Some post-Valentine musings
FILIPINOS are nothing if not one of the world’s best lovers. Many years ago, when I flew in for home consultations after a long stint in the foreign service, I had a very strange feeling finding myself alone by my lonesome self on a February 14 evening. Credit the successful joint venture of restaurants, hotels, chocolatiers, and National Bookstore Valentine cards.
Ohrwurm. At Balesin Island, we circumnavigated the world in our dreams, tickling the palate with lunch at Toscana, dinner at Mykonos, breakfast at Costa del Sol, etc. The resident trio band named ( you can guess), “D’Trio” hopped from resto to resto and serenaded us in Italian, French, Spanish, English ( including favorite Beatles), Jeprox, or whatever language suited the menu we found ourselves. There was no Irish restaurant here, but the trio indulged Robin and Edith Mercer with “Danny Boy”; and our German friends Wolf Kadach and Susanne Beyen- Latak melted to “Lily Marlene” and “Muss ich denn?”
How do Filipino warblers – without the rudimentary comprehension of der, die, das, or other any foreign language – emote love songs, in any foreign tongue, as if it came from the heart?
NO LOVE LOST. Poor Kamao ng Bayan, who has raised the hackles of LGBT. If man hath known no fury like a woman spurned, he has yet to put up with his worst match vs. Gayweather.
Take heart, Manny Pacquiao. Even Duterte Harry and Miriam ( she who eats bullets for breakfast) stay clear of agitating the Furies. But you have allies like Indonesia which asks Facebook to block LGBT content as “not in accordance with manners, morals of religion, and the values of Pancasila,” How so near and yet so far was separation in the City of Love? When the Huns surrounded the City of Paris in 1870 during the Franco- Prussian War, Balloon mail was the only way communications from Paris could reach the rest of France, with dozens of flights made, mostly at night, and hundreds of thousands of letters delivered.
A 145- year- old letter during the Prussian siege in 1870, delivered by balloon, turned up at Down Under. Charles Mesnier ( or Mesmier) had written to his mother, care of Monsieur Grussin ( or Grossin) at 8 Place de la Ville, Pont-Audemer, in Normandy.
Which must be why Gary Lising reminded us, before taking the hot air balloon flight, to bring our passports.
FOREIGN NEWS. Beijing, China. Xinhua flashed a story of a heartbroken elephant acting out his thwarted crush on nearly 20 cars near a Chinese nature reserve during a sulk over the Valentine’s Day weekend. The spurned pachyderm – angry after losing a fight for a mate, wandered out of a national park and onto a road in Yunnan province, smashing visitors’ cars in a fit of jealous pique.
Which reminds me of a high school boys’ wisdom in biology class: why a male elephant’s sex organ is found in its foot.
Farther east to China’s Hangzhou City, Qiao Dewei, 84, declared his undying love to Liu Shixiu, 83, his bride of 67 years. The octogenarian couple were dressed to the nines – he in wedding suit, she in gown. In all their years together, they had neither done anything romantic nor uttered “I love you” to one another. It took a grandson to play cupid by arranging with the hotel to light up the façade with the “I ( red heart) U.”
Writing it in calligraphy would have been too complicated.
ADVISORY. In this year of the Red Monkey, my wife and I will celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary, after four children and six grandchildren – none of whom were born out of wedlock. FEEDBACK: