Seares: Tomas calls Davao City ‘still ugly.’ Leni Robredo passed the bar ‘at the end of the day.’ Dancing with Harry Roque. Less garbage, smaller crowd?

‘BATI LANG GIHAPON.’ Former Cebu City mayor Tomas Osmeña didn’t say Davao City is ugly now. He said it is still ugly, meaning it was not pretty before.There’s a difference. Basing on ex-mayor Tomas’s assessment, Sara and the other Dutertes who ran Davao City before couldn’t be held responsible for the city’s “ugliness” (or “pagka-bati”) but only for having failed to convert the local government unit into a beauty.Tomas’s comparison of Davao City with Iloilo City, however, must tell us that he didn’t mean physical beauty of the city. He said Iloilo has become a boom city, so he must mean prettiness on the financial or economic aspect. The former has always been not an excellent speaker in Cebuano-Bisaya; some of its nuances still elude him.But his point must be that as presidential daughter, Sara could’ve made Davao flourish faster and prettier than Iloilo whose mayor, Tomas said, was “even kicked out” by the president.Tomas, a broadcaster said, risks a punch in the nose from one of the Dutertes. Don’t think so. Expect a “persona non grata” (“unacceptable or unwelcome person”) tag from the Davao City Council on the former mayor. Last March 22, that city’s Sanggunian branded Walden Bello, a veep candidate, PNG for calling out Sara for her absence from the debate, describing her governance as “corrupt’ and calling the city “a trading hub of illegal drugs.”MIKE LOVES THE PHRASE TOO. That expression “at the end of the day” — you must’ve watched and heard Cebu City Mayor Mike Rama say idiom more than twice in a number of speeches and interviews. And yes, presidential wannabe Leni Robredo used it to explain her flunking the bar before passing it.By this time, many of us must know that “at the end of the day” was (a) listed in 2008 by Oxford University researchers as No. 1 in a list of 10 most “irritating and disliked” words, (b) voted in 2009 as Britain’s top office cliché that people hated to hear; (c) picked in 2013 as the “most overused and useless” English phrase, and (d) included last March 2022 (by Reader’s Digest), as one of the 10 “most annoying” phrases in the English language.Leni Robredo’s critics ridicule her for not passing the bar the first time. Not for repeating the favorite phrase in two consecutive sentences: “But at the end of the day, I passed the bar eventually. At the end of the day, I became a lawyer and I am still a lawyer.”Atty. Eddie Barrita, bar first-timer and last to leave in other bars, asked if it was still “at the end of the day” when the exam results were released early in the morning.WHO DANCES BEST? By best, the candidate who gets most attention, not most appreciation, from dancing on stage at political rallies. The jury is still out but people have senatoriable Harry Roque in mind. No one beats him in his kind of dancing, if it qualifies as one.Dancing with the Harry? No one has yet disclosed the experience but there’s reportedly “nothing quite like it.”OF CROWDS & GARBAGE. Does the size of the crowd affect the volume of garbage it leaves? Garbage experts tell us “generally, yes.” But some factors may change the expected result, such as the kind of mass gathering (a political rally vs a concert), the predominant participants (mostly male vs mostly female, singles vs married, young vs old), regulation enforced and facilities provided regarding waste disposal, and the like.But why was the matter of garbage volume selected in the story about the Saturday, April 2, rally of BOPK, media specialist Max Limpag wondered in an FB post.Could be one of these reasons: (a) nothing else interesting or important happened; no stampede or claim of one; (b) the news source led the reporter to make it the lead; (c) there were serial updates on the story, each update with a different “angle.”The news source could show, without saying it outright, that the rival party’s rally drew a not-too-large crowd — by the solid waste left behind.