Of discos and discorrals and noise pollution

For this Sinulog Week, there is a Food fest at the Fuente Osmeña circle which serves the people who would flock there for the Street Party Bands happening there tonight. With the hectic Sinulog activities, this makes you very hungry. I’m sure that many foreign and domestic tourists would be joining this activity. It is part and parcel of the Sinulog Week.

However, for those of you who may wish to try real Cebuano cooking for a change, you should make reservations at the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel and get a taste of “Sugbusog: Cebuano Food Festival, a Culinary Journey to our Roots.” This Food Festival features the food delicacies of Bantayan Island, like the Labtingaw (a special kind of dried fish you can only find in Bantayan Island), Bihod, (this is the poor man’s caviar, so tasty that even the rich wants is so badly) Arroz Valenciana and the food of Aloguinsan like their surprisingly tasty Pan Bisaya and Salvaro. This is Cebuano food you can’t find in any restaurant within Metro Cebu.

Yes, you can also try the “Maize Kan-on” or corn grits which use to be the staple food of the Cebuano before we shifted to rice. When we were kids, we always ate this as our staple before we shifted to rice and I don’t really know why we made that stupid shift. I gathered that Gov. Gwen Garcia brought her guests to Marco Polo last weekend and she was asking for the “Dukut” of the “Maize Kan-on” but unfortunately, the Marco Polo’s chefs cook so well, they don’t allow the maize to burn at the bottom of the kettle as this is a form of wastage on the food. But in ordinary homes, “dukut” is a reality, which many of us also like to eat. So feast yourself with Marco Polo’s fine Visayan cuisine, which is why they are without doubt, the best buffet in town!

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Now that we’re well into the Sinulog Week, I’ve been told that there has been a series of snatchings that have happened in Metro Cebu which unfortunately victimized local residents. One of the waiters at the Cebu Country Club (CCC) told me that last Saturday his cellphone was snatched from him on board the jeepney he was taking to work at 9:00AM. He complained to the Mabolo Police Station, but it seems that the police have a nonchalant attitude to such petty criminality.

We submit that a major fiesta like the Sinulog attracts tourists, but they also attract sorts of police characters and the like. The Philippine National Police (PNP) should give each and every incident equal importance. A crime is a crime regardless of its gravity. This is the problem with government agencies, which publish statistics; for instance, this year, criminality is down by 5% or that announcement from the Department of Health (DoH) that the Dengue cases were down 8%. With information like it, it makes our government officials complacent. What we should aim for is zero crime rate or zero dengue cases!

Meanwhile I’m four-square behind the decision by Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama to reject requests of holding discos in the various parking areas along the parade route because it worsens the traffic along the area. When I say traffic, I’m referring to “human traffic”! Yes, in the past many years, those discos were done to enhance street dancing, but at the end of the Sinulog Parade, it clogs the entire parade route making it almost impossible for people who are already tired and weary watching the Sinulog Parade to go home. I have nothing against discos, but it should be placed on areas that will not worsen our traffic situation.

While we’re on the subject of discos, I’d like to note that it’s about time someone from the Cebu City Council (attention Councilors Alvin Dizon or Edgardo Labella) to regulate discos in terms of their volume control and their hours, if no law has been created to regulate this. Mind you, we are a country where the leftist screams and demands and complains about human rights violations but let me point out clearly that unbridled noise pollution is also a violation of my human rights to have a nice and quiet sleep.

But discorrals violate our human rights with impunity. In fact when the Fiesta Month of May comes, I can practically hear all those discorrals from the various barangays thumping and booming through the night as I live in Capitol Hills just behind the Provincial Capitol. If the Cebu City Council and the Cebu Provincial Board hasn’t regulated this yet, then it is high time to do so.

The problem with our kind of democracy, we Filipinos are just too free to do what we want. In fact we are far better than the United States, where there really is no freedom. Here, you can be as loud as you can and the police would be scared to stop you! To our friends in the City Council, while you are crafting this law, please make sure that there are penalties for those police officers who refuse to apprehend those potential violators.

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