i was having one of my typical i-shall-be-lazy-and-not-do-anything-but-hang-out-at-home-and-get-fat days when anmi calls me up to accompany her in supervising a meeting for search-in (a retreat group in zobel) of high school zobel peeps. given the state i was in when she called -- my "zen" moments -- i wasn't in the mood to go but some prodding convinced me.
i wasn't doing much at the meeting since anmi was doing more of the supervising and i was doing more of the eating. haha. sarap ng buffet eh! after stuffing my stomach with pasta, meatballs, lechon manok, roast beef, and rice (yummm...), i sat down near the group where everyone was discussing and met this guy named fidel...
...ramos.
while we were meeting kasi, bigla siyang sumulpot dun sa room. apparently, bahay pala niya 'yun! i later found out that one of the zobel peeps there is the grandson. anyway, the fun part came when he started talking to all of us just like any typical politico trying to entertain a group of people more than 50 years younger than him (trying to crack jokes while injecting allusions to current political events. you get the picture). nag kwento-kwento siya muna tapos he suddenly asked: "sinong pinakamatanda dito?". oh how i hate that question. even if my batchmates, anmi and tim, were also there, i kind of felt that i would eventually be in the hotseat. ramos wanted kasi the oldest in the group to ask him a question.
after some mild bursts of "hindi ako! hindi ako!" and finger pointing (to tim, since he really was the eldest), ramos signalled for me to come up beside him. anak ng...!! when i was walking towards him nga, i kinda remembered wanting to say "gloria resign!" pero syempre i decided not to create too much of a scene (him being an gloria supporter and all, hehe).
'eto na yung jologs part.
when i was standing beside him na, he asked me kung ano yung gusto kong i-tanong sa kanya. sabi ko: "wala po eh. picture na lang po tayo". i then got my cellphone out of my pocket, faced the camera phone to us, and took a photo.
well that basically ends the jologs part of the night. of course, it eventually became serious after he ate dinner 'cause i sat down beside him and talked politics. for a "retired campus politician", it was pretty interesting to talk about the current political crisis, the parliamentary system, the political maturity of filipinos, the strength of political institutions, and charter change with no less than a former philippine president. i still didn't mention that i wanted gloria to resign though. sayang, saya siguro 'nun!
i can't say i agreed with everything that he said but how often do you get to talk one-on-one about these things with someone who's been there, and i mean, been there right? although i did argue with him a bit by asking "leading" questions like "don't you think it's better if...." after he makes a statement i don't agree with. hehe, like i said, how often do you get to argue with a former president?
funny nga (although ignorant) when one girl asked him if dictatorship would be a good idea to solve the crisis. then i realized that this girl wasn't born yet when ramos, as a military general, broke away from a dictator named marcos in 1986 that helped topple a cruel government and proved to the world that peaceful and bloodless revolutions were possible. paging zobel history teachers, konting galing naman dyan.
oh well, that's it. moral of the story? always have your cellphone and camera phone ready at all times.
No comments:
Post a Comment