PARTY POOPER

(From "A Weekend Note," the editor's letter in Style Weekend, a weekend special every Friday in Manila Bulletin, 7 December 2007)

A bunch of renegade soldiers crashed our months-long shopping party and, for a while there, just for a fleeting second or two, our holiday fervor turned to fear. My first impulse was to call the bank and pull out some investments, but thank God it was followed quickly by the thought that neither our economy nor our government nor our spirit, by all indications, was that volatile.

BLURB
It’s a very small price for us to pay to live in a democracy. —Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, Jr., Armed Forces of the Philippines

But Makati, the centerpiece of our holiday revelry, was the center of the drizzle, which nevertheless rained on some of our parades, such as what would have been an exciting pageant of holiday collections, from Gucci to Prada, at Greenbelt 4 just across the street from the Peninsula Manila, where the useless, pointless drama unfolded, spoiling a lot of other parties, a big wedding with guests flying in from half a world away included.

My college friends and I, busy for weeks organizing a costume get-together at Fraser Place in Salcedo Village, kept our party spirits up and did not entertain the possibility of canceling on account of Trillanes et al. At 5 p.m. on that stupid Thursday day we were still exchanging SMS to each other to keep going: “Where to find Absolut Peppar in this town?” and, since our theme was New Wave, “What to wear? What to wear?” Not one to don costumes, I was happy to settle for a pair of Topman socks in the pattern and colors of the UK flag, which, to me, was all I needed to get in the spirit of The Cure’s “Lovesong” or Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” although, more than music, I was listening to the news on AM radio, hoping that the standoff would be over before it became a major party pooper.

But a party pooper it had to be, at least for the night. Just as my friends Richie and Gina sent a “Siege is Over! Another Reason to Party!” message to all our guests, the curfew between midnight and 5 a.m. was announced, something new for our generation. If half of our guests could still pull an all-nighter, like we used to do only a decade ago, this new development would have been the perfect excuse to “have some fun until the sun comes up” like Sheryl Crow. Alas, the next day was TGIF and a holiday, too. Siege or not, even a party-‘til-sunrise and, worse, a hangover could not compromise our individual plans for the long weekend, especially since none of us thought the trouble at the Pen could be any more than a little hiccup in our holiday schedule.

Indeed, all’s well that ends well, even if to make it home before curfew hours, I had to crawl through two-hour-long bumper-to-bumper traffic, from just past Airport Road all the way to the end of Coastal Road. Midnight caught me behind the wheel, but no sign of policemen, no sign of any checkpoint, at least where I passed.

Whew, it could have been worse, but it will take more than a few aging officers and men bearing personal grudges to take us all back to step 1 on the road to a safe, stable, progressive country. An opportunity to practice constant, tireless vigilance and a reminder of the need thereof, last week’s surprise, suprise, to look at the bright side and to borrow from Kanye West, only “makes us harder, better, faster, stronger…” Or does it?

A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com