Taking sides

I belong to close-knit organization, whose members are always willing to help each other and have consistently been one in supporting various causes.

Until lately, I thought that division would not be something that would happen. Well, we do identify ourselves with the classes that we belong to or our cadet companies that we continue to be very proud of despite having lost those washboard abs that we developed through hundreds of sit-ups and our daily dose of squat thrusts.

But recently, the PMA Cebu Squad has been experiencing some sort of division and the colors are yellow and green. No, this is not about the Philippine elections as we are long past that, but the NBA Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics.

Friendly banter has been exchanged and friendly bets of food and drinks have been laid down, at least in our e-mail group.

This early, some guys have already drawn the line like Cavalier Winston ‘Arf-arf’ Arpon of PMA class ‘64, who says he roots for the Lakers and also anybody else against the Celtics.

The others who have come out as Lakers fans are Nilo Yap (78), Jay Tindoy (84) and Bong Sale (98).

Those from the Celtics have Lexmark’s Nestor Bontol (77) as their marcher. This also explains why other Lexmark guys like Marlon Mesina (95) and Alex Orofeo (99) are also pro-Celtics as well as Navy officer Bruce Mundo (98) and Aristotle Templado (2000) of Aboitiz.

There are others who haven’t spelled our their choices like Ponsoy Alvarez (83), who has lost his interest in the NBA after Dr. J and Michae Jordan have hung their sneakers.

Game 6 is set today in Los Angeles and the Celtics fans hope to celebrate. If not today, then their team gets another chance in Game 7, this makes the series truly an interesting one even if I spend most of my TV time these days watching the games of the World Cup.

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I’ve been trying to stay up for the World Cup matches aired over Balls (channel 33) of SkyCable TV here in Cebu, which have led to sleepless nights since last Friday.

So far, there have been a few surprises, which make the tournament even more interesting.

Some of the interesting results are the 1-1 draw between England and the USA and also the 1-1 draw between Paraguay and defending champion Italy.

I was hoping to see Argentina dump Nigeria, but the Nigerian goalkeeper was both a great player and a lucky guy that he stopped all but one attempt at goal.

The Germans ran roughshod over Australia is what is yet the highest-scoring match while Japan shocked the highly-favored Cameroon side for the country’s first victory outside of their home soil.

As of this writing, it has only been four long nights, but there will be more to come until early July.

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MILESTONES: Belated birthday greetings to Giandi Pages, Heights Soriano-Uy, Paul Pereyra, Cherrypie Tacudin-Callelero, and Michael Climaco, who all turned a year older yesterday.

Today’s greetings go to my Tao brother Raymund ‘Jiggy Junior’ Cerna, whose wish is for the Lakers to win. The same goes to Chawo Gabutin and to Willy Rodolfo III.

More power to all of you! — THE FREEMAN