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Wednesday, September 24, 2003
Maxey: A city they can't put down
By Ram Maxey
IT'S 15 minutes past midnight in this city that hardly sleeps. The fun places, a.k.a. nightspots, are filled with citizens out having a good time in such popular places as Jack's Ridge, Matina Town Square, The Venue, Victoria Plaza, the sprawling Magsaysay Park and such high-profile hotels as The Marco Polo Davao, Apo View, Royal Mandaya, Regal (where high rollers gamble the night away at the casino).
The streets are still very much alive and humming with traffic as people are either still on their way to some place for fun and frolic while others are already homeward bound. This is just another night where nothing extraordinary is happening and citizens are engaged in perfectly normal activities of normal human beings in normal times.
In the thousands of households, families are either about to go to bed, are in bed, or are watching their favorite television programs or having a party. In the public parks, young couples stroll hand-in-hand or sit on the grass to savor each other's company and plan their future together.
In dimly-lit bars drinking buddies toast to each other's health or argue about the state of the nation while in many a karaoke establishment a bathroom tenor, emboldened by a few drinks, belts out his favorite song at the top of his voice unmindful of the fact that 90 percent of the rest of the patrons in the house are too engrossed in their own tête-à-têtes to listen to him. No problem.
In the squatter colonies, their occupants are too weary after a hard day eking out an existence that sleep is a welcome relief and an opportunity to shut out the harsh reality of the world outside even if only for a few hours before another day dawns. Sleep is a great equalizer among the haves and have-nots.
Soon the night hours slip away and give way to a fresh dawn. As the sun rises in the east, the city begins to stir once more and prepares to welcome the new day with its usual problems and new challenges in the offing.
The taho vendor will be up and about early to peddle his delicacy along his regular route. The bread delivery van shows up at precisely the same time in the early morning at its various stops (neighborhood stores). The fish vendor wakes you up with his spiel "palit namo matambaka...moromoro...bariles!" And so forth.
As it was Tuesday and the many other Tuesdays and weeks, months and years - so will it be today, tomorrow and so on. This is our beloved city. Some killjoy (probably from another planet) says we are living under a "reign of terror". You try and look in every nook and cranny to find where this so-called "reign of terror" lurks but you won't find it. It is not even a figment of someone's imagination. It is just plain dirty, black propaganda that won't ever succeed in putting down this great city of wonderful people.
Davao is a livable city like none other. No idiot can take that away from us.
(September 24, 2003 issue)
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