These are days we’re proud to be Pinoys!

I was in the United States when the name of New York cab driver Nestor Sulpico, 46, a native of Leganes, Iloilo, was splashed all over the newspapers in the United States where he was cited as the "Most Honest Cabbie in New York," an honor few cab drivers (especially in New York) could ever hope to achieve. Yes, that Nestor Sulpico is a Pinoy should be no surprise at all and we’re proud of him because he made us proud that the ordinary Filipino is an honest man. Alas, it is the big political rats that steal from our government coffers that make the international headlines.

No doubt, honesty is the best policy. But alas, Cebu also had its share of bad taxi drivers… a fellow named Batestil who tried to con US Marines from the USS Belleau Wood into believing that they hired him and ended up getting mauled and when the noisy militant left-wing organization took up the cudgels for Batestil, that was the last time we saw any vessels from the US Seventh Fleet visit Cebu. For many of us, it was simply tourism, where 3,000 US sailors would visit Cebu every month for R&R. Batestil comes from Mindanao and because of the heat, he went home, while Cebu suffered, thanks to him!

Yes, when a cabbie is honest, we ought to reward him, just like what Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña did during his first term when he gave Cebu’s honest driver Felix Carin a brand-new Daewoo car for his own taxi as a reward for returning lost US dollars. That the Senate came up with a resolution, authored by Senate President Franklin Drilon, Sen. Edgardo Angara, Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile and Sen. Pia Cayetano citing Sulpico "as a symbol of the Filipino abroad: an Asian who is honest and upright, and one whose character any employer can truly trust and be proud of." We can only hope that the honesty of Sulpico has rubbed off on our senators, many of whom need to see what an honest man looks like.

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Talking about Pinoys we should all be proud of, there’s Olympic athlete Jasmin Figueroa who stunned archery world champion Natalia Valeeva of Italy during the qualifying rounds in Athens, which proves once and for all that Pinoys can be world-class athletes. Though she failed to win over Spain’s Almudena Gallardo in the succeeding rounds, Jasmin has made Philippine history as the best Pinoy archer in the last 32 years. I should know… 30 years ago, archery was my favorite sport before I became a golfer and yes, back then, the Cebu Archery Club (CAC) gained national prominence during our national shootfests in just a year as a club.

Archery became so popular in Cebu; we had 13 archery clubs, and created the Cebu Association of Archery Clubs (CAAC) founded by the Cebu Institute of Technology’s (CIT) Rudy "Toto" Lizares. But then, as in all other games, things started to falter, though I really had my eyes set on the Olympic games, but I realized that there was just too much politics within the National Archery Association of the Philippines (NAAP) so I dropped archery and sold all my shooting equipment.

The story of Jasmin Figueroa is just one of the many efforts of Pinoys to be world-class athletes, just like Jennifer Rosales who won the Chik-A-Fil golf tournament this year and nearly won the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) a month ago. There’s also Dorothy Delasin, who is also making waves in the LPGA. The problem with us is too much politics ruin our chances to become great sportsmen or sportswomen. Take a look at basketball, the most popular sport in the Philippines. How many of us realize that the Philippines can never hope to win in basketball simply because we’re a nation of short people? Yet, almost all commercials to prop up this sport are concentrated on basketball.

There are far more important sporting activities where Pinoys can shine and yes, we are already world-class when it comes to billiards or bowling, like 9-ball world champion Alex Pagulayan. But what about the other sports? Well, an emerging sport that I also used to play in my youth is badminton, which now has become a nationwide (including here in Cebu) craze and which our STAR president/CEO Miguel Belmonte plays (I saw his photos in the JVC Open Badminton games), quite competitively I might add.

I just hope that badminton won’t just be a temporary craze because this is also a game which the Indonesians and the Chinese have mastered and which we too can master. We can only hope that there will be more tournaments which will help develop badminton into a major sport in this country. I still remember our pelota days, a sport that was purely a Filipino creation, which also became a craze in the 70s. Alas, this sport died down because of lack of support for tournaments by both the government and advertisers.

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Today, the University of the Philippines Cebu College, through the Central Visayas Studies Center, will launch the Program: Promoting Cebuano Language & Culture at the Conference Hall of the UP Cebu College in Lahug. Among the planned activities for the whole day is a "balak" or an oratory in Cebuano and a lecture-forum on the works of Cebuano artists Canuto Avila and Raymundo Francia. Actually, I’m not sure if I’m related to this Cebuano artist, but coincidentally, the lola of my wife is also a Francia. Another activity is Teaching Mathematics in Cebuano by engineer Jes Tirol of Bohol.

The keynote address will be given by no less than UP president Dr. Francisco Nemenzo whom we interviewed in our talk show Straight from the Sky on Nov. 25, 2002. Back then, Dr. Nemenzo was toying with the idea of rekindling our Cebuano culture and the response was overwhelming that the UP was finally accepting the diverse culture of the Filipinos… that we’re not just Tagalogs, but Cebuanos, Chavacanos, Ilonggos, Ilocanos or Warays. Best of all, it is time for our ultra-nationalists to realize and understand that you don’t have to be a Tagalog or speak this language to love our country. Cebuanos, Butuanons or Ilocanos love our country just as much as the Tagalogs.

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns can also be accessed through www.thefreeman.com. He also hosts a weekly talk show, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, at 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable.