One Saturday, I woke up at 5:09 am and the weather app said it was cloudy. But in reality, it was raining cats and dogs. Why did the weather app not register that? So how reliable is it now? As reliable as Pinoy politicians? Or as reliable as senators walking out of the Senate?
I have a friend who’s more updated on Philippine political news than I am. I’d rather watch BTS Facebook reels now that the South Korean boy band has made a major comeback after their military stints, and I’m not even a fan. I guess I’m just amused by their following. They even won Artist of the Year again at the American Music Awards, whose winners are decided by fans' votes. They first won in 2021.
K-pop has become a major industry in South Korea. K-pop hopefuls start taking dancing and singing lessons at the age of seven, with the hope they’ll be recruited to join the ranks of K-pop trainees once they’re 13 years old. Not all trainees reach international fame, thus making BTS among the fortunate few.
The dancing and singing lessons, and the training at such a young age, require much discipline. Only the best survive the rigors of auditions and rejections.
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The BTS members are now in their late 20s and early 30s, meaning they’ve been dancing and singing for at least 20 years if they started their lessons at 7.
If political candidates also began their political lessons at 7, they should be experts by now. Experts at what exactly? Hmm. Politics?
But that’s not how the normal world works. Not everyone starts knowing their absolute path at 7. It’s usually many years of traveling along a long and winding road leading to somewhere or even nowhere, with some realizing what they truly need during their senior years already. It’s never too late to restart.
But I think one good example of a restart, or whatever you call it: reboot, refresh, reset, is the way the Bol-anon goes home, from wherever he’s currently based, during the merriest month of May to celebrate his hometown’s fiesta, and then to bring back calamay as pasalubong to friends at his newly adopted place of residence.
This is a great way to honor one’s roots and to assure family, relatives, and friends back home that he will always remember where he came from. And it also serves as a gauge of where he is now in his journey. It’s not always a restart, though. It could be a simple breather in between the busiest days of his life.
My dad always went home to Carcar, Cebu for the fiesta there. When he was already too ill to travel, he still insisted on going. And that’s when we promised him we’d be the ones to join it on his behalf. Which I’ve not done in the last few years when my sister got sick and eventually died. She was my travel companion. How could I now travel without her?
