Admit it, you’re a frown person too. You know there’s more reason around you to frown than smile. You only smile because that’s what your kindergarten teacher taught you to win friends or to get along in life.

As demanded by my job in the newsroom, I don’t smile, even if I want to. Hunting down adjectives and adverbs in a straight news story is a depressing activity. And besides, I wear...]]> WHICH takes more effort, smiling or frowning? Experts say it takes more muscles to smile than it does to frown. In that case, I’m suffering from facial muscle fatigue since I’m what you may call a frown person.

Admit it, you’re a frown person too. You know there’s more reason around you to frown than smile. You only smile because that’s what your kindergarten teacher taught you to win friends or to get along in life.

As demanded by my job in the newsroom, I don’t smile, even if I want to. Hunting down adjectives and adverbs in a straight news story is a depressing activity. And besides, I wear a frown as a rule, like I told you, even if I’m editing the immaculate copies of Mayet Tabada’s editorial pieces.

This whole business of smiling took on a galactic proportion last week, when those who cared to look up the sky through the smog saw the heavens “smiling” at them. It’s one of those rare cosmic treats of Venus aligning with Jupiter to form the “eyes,” and directly below it, the crescent moon to form the “mouth.” In computer lingo, it’s a smiley. It’s the heavens flashing the popular text emoticon.

It worked, if you’re superstitious. In India, around the same time the smiley started to be seen in the skies, the hostage drama at the Taj and Oberoi hotels ended. In Thailand, the 192-day vigil by anti-government protesters came to a climactic finale. For Filipinos, Manny Pacquiao humiliated de la Hoya–with lots of smiles. (Trivia: Pacquiao’s smiles as he walked from the locker room to the ring were proportionate in number to the punches he landed on de la Hoya’s face.)

But news reports about the cosmic phenomenon said it’s not a smiley in the American skies but a frown! In the Northern Hemisphere, the happy celestial trio turns at such angle that it transforms into a sad face. Again, if you’re superstitious, the astral frown says something about everything that is sad in the US these days. But hey, it’s Obama for the next four years. Isn’t that good news? Well, you can always say emoticons are republicans.

But I’m not superstitious, and I don’t believe smiling helps you get anywhere in life that much, really. And leave the stars alone. They follow their own course in heaven. They align in twos, in threes, in hundreds, they collide, explode, they make love with the moons–millions of years before some creatures on earth learned to draw back their lips to expose some teeth and called it smiling.

That’s why I look at this interstellar galactic grin as nothing but a result of modern man’s obsession with computers and text messaging. We look up the sky and see a huge cosmic emoticon right up there. Nothing more.

But to indulge the spiritual in us, here’s another interesting trivia. A similarly close conjunction between Venus and Jupiter occurred in June of 2 B.C. Around that time, it was said three magi in the East were alerted to the birth of a future king and were led toward Bethlehem by a super bright star. The super bright star was believed to be the two planets tightly aligned in the sky. Some scholars connect the event with the Christian nativity story.

I’ll give this one lovely tale of the first Christmas a genuine Pacquiao smile.

( sun.star, december 9, 2008 )

Of course, what we save in cash we more than pay for in non-monetary ways, like by allowing ourselves various forms of inconvenience otherwise not experienced by mall goers. The P600 that I saved from buying an ukay-ukay shirt is what I get...]]> I go for anything that’s cheap. For example, why would I spend P700 for that brand new shirt with the crocodile logo when there’s an ukay-ukay shirt at P100 and with a print that says “Sex is Overrated”? It’s hip, it’s practical, it’s cool. And more than just simply a statement, it’s pro-micro economy. It’s the ginabot-crazy people like us who sustain the livelihood of pungko-pungko vendors.

Of course, what we save in cash we more than pay for in non-monetary ways, like by allowing ourselves various forms of inconvenience otherwise not experienced by mall goers. The P600 that I saved from buying an ukay-ukay shirt is what I get in exchange for almost dying of suffocation inside the ukay-ukay store. For my P600 savings, I have to live with the thought that the shirt’s previous owner could have smelt like dumpsite in the armpit region.

And forget about food hygiene in a pungko-pungko corner. Surviving the experience is easy: if a thing is lying still, it’s lumpia; if it moves, it’s a cockroach.

But these are inconveniences that we are willing to endure in the name of bargain sale. Take for example cellular phones. Have you noticed how we go for cheap deals at the expense of clear communication?

Before I switched to my present phone subscription, I enjoyed quality service from my old provider: unlimited texts, clear signal, wide coverage that included Pinamungajan and other remote jungles around the globe, a slick phone that screamed hell if a phone snatcher was within a kilometer radius. But these were services that came at P2,000 a month.

So when another phone company came waving a similar package at P300 a month, I was ecstatic. Unlimited texts, unlimited calls and a free phone at P300 a month? This isn’t happening, I told myself. I had no choice but to let my ukay-ukay mentality take over. I dumped my old subscription, grabbed this new promo and convinced my friends to do the same.

I had been told that this phone company’s services bog down when it’s cloudy and the sun is out. But I always thought it to be a joke until I started to miscommunicate with my friends, courtesy of my new subscription.

I was at the mall one day to meet my girlfriend for a date when the network started to mess things up. At first, I couldn’t get my calls through. My girlfriend was always “out of coverage area.” This was a mall, not any uninhabited island, for Christ’s sake. How could an ultra-urban center be out of coverage area?

I tried texting. “Honey pie, sweet corn lollipop, wer r u? am hir na.” But it was always “message not sent.” Then after a few minutes, I received a message: “bunny scrub, Im at *** some text missing***”. I replied: “Tootsie roll, som problem with signal. Try coling.” Again, it was “message not sent.”

This went on for like an hour, me tootsie rolling my girlfriend, she sending unintelligible messages. Until World War III started when she texted: “R u rily at d mall??? U fukn idio *** some text missing *** dn’t make … signal as excuse not to *** some text missing***”

I tried calling her again. This time, I finally got through. I told her: “Hey, flower bomb, sorry. It’s really bad signal. Where are you pearly shell, petal bell?” Then from the other line I heard my girlfriend’s voice droning: “dorrrn’t frower bwam purrrly shelll meee u idiort….doorrnmm growrrrwon… doozrnoms maaa time wasterd.” The bad signal was making my girlfriend sound like a constipated robot.

To make a long story short, the date didn’t materialize. When I got home later, I received ten successive messages from my girlfriend, all saying the same thing. “Hi french fries, brute burger, bunny scrub, Im at the mall na.” Then followed by ten more that said: “R u rily at d mall??? U fukn idiot. I’v bin hir for almst an hour. Dnt make d bad signal as an excuse not to see me!!!”

I went back to sleep. Tomorrow when the sun is up, everything will be back to normal, I told myself.

SUN.STAR, NOVEMBER 18, 2008