Sunday, January 20, 2008 Malilong: Drink and be merry, but please behave By Frank Malilong The Other Side
THE Cebu City Sports Center will be closed on Monday, went the advisory from Walk and Talk secretary Alex Ong. You can resume jogging the following day.
Just as well. The oval will probably be reeking with the smell of drying urine on Monday. You can’t walk and talk and hold your breath at the same time. I’d rather hibernate than choke.
It is inconvenient but it is a price I am willing to pay for the privilege of hosting hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and tourists, here for the feast of the Sto. Niño. In fact, I have, during the last few days, found myself frequently in the middle of a monstrous traffic jam, and not curse under my breath. It is a pleasant surprise; I can be a gracious host.
My only wish is that our guests would be a little considerate, too. The sports center, for all its vastness, only has two toilets, one each for the men and the women. They could not possibly accommodate the mass of humanity gathered inside the complex who will, at one time or another, feel the need to relieve themselves. I will not be scandalized if they do it against the wall, at least not in the case of the males.
Too many times in past Sinulogs, however, I have seen people at their ugliest behavior. In fairness to everyone, I must admit that in most cases I was not sure if they were guests or locals. But there were instances where you couldn’t miss their origins by the color of their skin and the language they spoke. And boy, were they nasty!
It is okay, maybe even cute, to see foreigners trying to ape what the locals do such as smudging other people’s faces with soot or paint or drinking beer in the parade route and spraying its contents towards onlookers. The trouble, however, is that because they are not familiar with our culture, they tend to overdo it.
Last year, for example, I saw a middle-aged father being restrained because he was about to run after a drunk Caucasian who emptied his can of beer on them and sent the man’s little girl crying.
If it is your idea of revelry, then by all means drink and be merry, people.
But, and I address this caution to every one, note the lines that you can’t cross. Otherwise, you could wake up the following morning nursing a busted nose along with your hangover.
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The timing of the demolition of their stalls at the Basilica was unfortunate but the vendors cannot claim that they didn’t have it coming to them.
They knew that they couldn’t display and sell their wares on the sidewalk even if these were religious items they were vending. In fact, they have been evicted from the premises so many times in the past.
They can’t even complain that the mayor implicitly allowed them to operate by not driving them away much earlier. They were aware that their occupation of public property for their trade was coterminous with Mayor Tomas Osmeña’s tolerance.
I wish that the vendors and the City Government can come up with an arrangement that, while assuring the former of their right to earn a decent living, would not compromise the safety and the convenience of the public.
I sympathize with the vendors. This is the time of the year when business is really good for them. Unfortunately, their private interest, no matter how legitimate, is only a small part of the equation. The government has to look at the bigger picture.
