2016 end thoughts

CAPILLAS

I was hoping to have this space officially launched as a column by March 18 next year, the first anniversary that I began writing here, but there was a deadline for this month and orders are orders and so I have to comply.

The photo that you see here isn’t even new, and I plan to have a new one taken and published by the first week of January to be more up-to-date.

When I was asked by editorial assistant and all-around wingman Raffy about the title to this column, I began searching online and in the inner crevices of my consciousness for something nice and appropriate.

Actually, the first column I wrote was 11 years ago in Sun.Star Cagayan de Oro, and it was entitled “Rise and Shine” since I wanted something catchy and mention something about the start of the day.

A former co-employee who makes it a point to make fun of me whenever the chance presents itself couldn’t resist and told me I should title it as “Rise and Fall,” perhaps to drive home the point that he wanted me to fail in my little endeavor so to speak.

As an aside, “Rise and Shine” also happens to be one of the cheat codes in the popular “Warcraft” game that one enters to illuminate the darkened corners of the campaign map, but the former co-employee didn’t know that.

Still, at least it lasted about a year or so and the former co-employee has since retired to work as a full-time motorela driver, but it was an instructional case, knowing that there are a lot of people who prefer to see you fail than succeed.

At any rate, my column pieces did appear online in Sun.Star’s website so I guess it does meet their standards and I do talk about nearly anything under the sun.

But back to the search for the column title; my mind rattled off phrases like “Strength and Honor” taken from one of the lines in the 2000 movie “Gladiator” (and yet another cheat code in the Warcraft game that gives multiple lives to your characters) to “Counterweight” to “A Day In the Life of…” to “Just Me” but the last two sounded like it came from either an America TV soap opera or a social media blog.

So I settled for “The Way It Is” — I hope no one has trademarked it or else I’ll have to shop around for another column title — an abbreviated phrase used by the late great TV news anchor Walter Kronkite to end his CBS news program (“And that’s the way it is”).

It’s also an abbreviated version of a song title “Just The Way It Is” shared by at least four artists — the late rapper Tupac Shakur, songstress Celine Dion and Phil Collins — based on what I looked at in YouTube, though I most remember the ’80s song “The Way It Is,” a piano driven blues tune by Bruce Hornsby and the Range that’s nice to listen to when making your way back home through Metro Cebu’s traffic congestion after a long hard day’s work at the office.

I also found the phrase somewhat reflective of the Filipino’s philosophical sense of acceptance about how certain things and situations happen in his or her life and how he or she makes the best of it and moves forward, learning from it and growing because of it.

Like the bamboo that bends to and fro at the strongest winds yet never breaks, that is how some had characterized the Filipino. Our acceptance of “the way it is” is not about abject surrender or resignation of what happens nor about yielding to other’s control but about working through and overcoming whatever lies ahead, which is I think what one should do as we gear up for New Year’s Eve.

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PS: Just watched the Star Wars movie “Rogue One” twice and just wanted to add some thoughts about it after reading Cebu Daily News’ resident movie critic Jeff Ruffolo’s review of the film.

For starters, it is the first as far as I can recall in any Star Wars film outside of the prequels or trilogy that had a racially diverse cast of actors. The pilot Cassian Andor as played by Diego Luna being Spanish, famous Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen as Force-sensitive Chirrut Imwe and Riz Ahmed as an Imperial pilot.

I do agree with the criticism about the director’s decision to use the CGI likenesses of Peter Cushing and the late Carrie Fisher for the characters of Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia respectively since it looked unnatural unlike Marvel Studios’ better CGI use of Michael Douglas’ ’80s features in last year’s “Ant Man” film.

Still, as someone who’s watched the Star Wars films and played at least four Star Wars games, “Rogue One” is a welcome addition, and I’m looking forward to “Episode 8” especially in light of Fisher’s untimely demise.