IT GETS old, you know. Talking about the same topic three times a week for more than three months.
I feel stuck. Like I’m trapped in a time warp like Bill Murray’s character in the movie “Groundhog Day,” forced to relive the same day over and over and over again.
To those who don’t know, Groundhog Day is an actual annual tradition observed in the US and Canada on Feb. 2.
It is based on the Pennsylvania Dutch superstition that if a groundhog returns to its burrow after seeing its shadow when it emerges on this day after months of hibernation, there will be six more weeks of winter. If it goes all the way outside, then spring will arrive early.
I went to college in Pittsburgh, a city in Western Pennsylvania, so I’m familiar with the tradition and the groundhog, also known as the woodchuck, which, by the way, is a rodent. But of the cute variety. Since it is related to large ground squirrels, you’ll hardly mistake it for a rat. Of course, if you’ve had several bottles of Rolling Rock and maybe shots of jagermeister, then yeah, you may find a resemblance.
Hey, anything’s possible when you’re sauced up.
Of course, we are in the Philippines. There’s no need for a Groundhog Day because, one, it’s a tropical country with only two seasons that don’t happen to be winter and spring and, two, groundhogs are not endemic to the archipelago.
So there’s really no point in discussing it here, is there?
Then I’m back to talking about the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and how it has affected all facets of life not just in the Philippines but around the world since it emerged more than three months ago.
Did you hear about the latest development in the Cebu City Government’s quest to find a site for a public cemetery?
I know it’s a morbid topic, which is why I won’t say why there is a need for a new one, but let me give you a heads-up. It won’t be in Barangay Guba, not after Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) 7 officials were up in arms when the City went ahead and started clearing a five-hectare property at the site, which happens to be within a watershed area. They said it could affect the city’s water supply. I guess the existing cemetery there hasn’t?
Anyway, Environment Secretary and Cebu Covid-19 overseer Roy Cimatu stepped into the picture and announced that the new cemetery will rise, ahem, in Barangay Sapangdaku.
While he’s at it, he should tell his minions at the DENR 7 not to push through with their plans to sue the City. The City already has its hands full with the health crisis. And Cimatu, being a retired army general, knows who the real enemy is.