Lanterns, mooncakes
Published Aug 21, 2021 12:02 am
MEDIUM RARE
Jullie Y. Daza
An alternative headline would have been “The last Q” (for quarter), but where’s the romance in that?
Quoting the president of the biggest federation of business clubs in the Philippines, “Spare the last quarter.” Henry Lim Bon Liong was okay with the Aug. 6-20 ECQ – as every reasonable businessman was, given the spiking numbers of COVID cases. But like ECOP president Sergio Ortiz-Luis and other like-minded merchants who are convinced that we cannot forever be in lockdown and accordingly must find a way to live with the virus, Henry is optimistic that the last quarter will be less cruel; it’s the last hurrah for celebrating, spending, shopping, buying gifts for Christmas and the New Year.
Christmas is just around the corner, 10 days before Sept. 1, start of the “longest Christmas in the world!” For the impatient ones and as if by design, there’s tomorrow to wish upon a star: Aug. 22 by the lunar calendar is the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival in countries where the moon cake is a symbol of the riches of harvest, a night when the brightest moon of the year competes with the glow of red and golden lanterns swaying in the evening air.
Suffering from lockdown fatigue, boredom, burnout, depression? Get out of the house and gaze at the moon and stars for a change, recharge. (I saw a tantalizing ad of Solaire for moon cakes but didn’t act on it in solidarity with the penny-pinching brethren.) Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez made sense when he asked IATF to consider what most of us have been thinking all along: If 94 percent of cases are mild or asymptomatic, the laser beam of our attention should not be on them but on severe/critical cases, those who should be in hospitals under the expert care of our heroic doctors and nurses.
Like Mr. Ortiz-Luis, Secretary Lopez warned that an extended ECQ would produce 16,000 more lost businesses. How many of them can the new MECQ save? The direst of consequences were already predicted last year by non-experts, the untitled, unentitled people of the street who said, “We will die not of the virus but hunger.” From Desiderata: “The dumb and ignorant, they too have their stories.”
Jullie Y. Daza
An alternative headline would have been “The last Q” (for quarter), but where’s the romance in that?
Quoting the president of the biggest federation of business clubs in the Philippines, “Spare the last quarter.” Henry Lim Bon Liong was okay with the Aug. 6-20 ECQ – as every reasonable businessman was, given the spiking numbers of COVID cases. But like ECOP president Sergio Ortiz-Luis and other like-minded merchants who are convinced that we cannot forever be in lockdown and accordingly must find a way to live with the virus, Henry is optimistic that the last quarter will be less cruel; it’s the last hurrah for celebrating, spending, shopping, buying gifts for Christmas and the New Year.
Christmas is just around the corner, 10 days before Sept. 1, start of the “longest Christmas in the world!” For the impatient ones and as if by design, there’s tomorrow to wish upon a star: Aug. 22 by the lunar calendar is the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival in countries where the moon cake is a symbol of the riches of harvest, a night when the brightest moon of the year competes with the glow of red and golden lanterns swaying in the evening air.
Suffering from lockdown fatigue, boredom, burnout, depression? Get out of the house and gaze at the moon and stars for a change, recharge. (I saw a tantalizing ad of Solaire for moon cakes but didn’t act on it in solidarity with the penny-pinching brethren.) Trade Secretary Ramon Lopez made sense when he asked IATF to consider what most of us have been thinking all along: If 94 percent of cases are mild or asymptomatic, the laser beam of our attention should not be on them but on severe/critical cases, those who should be in hospitals under the expert care of our heroic doctors and nurses.
Like Mr. Ortiz-Luis, Secretary Lopez warned that an extended ECQ would produce 16,000 more lost businesses. How many of them can the new MECQ save? The direst of consequences were already predicted last year by non-experts, the untitled, unentitled people of the street who said, “We will die not of the virus but hunger.” From Desiderata: “The dumb and ignorant, they too have their stories.”