Cell phones – they’re everywhere in Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) and Region 1 that one may well conclude these are more than the two regions combined population, and still multiplying.
Just a wee history of cell phone (CP). Before, It wasn’t called CP, but “mobile phone” and invented in 1973 by Martin Cooper, an American engineer and regarded the father of cellular phone.
Mobile phones emerged in the Philippines in the 1990s and swamped markets nationwide. The term CP took Filipinos’ fancy by storm, by the same token typhoons love storming Filipinos.
Maybe you recently saw a man in his thirties or forties yakking on a CP outside some stores, along a pedestrian lane or while crossing a road.
He ambled along with phone in one hand and a bag on the other, nearly bumping into a very, very beautifooool woman who was also talking on her cell phone and who, moments earlier, nearly bumped into another man with, you guessed it, a cell phone at his ear.
“Why are all these people with CPs in their hands anyway?” Sandoval wailed to Ah one day they walked the streets of Baguio.
“Search me,” Ah confessed to his friend, also puzzled by the phenomenon. Ah and Bert are ignorant about CPs as the two don’t use them.
“Walking and talking on the cell phone is enough multi-tasking for me. Why can’t people just pause and concentrate talking on their phones, then resume walking again,” Sandoval wailed.
Sandoval confided to his friend how he thinks the CP was invented by the devil as it is so convenient it is an inconvenience. These contrivances are like persons. If you don’t re-charge them, you get nothing from them at all.
Ask Atty. Joe Molintas what’s a CP anyway. This good ol’ hearted friend of many will think for a minute and smile his head off by intimating a CP is a darn gadget that will assure that a Cordilleran or non-Cordilleran, when alone in public view, will not look forlorn, left unattended, or completely forgotten.
“CP is also a contraption that makes anyone not doing anything, feel he/she is doing something by groping for that CP every after two minutes or so and, staring into it intently like a serious matter has cropped up, when in fact there ain’t anything in the CP to read,” Sandoval added.
Majority state their love of our Creator by often singing,” What a friend we have in Jesus…” Those in love with CP, sweetly croon, “What a friend I have in my CP.”
On the other hand, Baguio City councilor Peter Fianza may point out that those who don’t utilize CPs finally realized people using CPs are prisoners of their phones – the very reason why cell phones are called CELL phones.
Baguio City councilor Faustino Olowan may well tug at his ear and playfully muse that before HOME is where the heart is. Now with CP, the PHONE is where the heart is.
Bong Cayabyab of the Public Information Office of Baguio City Hall, laughs to think that it is very much easier for many to ride the eye of any typhoon or storm, than to give away or donate their cell phones.
Many women profess that CPs are their best friends, and their lifelines to the outside world. Dispossessing their CPs can mean for them their jail sentence.
AH is often left speechless seeing women spiral into mini heart attacks upon discovering their CPs aren’t with them. They’d scratch their heads, pull their hairs, frown, pout, bite their fingernails and wring their hands in despair, trying to remember where they misplaced their CP’s.
You’d be surprised how difficult it is to relinquish a CP. Even a drunk, upon waking up from his stupor will search for CP first, not his wife, girlfriend or his house. He cares none if he fell drunk in a gutter or if his pants zippers are open so long as he can find his CP.
For women who’ve had too many drinks, they would open their CPs and talk to them like these were actual persons, pouring their heartaches and woes to their CPs and begging them for advice.
When Ah and Berto had their walk that day in Baguio, they, ironically, were out and headed to a CP store to scrutinize latest models. “What CP model do you want?” Sandoval asked Ah.
“Anything is fine. Simpler the better,” replied Ah, who’s a moron about CP brands.
Just as the sales lady dug produced what was supposed to be a starter phone for low-tech Ah, Ah saw it. There on the wall – calling to him. A CP with TV capability.
Ah’s imagination ran wild of watching all his favorite TV shows in that CP when his reverie was cut short by Sandoval, handing Ah a different CP brand and saying, “ How about we get this? It’s buy one, get one free.”
