Has it always been this way? Or has this year's elections made a lot of people think more over who to choose for public office this time around?

(I can't help it. I eavesdrop a lot when people talk loud enough for me to hear. Just following advice I read somewhere in a book on how to write fiction. LOL.)


A friend of mine told me that her 19-year-old younger brother approached her about the elections. He asked her for advice on whom to choose and how to choose, as he will be a first-time voter. What surprised her, she said, was that he asked the question at all, as he is sort of a happy-go-lucky tambay and sometime tricycle driver who rarely, if ever, asks his elders for advice on serious questions.

Cursing Globe Tattoo's wonky internet and the summer heat, I fled the house for my suking internet cafe noontimes last holiday weekend (free aircon, faster computer, faster internet service at P50/5 hours; beat that, Globe!). While I was catching up with various online friends, someone mentioning the names of politicians somewhere behind me caught my attention. The cafe owner, an amiable former OFW who often spends weekends playing DoTA and other MMORPGS with the patrons of his cafe along with his nurse/MMORPG-playing wife, was holding court at the counter among the "DoTA boys" who were perhaps waiting for their other friends to arrive since they were not playing yet. To my surprise, these guys, whom I remember more for yelling imprecations at one another at the tops of their voices whenever a game was in full swing, were discussing the pros and cons of voting for this or that presidentiable. They narrowed their choices down to two: Gibo Teodoro and Dick Gordon; the lone voice who suggested Manny Villar was jeered out. Gibo was gravely considered (good workable platform, articulate, intelligent) and somberly discarded (he's admin, we never know what he might do once in power), and Gordon was settled upon (Subic made good, he's had experience in administration).

Recently too, I met a friend from home for lunch, and she filled me in on local politics, alliances shifting, friendships rearranged. As she works in our munisipyo, she said they'd conducted a recent spot survey among our kababayans for the national elections. What came up was interesting. Villar; no, he has too many issues and his ads are getting to be annoying. Noynoy; he's not his parents. Gibo; he would have been good were he not affiliated with the administration. The others were dismissed as relative unknowns... and we were left with Gordon, who was perhaps not as annoying as Villar, not as too-good-for-his-own-good as Noy, and not as identified with the Arroyo administration as Gibo.

The neighbors drinking at their habitual tables set out in our alley in own own stinking little corner of this metro also seem to be discussing a lot of politics everytime I pass by, interspersed with their problems with their wives and children and work or lack thereof. Villar and Gibo were also eliminated as possibilities for the reasons above mentioned, while Gordon was taken into consideration, although they seemed to be leaning heavily in favor of Noynoy.

It gives me hope.