exit.
“Gotta rush. My Trooper is parked in a tow-away zone.”
“Oh, before you go, are you married already? But you’re 30, what gives?”
Good thing my girl friend – my best friend for seven years and my closest confidant, not counting my mother – is a professional guidance counselor. Sun.Star Cebu’s medical plan does not cover Gestalt Therapy bills.
Don’t get me wrong; being part of this publication is one of the most positive things that has ever happened to me. Sure, the unabated killings in Manila and Mindanao have reduced the number of my kind, but as the saying goes, this isn’t a job, it’s an adventure.
FRONT SIGHT. But when Adrian Tadena called me up late Friday to “come home to your old range” because friends in the club were getting together and setting up its first-ever match under the International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) format. It was a reunion I vowed I won’t miss.
Front Sight Gun Club is a very close-knit organization composed of shooters from Minglanilla – where I and my family used to live and where my mom taught public school until retirement.
Based in the town’s Barangay Tubod, the club operates a quaint four-bay range along the banks of the Tubod River.
I have a lot of fond memories of that range. It was there that I shot – and miserably lost – my first competition.
Proximity from my home in Banawa has however limited my visits to Front Sight. Its new board of directors has thankfully retained me as card-carrying member.
The tactical match, Adrian said, was to serve as a breather for the club’s other members who attend the more popular practical shooting matches on a weekly scale.
It was a three-stage affair set up by Ernesto Reyes and Dadoy Cabuenas and culled from media reports of actual shooting encounters.
Club members came in full force for the match that offered three categories: Stock Service Pistol (SSP), SSP for Lawmen and Custom Defensive Pistol. The law enforcement folks were separated from the regular shooters because they were on “duty rigs.”
The results: (SSP) myself, White Degamo, Eric Ayag, Irish Vergara, Adrian, Alvin Empinado, Venancio Tangkay, Jack Rentuza, Christian Cullen, Rosemarie Mendrez, Kim Magundia and Merto Lopina; (Lawman) Gil Limosnero, Ricky Larrobis, Florante Gesto and Jojo Gesto; and (CDP) Cabuenas, Chito Lapera, Mario Abrenica, lawyer Graeme Elimido, Gil Biscocho and Roger Castañeda.
Reaction. The anonymous letter we published last week drew reaction from Glenn Java of the National Range Officers’ Institute (NROI): “The problem was already resolved last Jan. 16, a day after our meeting with them in Dumaguete.”
As can be recalled, an e-mail was sent to the Kamagong Gun Club Inc. webmaster, Eric Martin, decrying how a range officership seminar attended by some shooters there was allegedly ordered invalidated after the participants had already paid the requisite fees.
I thank Mr. Java for his response.
There are those in the organization, however, who believe that the issue should have been kept internal and that news of the goings on in the shooting community should be solely of positive developments “and not those that create conflict.”
Sorry, that position is the anti-thesis of why the media, as an institution, exists.
(knrama@gmail.com)
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (January 30, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
Join the Sun.Star message board.Click here.
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