Tuesday, June 10, 2008 Malilong: Boys will be boys head By Frank Malilong The Other Side
YOU look like you were really having fun, the lady remarked while viewing the pictures of our recent trip to Hong Kong and Macau. We were.
Imagine six men, no one younger than 50, wandering around Kowloon for more than three hours on foot with only a map as guide. All, except one, had traveled abroad but none where they had to communicate to the locals without the help of an interpreter.
Dito Florido is 70 plus, walks very fast (sometimes too fast for comfort) and is a brilliant lawyer who has been to almost all parts of the globe. Alex Monteclar is dean of the USC College of Law where Butch Gemarino, the Cebu City register of deeds, also teaches. Danny Llenes, a businessman, is a cross between Danny DeVito and Dustin Hoffman, while Ben Sun, well, who hasn’t heard about Ben Sun?
We all belong to a group that used to be called Walk and Talk until we decided to add Eat to our name in the interest of accuracy. We meet every morning at five at the oval of the Cebu City Sports Center.
Ben speaks Chinese but not the one that is spoken in Macau. So when we went to a restaurant, he had to go around the tables and point to the food that he wanted to order. It was scary but it was fun although not as funny as my own experience with the sign language.
While waiting for the ferry to take us from Macau to the Hong Kong Airport, I felt the urge to relieve myself. I approached one of the employees manning the terminal gate and asked where the rest room was. From the way he shook his head, it was evident that he did not understand my question.
Because my need was becoming very urgent, I decided to express myself through signs. Imagine someone motioning that he wants to urinate and so please, could he tell him where the nearest urinal is. It is not a pretty sight.
There is always a child in all of us. On our last day, Danny called Butch’s room number twice and each time was answered by a female voice on the line. When Danny later complained about the “answering machine,” we all had good laugh.
I hate long travels and after my one and only trip to Europe have sworn I won’t ever fly long distance again until I could afford business class. I still couldn’t afford it even for a shorter and relatively cheaper flight but while the leg cramps and the ache in my lower back were still there, they were no longer as bothersome.
Why am i writing this? Because I want to share what I had discovered during the trip: that men in the autumn of their lives can act like boys celebrating the end of summer without feeling any tinge of guilt or shame.
