MEDIUM RARE

Dear reader, have you ever seen a real gold bar and held it in your hands?
At last I have experienced placing a gold bar between my hands, all five grams of it, so tiny the store sold them at five grams per bar, each of them one inch long, width and thickness impossible to calculate, being so almost-insignificant.
The price of gold that day, based on ₱4,250 for a five-gram bar, was ₱850/g in Chinatown’s Gold Center. In contrast, the dollar-peso exchange rate hovered at 55.67-55.79 just a couple days before Mother’s Day. Speaking of dollars, which is the more solid investment now, the greenback or a yellow bar of gold?
Two friends of mine are all for “investing” in gold. Z says the 22-carat gold jewelry sold in Chinatown was always a “sure thing” with her mother. For H, gold is a hedge against the fluctuating value of the USD. So when my daughter offered her van to take the five of us on a gold hunting expedition to Chinatown, her word was good as gold, and the green light was on. Throw in the idea of lunch on the Escolta at Uno, surnamed Seafood Wharf, and what’s there not to like?
The Gold Center has been a fixture on Ongpin-Plaza Sta. Cruz ever since I can remember, but why it has taken me this long to dare climb a short flight of stairs to reach the heart of the glaring cave of yellow gold was a mystery to my daughter (who thinks I’m a semi-expert when it comes to Chinoiserie a la Downtown Manila). Like Aladdin’s cave, the Center was an eye-opener. Unlike Aladdin’s cave, it was full of women, none of them Chinoys, who crowded the stores as if there was a building-wide summer sale going on. No, there was no need for such a promo. Gold alone was the lure, maybe 10 percent of it owing to Mother’s Day on the morrow. When I scrutinized the mini-treasure the saleslady had so gingerly handed to me, I observed four Chinese characters etched on its reverse side, signifying “Annual Surplus.” If it means what it says, shall we return in May 2024 to check the price of gold (versus the dollar)?