NEVER FEAR

(From "A Weekend Note," the editor's letter in Style Weekend, Manila Bulletin's weekender, Friday, October 26, 2007)

For the first time, at least to me, Manila seemed quite as scary as people the world over thought it was, the way CNN presented it during our bomb scare episode in early 2000. Scary, indeed, but only very, very briefly!
Last Friday, driving out of the Makati Shangri-La, I didn’t let a taxi cut me, realizing too late that he had every right to be in such a hurry. A young boy with a bleeding arm was on his passenger seat, cradled on the lap of his mother. Thank God I was able to redeem myself when policemen guided the taxi through the gridlock and I had the “honor” of moving my car away in consideration of the victim.
Only then did I start to notice that something was wrong. Sirens were going off everywhere and there was a sense of panic in the way security men were keeping order on the street.

BLURB
He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat. —Napoleon Bonaparte

What was behind all the commotion was a blast at Glorietta 2! I don’t remember now if I came by the information via SMS or voice calls from friends, but I somehow found myself tuning in on any AM station on my radio to figure out what was happening. It didn’t help. Reporters in the vicinity were as clueless as I was and hours after the explosion, after my friends and I had spent a whole afternoon browsing through five halls of merchandise at CITEM’s Manila F.A.M.E at the World Trade Center, the radio stations could confirm no more than that there was, indeed, a blast and the extent of the resultant damage positively ruled out LPG as the cause. The good news on that dark, gloomy, bleary, rainy, tragic Friday afternoon was that all the news spreading around via SMS that a similar explosion rocked SM Megamall was no more than a prank some irresponsible people were trying to pull.
It’s shopping season and Manila is a-buzz with commercial activity. The arrival of fall/winter and holiday stock is enough reason to send summer or even pre-fall collections flying off the rack at a steal in the stores as well as in some secret shopaholic rendezvous.
At the Makati Shangri-La, we were at lunch with Kuala Lumpur-based Makoto Takahashi, CEO of Sharp Corporation’s Asian operation, who was just too happy to take us through the new Sharp Alexander, whose piece-de-resistance, as presented to us in a blare of trumpets ironically on this day of the blast, was its sound.
Last Friday was also the third day of the bi-annual Manila F.A.M.E, at the World Trade Center and buyers from around the world were looking around and checking out merchandise they could order for the next season.
What a pity that just when I’m seeing a lot of foreigners in our midst something might again keep them away, especially with the US Embassy advising Americans to “stay away from Glorietta and nearby areas” only hours after the Friday explosion.
The good news is, at least in our offices, no one thought of canceling any appointment at the mall in the coming days. Why let some misguided elements take the fun out of the shopping season? More important, why let them stagnate our economy by keeping us at home, locked up like prisoners?
If I have to die living my life, well, I might as well live. Of course, I can say that because I don’t live in Pyongyang or in the Gaza strip or in Kabul or in Darfur or in Rangoon. And, of course, I thank God and my dear country that I can be brave and make a statement like this without any fear that tomorrow I might be hanged or gassed or clubbed to death.

A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com