Show Me the Manny! - Another Paking Story

i'm not a fan of manny pacquaio.

he can stand beside me and i'd literally look past him. can't help the fact that he's very veeeery short and am part of the kapre clan. well, he does look like gimli in lord of the rings. remember the dwarf?

anyways, paking raised a few eyebrows raise despite botox induced paralysis when he said he is from cebu after the fight with marquez. then again, there is some truth to paking's claim.

sunday may 4, 2008. last day of pinamungajan town fiesta and people are buzzing and lining the streets to catch a glimpse of paking making his way to the town auditorium where he is scheduled to accept a shrine dedicated to him that traces his father's roots to guimbawian, a mountain baranggay, in this sleepy southwest town of cebu.

then again, i am not a reporter and that's not MY story.

earlier that day, paking was the honored guest of the mayor in her house where a sumptuous lunch feast was prepared for his visit. my friends kept bugging me to take their pictures with HIM. some sort of proof of purchase i think. am sure the photos will end up in a facebook, myspace, friendster page. sigh.

when he came in, the reporters rushed to take pictures of him alighting from the car, walking to the porch, stepping into hall, moving into the sala, watching pretty boy oscar dela hoya clobber his enemy (paking muttering to himself: "if i had THAT face then things would be really perfect") get pinched, kissed, posed here, posed there, sit down in the dining table, eat, smile in between bites (we can always photoshop the bit of food stuck between the teeth), and on and on and on... i swear he didn't have time to simply... breathe.

i hurriedly took the pictures my friends requested and moved out to the covered area behind the house and gulped down lungful breaths of sea-salted air. too many people in an enclosed space is not good for the nose. i felt claustrophobic for the poor fellow. then again my friends said that he probably expected that. wanted it. craved for it.

everyone asked why i didn't want to get my picture taken with paking. here are the reasons:

1. he is short, veeery short. i am tall - someone's head is gonna get cut out of the frame and am guessing it's mine. either he wears heels or i go down on my knees. am sure neither one of us wants to do that.

2. i don't like lending out my camera to just about anyone - a 30 thousand piece of equipment in the hands of someone who probably don't know how to set the controls induces my panic button. dit dit dit.

3. he doesn't smile in his pictures - i don't want to look like a moron with a huge smile plastered on my face whereas paking is probably thinking to himself: "next...."

4. i am not a boxing fan - am not that enthusiastic about bloody mugs or faces rearranged like a van gogh painting. though in some boxer's case - it probably is an improvement.

5. and i am not particularly a fan of paking - idolatry is banned in my religion.

then again, pokwang is also a featured guest of the mayor and is set to perform at the concert that evening. now... that... is... a completely different story. i'll probably out-box paking himself just to get myself a picture with pokwang.