Welcome once more, Gabii sa Kabilin

This is the week when the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation, Inc. (RAFI) celebrates the Gabii sa Kabilin (GSK). I think this is the 12th year for this annual GSK celebration and it is something that we in Cebu are truly proud of as we are the only city in the Philippines that allows its people to give importance to our glorious past by going to the museums, not as tourists, but to bask in our historic heritage and culture. For instance, how many millennials know about the “banga”? In the ‘50s most Cebuanos drank water from the banga because it was cool and did not need refrigeration. You can look for a banga in one of the museums during GSK.

I tell you that I grew up in the Parian District, but it was during the second year of holding the GSK that I learned about the Jesuit House that has a number 1730 in its living room. This gives us an idea of how old this house was. But as a kid growing up in Parian, I never learned of this until the GSK was held. So with us tonight is RAFI’s Haidee Palapar, GSK event director; Fr. Felipe Bacalso, SJ, of the Sacred Heart Parish; Rave Fabria, Casa Gorordo tour guide; and Ma. Cecilia Cabanes, Museo Sugbo researcher.

So watch this interview on GSK which is going to happen this week, which is why we have them as our special guest tonight on SkyCable’s channel 53 at 8 p.m. with replays on Wednesday and Saturday same time and channel. We also have replays on MyTV’s channel 30 at 9 p.m. Monday and at 7 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Wednesday and Friday.

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Early Friday dawn, we went back to Heathrow for the hour-and-a-half flight on a British Airways Airbus A-321 to Denmark. If there is anything a potential tourist should know about London, they have to know that because of recent terrorist attacks security measures have been increased, and more so in the Heathrow International Airport. But British Airways has modernized their security system, which I know that my good friend, Andrew Harrison of GMR-Megawide, has done for Terminal 2 at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport.

Their baggage handling system has already incorporated your loading your own luggage and presenting your passports in an electronic security system, then you finally go to the last security check so you are truly cleared. I passed through this system and already had an idea of what I had to go through because Harrison showed me that this security system was already installed in Terminal 2.

For the entire week we stayed in London, the weather was sunny with no rain. But when we landed in Copenhagen, Denmark, it rained for two days. Since we stayed for two and a half days, we just stayed in the hotel on the first day. Thankfully the weather improved the next day, so it gave us the opportunity to take a hop-on/hop-off bus tour with a canal riverboat ride and it was quite surprising that so many people went out last Saturday.

Near our hotel was a huge group of people having a cosplay convention for two days. It just gives you an idea that this Japanese custom is important to the Danish. Apparently they have a word “hygge,” which means “cozy social” and this happens when the sun is out and this is what we saw in their cosplay. Hygge is something Danes strive for at all times, no questions asked, in quaint little pubs and cafés or during softly-lit dinners with family and friend and we saw that in Copenhagen.

I heard that this year, Denmark has been ranked among the top three happiest countries in the world, according to the United Nation's World Happiness Report. Of course, we cannot find out what hygge means in just one day in Copenhagen. But we noticed that the Danes love eating along the sidewalk due to its cool weather. They also have very good cuisine and I was blown away when I had my first taste of herring. I’m not really a fish eater, but tasting herring for the first time made me clamor for this food and good cuisine is one of the reasons why the Danes are considered one of the happiest people on earth. Just a little thing that came to mind. There are five million Danes, which means there are more Bisaya-speaking people than Danes.