To fly again

 
LADIES AND gentlemen, we have just landed at…

In the quietude of home quarantine, resonates with the deepest longing that which for so long was the harbinger of great joy.

Be it Bangkok or Boracay, Kuala Lumpur or Kaohsiung, Seoul or Singapore, Phuket or Puerto Princesa, Dubai or Davao, Taipei or Tokyo, Cairo or Coron, Ho Chi Minh or Hong Kong, the heart always leaps at the instant rubber screeches on runway concrete.

And that is only upon arrival.

Four days, one week, or a fortnight – days and nights why should they even count? Travel is happy hour, to the minute, every hour.

Of kidding -- Disney or Universal. Ocean Park or Legoland. 

And adulting – Pattaya, Patpong, and Phi-Phi too. Grand Lisboa or Venetian. Sepang circuit. Macau Tower bungee, for the brave one.

Of awesomeness -- Angkor Wat. Kinkaku-ji. Petra. The Great Sphinx and the Pyramids. Jerusalem…

 

…O Jerusalem, O Bethlehem turning happy hour into holy hour – Shepherds’ Field and Manger Square. Via Dolorosa and the Holy Sepulcher. The Sea of Galilee and the Jordan River. The Wailing Wall. Heaven’s very gate opening, nearer my God to Thee, the spirit soars.

Of nature’s majesty – Hanami. Momijigari. Mount Fuji.

Of man’s skyscraping glory – Petronas. Taipei 101. Canton Tower. Burj Khalifa. Tokyo Skytree.   

Of gustatory delights – Ramen, sushi and sashimi. Fish amok. Nasi lemak. Laksa. Tom yum goong. Hainanese chicken. Chili crab…night-market street food, burp.  

Of shopping – Aww, cash-fixed at Giordano and Uniqlo. Prada, Gucci, LV, Bally, unaffordably. Buddha heads and Bali masks, nothing else shall I want…

Moments then, memories now, one tries best to recapture, to relive in SD files or external HDDs ran and reran in old reliable laptop.

Verily, a flight from the doldrums of home quarantine, these happy thoughts.

Still, this reclusion – hopefully non perpetua, notwithstanding the restriction imposed on seniors in effect through the slowly devolving stages of CQs – rankles.

Painfully so with all the travel plans this nasty veerus scuttled. Most ruefully that dolce vita under the Tuscan sun, through Firenze, Venezia, Milano to the Vatican, long promised the wife, foregone.   

Creeping melancholia arrested just in time by this National Geographic find: “This virus can stop our travel plans, but it cannot stop our travel dreams.”

Cannot agree more with travel expert Rick Steves. Thus: “Planning for travel—thinking about it, talking about it, imagining it—may in fact be the best thing you can do to stay optimistic and, when this is all behind us, be ready to embark on your trip of a lifetime.”

The NatGeo article goes on its flight into the wind, so to speak, with Matthew Killingworth, senior fellow at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, saying trip-planning encourages an optimistic outlook: “Our future-mindedness can be a source of joy if we know good things are coming, and travel is an especially good thing to have to look forward to.”

So, I submit.

Even as post-Covid travel is uncharted territory, it is not fear of the unknown, but rather excitement over the untried that takes hold of every traveler’s soul.

“New normal” air travel worries assuaged by the airlines’ health and safety protocols already in-place this early – from pre-flight, on-flight, to disembarkation: pilots and crew subjected to rapid antibody tests, seat spacing, thorough plane disinfection, wearing of masks, alcohol-based hand sanitizers, crew in PPEs, etc.

Cebu Pacific notches the issue of health and sanitation even higher with its fleet of Airbus jets equipped with high efficiency particulate arrestor filters that can filter the novel coronavirus, as well as other virus and bacteria clusters, with 99.99% efficiency.

So, what is there to even worry about, more so to fear?

A number of travel advisors suggest going somewhere one has not gone yet as best post-pandemic therapy, citing the novelty of the experience as sure trigger for dopamine and endorphins, yes, the so-called “happy hormones.”

I would rather first go back though to places that have given me the greatest sense of well-being. Places that imbue me even greater happiness at each return.  

Top of mind now: Kyoto in autumn with the wife. Nothing less than Eden itself regained. After this pandemic hell.

Raiding Fontana redux

PUBLIC OUTRAGE exploded over the news of the Tuesday evening raid at the Fontana Leisure Park in the Clark Freeport that uncovered a makeshift pharmacy and hospital exclusive to Chinese Covid-19 patients in one of the villas.

The impact of the incident to the greater community readily gauged in the reaction to Punto’s story of the raid: Uploaded online Wednesday mid-morning, already registering, as of 9:23 a.m. Thursday, 1.2K shares and 22,075 hits.    

The Clark Development Corp. that administers the freeport immediately ordered the closure and full lockdown of Fontana, ensuring its order executed with the full force of the law by its own security force in full battle gear at Fontana’s shut down gates.

“Aside from the operators who are now facing criminal charges, the CDC will also hold into account the management of Fontana for allowing this to happen within their property,” the CDC said in a statement.
Vowing: “We assure Clark stakeholders, the locators, local communities and residents especially, that we will not stop until all those involved are prosecuted and punished.”

Déjà vu triggered in me by CDC there. Fontana rising from the mist of not so remote a memory as yet – yes, of a raid too, indeed of Chinese involvement. Aye, in this very corner, Dec. 1, 2016, same headline Raiding Fontana, thus:

ALL LEGIT. No Chinese illegal in Clark raid.

So headlined the Philippine Daily Inquirer of the raid on the Fontana Leisure Park at the Clark Freeport on Nov. 25 by the Bureau of Immigration where, it said, 912 Chinese were found working.

At the Fontana Food Center where they were herded for verification and investigation by immigration officials, “All of the 912 foreign nationals … presented documents or passports for verification … to prove the legality of their stay here in the country. Their individual biometrics were also being taken as part of the procedure.” So Mabalacat City police chief Supt. Juritz Rara was quoted by the PDI story as saying.

End of story? Not quite.

The day the PDI story came out, Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre was on ABS-CBN saying that the 1,318 Chinese nationals rounded up at Fontana will all be charged for violation of their visas.

Quite some conflicting statements there already. One – the number of those “taken in.” The police chief saying 912, the justice secretary saying 1,318. Or a difference of 406 warm bodies. Two – the police chief saying all of those “arrested” were verified to be in the country legally. The justice secretary ordering the filing of appropriate charges against them for visa violations.

Come now, since when did a city police chief become spokesperson for matters of immigration? There is just much, too much, at stake here to be left to a city cop chief.

Aguirre himself – in that ABS-CBN interview – disclosed reports of offers of up to P250,000 per head for what has long been euphemized as “facilitation fees” to make legal the illegal.

For the record, BI spokesperson Atty. Antonette B. Mangrobang said that as of Tuesday, only 99 of the Chinese nationals have undergone inquest investigation because of the sheer number of those who were arrested.

She said the BI is still verifying and validating the immigration status of the others and will charge the Chinese nationals for violation of their visas for engaging in online gaming. She also said the overstaying Chinese will be deported while summary deportation proceedings will be made to those who engaged in online gaming.

Netizens had a field day with the Fontana raid.

“Here’s the reason why there are always no villas available, even to members,” said one…

Yes, now we know that those villas have been transformed into call centers and online gambling stations, employing exclusively Chinese nationals.

One Elpidio Que commented: “Chinese gambling lord Jack Lam runs the Fort Ilocandia Casino in Laoag and Fontana Casino in Clark legally, but operates an on-line casino illegally in Fontana.”

It looks precisely that now with Aguirre’s disclosures.

Come to think of it, there’s nothing new to this Fontana raid by government authorities and finding illegal foreign workers there. Raids, mostly by operatives of the NBI, have become so routine that many times they merited little, if any, space in newspapers or broadcast time. The fate of those arrested almost always buried in succeeding bigger stories. Na-areglo, in street lingo. Which has led jaded newsmen and observers to unkind speculations on the real intent and purpose of those raids.

This last one coming into the season of merriment and gift-giving added more malice to it. Baka naman maagang namamasko o nagka-caroling lang.

Let us wait for Aguirre to see through these, all the way to China for these illegals…

Meanwhile, the Clark Development Corp., freeport administrator, said it “is hoping for a speedy resolution of the (BI’s) investigation.”

“CDC, as a government agency, is supporting any drive to curb any illegal activities. It has always been an active partner in inter-agency coordination and has espoused cooperation among its stakeholders in the Freeport,” a short statement said. “We are confident that all locators will continue to abide by existing labor and immigration laws.”

Pardon, but that confidence of yours is not enough.

CDC is duty-bound to take a more proactive role in making sure that its locators toe the legal line, being a principal party in all those contracts signed at the freeport.

But then, can the present CDC management do so without fear of falling into disfavor with the Force actually governing the Freeport?...

OBVIOUSLY, CDC could not and did not.

Hence, this last raid where not only matters of immigration and illegal business operations but moreso the health, aye, the very life of the Filipino is put at stake!

So, until the next Fontana raid, folks. Here’s keeping our fingers crossed.

Call me paranoid

IT ALL started with that Zambales teacher posting on Twitter a P50-million bounty on the President’s head.

What could have been readily dismissed as patently illusional, laughed off even as pure hallucination – given the dire economic straits veritably all Filipino teachers are mired in, where a paltry P500 is sweated blood for – the NBI took all-too grimly – arresting the teacher, and not without some sadistic glee – the teacher on all fours like a swine wailing remorseful apologies, on cam.  

The human rights goody two-shoes have not had time to raise a whimper when came in succession the arrest of two netizens who allegedly even raised the ante on Duterte’s head.

“I will double your P50 million to P100 million for anyone who could kill Duterte. I’m now here in Boracay.” The Facebook post of a construction worker obviously referencing the Zambales teacher’s Twitter post.

Again, laughably preposterous as it could only be – a daily wage earner having P100 million to give away! – it took a composite team of policemen in Malay, Aklan, operatives of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, and the Regional Anti-Cybercrime Unit to effect the arrest of the peon in his boarding house in Boracay.

In Cebu, an unemployed college graduate, was nabbed in Cordova town hours after she allegedly posted on her Facebook account a P75-million reward for a similar extermination job on the President.

Once more, manifestly ludicrous – an out-of-work lady proffering P75 million – still, the police took it hook, sinker, line, all the way to the rod.

And despite her vigorous denial – that she could not be the one who made the post, claiming her social media account was hacked – police are reportedly determined to file a case against her.

It was not putting up a price for the head of the President that caused the arrest of a man from Agusan del Norte. It was his Facebook post that called Duterte a head case.  

“Alam na pattern, mosalida si Go konuhay siya mohangyo sa buang nga Pangulo, Digong gago. Buang si Digong.” Roughly translating to: “We know the pattern, [Senator Christopher] Go would put up a show asking the crazy President, Digong stupid. Digong is crazy.” So, the man supposedly posted.

The Caraga police said he will face charges for violation of libel provisions of Republic Act No. 10175 or the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, as defined by Article 355 of the Revised Penal Code.

Comes to lecture the police Christian Monsod, a framer of the 1987 Constitution.

“The arrests were unconstitutional.  No warrant of arrest.  No complaint.  No basis for warrantless arrest,” Monsod said in a text message to the Inquirer.

Emphasizing: “Whether libelous or not is for a court to decide, not the police.”

Only the judge

Why, even our own GM, former IBP-Pampanga president Gener Endona posited:

“A complaint for libel has to be filed, preliminary investigation to be conducted and if there is probable cause, only the judge can order the arrest of the accused. Policemen cannot arrogate unto themselves whether or not a crime of libel was committed.”

Duterte bête noire Chel Diokno, chair of the Free Legal Assistance Group, further articulated: “The limited authority given to the police to arrest without warrant is only for crimes that occur in their presence or for hot pursuit.”

And on point: “Crimes like libel (especially in cases where no complaint is filed) were never meant to be the subject of warrantless arrests. Only judges are equipped with the knowledge and impartiality to decide if a person should be jailed for libel.”

Odd, Diokno said – as countless others too wondered on FB – that citizens could be arrested for allegedly cursing the President when he, Duterte, shows no compunction in cursing senators, presidents, bishops, the Pope, the Church, even God Himself.

As one wag put it: “Ang lahat ay hindi puwedeng murahin si Duterte. Ang lahat ay puedeng murahin ni Duterte.”

So, the web is swept with cries of “selective justice” pointing to Vice President Leni Robredo’s lion share of bashing, including those calls for her passing, starting Day One at the OVP.

So, has there been even but one of these bashers – easily identifiable with names, faces, even domicile in the social media – ever invited by the police even for routine questioning?

Foot-in-mouth perhaps, the NBI said Thursday they will also go after people who have threatened the Veep.

Her spox though riposting: “VP Leni is focused on working to help our fellow Filipinos struggling to cope with the hardships brought about by Covid-19 and the ECQ. We would rather spend our time and energy helping, rather than paying any attention to mean posts on social media.”

And rubbing it in: “She’s endured this many times in the last four years, and she has never let it distract her from the real work that needs to be done. And this holds true even more during this time of crisis.”

Indeed, it was the VP that was sporadically targeted with death threats in the social media for the longest time, never the President. Only now that Duterte is it, and seemingly calculated at that.   

I don’t know if it’s just me, or have you too noticed some sort of role reversal in those…for want of a phrase, kill-kill-kill ejaculations in the web?

Cry conspiracy theory now! It cuts both ways among the ‘tards in the political divide, anyways.  

Call me paranoid. But I sense some insidious method in the seeming madness of this all. And, terrifyingly, it’s more than a case of wagging the dog.  

This Martial Law survivor, senior now as he is, is not yet that demented to have forgotten the 1972 bogus ambush of Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile that midwifed the birth of the Marcos dictatorship.

And we all know who has kept the disgraced Ferdinand highest in his pantheon of idols.

I see the signs, not the least prognosticator though I am.   

Senior's day out

MAY 12, past 9:30 a.m. The 60^th day of my home quarantine, and I resolved to go beyond the 2-kilometer radius farthest point I’d gone in the two times I ventured out of home.   

Instead of the nearer – to St. Jude Village, that is – Walter Mart, I drove myself to SM City Pampanga, that old happy affliction called “malling-itis” recurring in me.

No random trip this, but task-specific: withdraw from BDO what little cash I can to shore up the fast-dwindling home fund, buy my maintenance meds and the wife’s too, look for a Cebuana or Palawan branch to pick up a $100-remittance from a generous US-based friend.

I didn’t know if the security at St. Jude’s gate had any whiff of what was coming that day – ECQ turning to GCQ – but they were more lenient, simply waving on vehicles coming out of the village, after checking if the drivers wore face mask.

Contrary to what I regularly see on FB, there was no traffic build-up leading to the checkpoints near the entry to NLEx, the police and tanods there taking but a cursory look at the drivers and whatever ID/passes shown them; no more questions of destination, purpose of travel, etc. just a reminder to keep the face mask on, even inside the car.  

No line of vehicles entering SM, a nod from the security guards and onto the Mexico side parking, nearest the BDO branch, at 9:48 a.m.  

Now, traffic – pedestrian that is – in the queue to the mall’s west entrance. The guard saying, “mall opens at 10 a.m.” but started letting in mallgoers in batches of five. I got in two minutes past 10 – past thermal scanning – 35.2C, and alcohol handwash.   

Only to queue again: first to sign the bank’s logbook, then to the protocol-distanced monobloc chairs along the corridor fronting the bank. Uncomfortable with being number 26, I asked a guard if they have dispensed with senior lanes. He pointed me to a single line of unoccupied chairs at the leftmost row.

Soon as silver maned me occupied seat 1, I noticed a trio of grey hairs leaving their chairs in the regular queue to transfer to my lane. Yeah, it pays to ask to be ahead.

While I was not the first to enter the bank – again, after thermal scanning, 34.8C this time – I got straight to the priority lane counter, and in less than 10 minutes, transaction finished. It just got to show how little cash I withdrew. Before giving me the cash though, the bank teller asked me to remove my face mask to match with the picture in my depositor’s record on her computer. Could not help noticing her somewhat startled with all my facial hair now. Still she managed an almost inaudible “thank you, sir” through her face mask.

Out of the bank, after yet another alcohol hand wash.

Healthy Options, right next to BDO, for a bottle of organic honey – 1:1 tablespoon with apple cider vinegar in a tall glass of warm water, my soon-as-I-wake-up tonic drink daily. Only three of us seniors inside the store. Again, alcohol handwash, after paying.

Watson’s next door for the meds. First and only one in line to the pharmacy. Three boxes of amlodipine/valsartan – 21 tablets in all – for my two-week dosage. The pharmacist taking longer with the wife’s meds, 10 kinds in all at 10 tablets/capsules each. And still ran short of one – some kind of coal in a sachet. Once more, hand washing with alcohol before leaving.

Looked at the watch to see it was only 10:38 a.m. and I was already done. That was fast, way, way faster than before ECQ when queues were longer and serving time slower – even on priority lanes – in just about any transaction at the mall, be it in the bank, pharmacies, eateries, coffeeshops, or at the department store.

Facility that could be out of fear of greater chances of getting the virus the longer the personal interactions lasted.

Melancholia

Still, that was so fast it was fun. Nearly shouted “Extended ECQ, bring it on.” The sense of triumphal felicity though instantly crashing to melancholy at a mere turn of the head – to the darkened barricaded corridor of closed shops as far as the eye could see.  

I did not expect it could hit that hard – with heavy steps and heavier heart to walk through and see one’s happy place so uncharacteristically forlorn, so devoid of gaiety, so bereft of…life.

Uniqlo. Santouka. Starbucks. Go-to spots all. All shuttered down. I could not even peer at Ramen Nagi. It was much too much. Had to leave SM City Pampanga in a rush, else I would have sung dirges even in broad daylight.

Sped through JASA looking for a Mercury Drug branch to get the last in the wife’s incomplete reseta.

Passed two – Dolores near the church and at Walter Mart – with snaking lines from the sidewalks down to the streets. Thought of proceeding all the way to Angeles City but stopped right after Colegio Sebastian seeing an MD branch absent any human presence but a single security guard by its entrance. Long story short – out of the car, got priority number card, alcohol handwashed, entered, go directly to the plastic partitioned counter, handed the prescription, pharmacist got the meds, paid, got the change, alcohol handwashed, out of the store, into the car. Less than 10 minutes, wow. Yeah, I could do this.

Time to look then for a Cebuana, the kids said Palawan was always crowded, on the way back home. Long lines at one in front of the San Agustin church. Proceeded to the one by the side of the JASA-Dolores flyover – all but one in line. Buenas. Finished the form just in time for my call with two customers inside the shop done with their payout. Submitted the form with a government-issued ID, and got P4,890 for the Benjamin. Short end of the bargain with the exchange rate at P50 to $1. Just have to accept it.

The burning heat of the sun felt like noontime early September in Dubai. Still wanted trip downtown San Fernando but could not afford the risk of sunstroke, so onward home, arriving at 11:42. Just in time for a lunch of suwam mais, pritong dalagang bukid, halabos na hipon with chopped mango, tomatoes and bagoong as sawsawan. Burp.         

So, if I could do this under ECQ, I could do even more under GCQ, right?

Alas, the IQ and the EQ say otherwise: The danger of Covid-19 is still here. Expose thyself not.

One senior’s day out, after months homed-in is enough. There’s still so much to live for, to love for, to pray for, to hope for…like SM malling again, in full operation wistfully.    

Well, in another two weeks, maybe.

   

  

   

Virulent capitalists

“TAYO, WE can afford to work from home. But the daily wage earners, wala namang online. In the meantime, wala silang kita. Hindi sila kakain. ‘Yong ibinibigay ng gobyerno ay hindi enough.”

So, the Honorable Cynthia Villar implored the government on Tuesday over DZMM – before it shut down – to allow daily wage earners to return to work as soon as possible amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Proffering statistics only she knew from where, Villar said the crisis affected most adversely 59 percent of the population, she further segmented as 22 percent “poor” and 37 percent “near-poor.”

Villar, kauring anak-pawis! I was all too ready to take back everything unsavory I wrote about the senator, which is just about everything I wrote about her, and hail her for taking up the cudgels for the working man – and to be gender sensitive, working woman and working etcetera – but for the next things that came out of her mouth.  

“May findings kasi na at 27 degree Celsius, namamatay ang virus. So ‘yong mga constructions workers, agricultural workers na nasa labas, mahirap na rin sila magkaroon ng contamination kasi hindi nage-e-stay ang virus sa mainit na lugar,” Villar averred. Indeed, where are her data coming from? She who eschewed, aye, chewed out the DA for its propensity for research in one Senate hearing.

Wow! The World Health Organization itself has said there is not, as yet, any evidence that sunlight kills the coronavirus. That the virus continues to spike in hot Philippines – heat index at 46 degrees the past days, is still prevalent in hotter Malaysia, and spreading in hottest Africa is an affirmation of WHO’s word. And therefore, a negation of Villar’s.

Come to think of it now, Villar was but a second coming – I did not have enough gall to call her second-rate, trying hard copycat – of Joey Concepcion in the allow-daily-wage-earners-to-work-because-they-have-some-sort-of-immunity thesis.

At the close of April, in an online forum of the Shareholders Association of the Philippines, the presidential adviser on entrepreneurship proposed the resumption of construction work amid the pandemic in order to help revive the economy.

The construction workers out in the open, Concepcion pointed out, may have “better immunity” than “sheltered people.”   

Concepcion thus: “Maybe because they are so used to so much exposure that they have a better immunity than us, who are sheltered in a well-protected environment.”

Absent any scientific evidence, Concepcion took the slippery ground of  argumentum ad verecundiam – appeal to false authority: “When we talked to the proponents of Caritas project, which involved about 30 business organizations led by the Zobel brothers, the same thing was relayed to them, that many of the poor are somehow resilient to the virus.”

Caritas in charity, yes. Zobel in business, indubitably. But both in virology, in immunology? That’s no leap of faith. That’s an absolute suspension of disbelief.

This, though, I believe:

Villar and Concepcion – capitalists of the highest order all too suddenly seeming to champion the cause of the working class. Some red flags immediately raised there.

Comes to mind this nugget of wisdom from celebrated American lawyer Clarence Darrow: “I am a friend of the working man. I would rather be his friend than be one.”

There is your social distancing, sympathy – feigned or genuine – notwithstanding, the twain between the haves and the have-nothing not even narrowing.  

It cannot get any redder than looking at it through the prism of contradiction, dialectical or otherwise. Of an instant go-back to the “history of all hitherto existing society” summed up in the class divide of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

So Villar invoked the continuing sustenance of the out-of-work amid the ECQ with government subsidies falling short, and Concepcion the revival of the economy. Both, concededly, valid, even noble causes, taken solely on their own merits.

But at what cost? The working class, as though immunized, aye, armored by their own sun-burnt skin, let loose like some beast of burden to produce, not so much for their daily need as for the ruling class’ insatiable greed.

Verily, the immunity Villar and Concepcion conveyed upon the workingman no different from the amulets old man Valentin de los Santos bestowed upon his bolo-wielding Lapiang Malaya cultists with which they stormed the phalanx of M-16-firing Constabulary troopers in that infamous Maytime massacre of 1967.

Indeed, replete is history with stories of the bourgeoisie, even under the best intentions, pushing the proletariat to the slaughter.   

Even for a minute forgetting the capitalists’ vested interests, not even the ends of national wealth are ever justified by the sacrifice of the nation’s health.

Isilya mo

A chair is still a chair,

even when there’s no one sitting there. Anang isang awit.

Nguni’t nitong panahon ng Covid, ang silya’y hindi na lamang pansalo ng puwit.  

Di mawari, di rin malirip, buhay ngayo’y tila sa silya nakakapit.

Pagsusumamo ng limos at malasakit, sampung kilong bigas di na ipinagkait.

Kahoy man o plastic, walang lamangan, pantay-pantay – pati kulay, ang dito’y nakalagay.

 

Datapuwa’t, subalit, bakit? Ibang silya’s doble supot ang naihatid.  

 

Dili naman, may manok pang paningit.

Pasalamat ka nga’t ika’y nabigyan, gaano man kalayo iyong kinalalagyan –

 Samantalang ang iba’y hanggang hintay na lamang.

 

Kahit kawalan ay pinasasalamatan.

 Sumunod ka na lang? Hinagpis ng hapis ni minsa’y di nakakuha --

 

Habang ang iba ay nakakadalawa na.

Katarungan nasaan? Sansalop ma’y tayo’y di nabahaginan. Mayroon pa nga diyan, tig-iisang kaban. Hatid pa ng militar kahit kulay dilawan.

O di kaya’y handog ni kinatawang mahal – pangala’y pinalaki nang sa halala’y di makalimutan.

 

Sa silya ng buhay, may malas, may buwenas. Subali’t pagdating ng bigas ay tiyak. Di dapat manimdim, bagkus paka-alalahanin: Isilya mo ang iyong daing, ito ay diringgin.

 Maagap ka lamang at siguraduhin di ka maunahan ng asong patpatin.  

(mga laarawan  ay pinulot sa facebook at hindi inaangkin nitong sumulat)