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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.

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Monday, November 24, 2014

entry arrow5:03 PM | Parade



The fastest way to get around town today is on foot. I knew this as I was preparing to leave the house late in the afternoon, the sound of percussion and trumpets and heavy footfalls marking the parade going on outside. It's the annual fiesta extravaganza, something I have not watched in full or with eagerness for many, many years now. I've caught only glimpses of it the past few years. That's what happens with familiarity: you ignore the familiar, embarrassed even to appear interested in it. (Why is that?) Walking past the parade, which was snaking northward up along Hibbard Avenue from Perdices Street, I see my proof: the more this city changes, the more the annual parade remains the same. The corps of majorettes/minorettes of each school band, for example, is still a mini-beauty pageant: twirlers are handpicked from the crop of the fairest girls in school, twirling talent be damned. And every sort of office and club is part of the parade, making it a steady stream of faces, all sweaty and smiling and living up to the uniformity of their t-shirt designs. I could declare banality, but I do not: I knew that if I'd only stop and observe, I'd find something wonderful in this ordinariness. Last night, for example, I was waiting for my take-out from Chowking when this perfectly ordinary-looking woman came in wearing a 1980s Pinoy TV version of a Persian courtier's garb -- Princess Jasmine channeling Alma Moreno in Lovely-Ness. I thought: "How extraordinary to parade around town like that. Even if it's fiesta." And then my order came, and I thought no more of it. Today, I went past the parade, turned a corner, and wondered about what I would have seen if I had chosen to stop and stay.

Photo from su.edu.ph

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