The sixth sin

The Philippine campaign in the Southeast Asian Games mixed national emotions, from celebration to disappointment and many more in between, and beyond. Kayla Sanchez awed as most decorated Filipino athlete with 3 golds and 5 silvers. The awful part is her being a solitary gold medalist from a body of water studded with islands, high tide or low tide, without reference to the iconic answer of a Filipina beauty queen whose statistics is drowned by technology that discovered more islands unaccounted before.

 The track and field army struck five golds, punctuated by EJ Obiena who cleared a new record height. But the king is warned his kingdom may soon be invaded. He had to earn his fourth consecutive gold by count back, as opposed to bareback, that unsafe sexual practice that cause HIV infection. The runner-up from Thailand had it perfect until it mattered.

The sad part is Eric Cray abdicating the crown he held for six consecutive times. The one-lap hurdler finished almost dead last in his seventh and final attempt. Too bad anchor Kristina Marie Knott was walked down the final strides in the 4x100m relay, the one gold that eluded the Filipina quartet before, even if it included Elma Muros and anchored by Lydia de Vega several times over.

The more satisfying part is the men’s basketball team winning the only gold that matters, especially at the expense of the host country that played dirty even before play, in the form of eligibility restrictions and during finals, in the form of record number free throws.

Envious Thailand never won the men’s basketball gold. At least Malaysia won twice and Indonesia once. The supposedly polite Thais bragged to deny the Philippines from grabbing its 20th gold. They thought they had it, until Norman Black silently blacked them out in the second half.

Women’s football team won the gold that should matter. The Filipinas beat defending champion Vietnam via penalty shootout, as opposed to penalty shutout, otherwise known as impunity. Inna Palacios waited 18 long years to stand on the golden podium, but the country waited longer. Now Inna leaves and lives in the palace of reality built by years of asking and dreaming, while her country basks in the glory of making herstory, nay, theirstory.

These and more thrilled and frustrated the Filipino nation. But the part that stings is the sixth place finish behind Singapore which land area and population are way smaller than a broken country, either by geography or stupidity. Nothing however disappointed more than the unfortunate incident involving a lawmaker breaking the law. Or bending it, to borrow another lawmaker’s weird, er, word, without reference to the fencing sword.