STOP, LOOK, AND LISTEN

The Cagayan de Oro Nite Café is so wealthy! It is so rich with raw life, with living stories, with local culture, and so much more. I recalled my memory when the government scheme was first implemented. I was in 3^rd year High School then and I could still recall that sense of excitement every Friday and Saturday night. It is a blessing perhaps that my home is in very close proximity to the night café, just a block away still we are spared by the rattling noise and chocking smoke.

Just walking around in the Nite Café gives you an infinite amount of images, stories, and lives. As I pass through one stall, an emo couple was searching for new cool belt accessories with the sales girl helping them search for a nice match for their attire. A mother and her daughter eating ice cream spotted an attractive booklet of some fairy tale and asked her mom to buy her one. A Barkada of XU students sifting through piles of ukay-ukay clothes which I think they are stocking up their fashion inventory for the incoming school year. Across the street, a bank worker with respectable business attire went inside a hot unventilated humid store to hunt for new fake DVD releases to watch over the weekend. A group of families sitting in the park benches watching the boxing match in the huge screen above was dazzled at the atomic punch of some boxer (who I don’t really know). Some senior citizens close their eyes in relaxation before blind masseurs deliver heavenly massage to their tired muscles.

Seeing the people live about their lives, and for a moment not thinking where I am and what I am doing, just observing the surroundings opened to me a rich scene of life. In a single spot where I stood, I could see a vast world full of life and activity. It amazes me that even in the bustle of people traffic and choking barbeque smoke in Nite Café, if I just stop, look, and listen, I could see a whole word with different faces moves seemingly in harmony in front of me.