Feeling lucky

IT’S MORE fun in Metro Clark. So Buenas Angeles! was launched last week.

Buenas Angeles!, what the … does it mean?

Good angels. That’s the direct translation, said the ilustrado Marco Nepomuceno whose very name is synonymous to the city, and whose restaurant – Camalig – makes one definition of the city’s gastronomy. Bueno apetito!

If they meant Angeles the city, they should have made it Buena Angeles to suit noun-modifier agreement, buenas smacking of plurality, he added.    

Gramatica Espanol, notwithstanding, good angels just ain’t in character with the city, monikered for the longest time as the City of Lost Angels. So what gives? 

Malas, all that the HARP Travel Guide to Angeles City and Clark – launched in the same event – had of Buenas Angeles! were that on its cover and in the complimentary closing of the “Editor’s note.”

Nothing, not even a single sentence on why Buenas Angeles! in the 40-page glossy full color brochure put out by the Hotel and Restaurant Association of Pampanga or HARP. (Wouldn’t HRAP be the more appropriate acronym, or for that matter, HARAP? Of course, they are free to call themselves however way they want, as they felt free to steal part of my article on Pampanga’s legacy churches. Anyways…)

So we are left to our own devices to fashion out our own take to the slogan. 

By Buenas, HARP may have meant the connotation of the word in Filipino – buwenas, translating to lucky in English – which in Spanish will translate to suerte which, again in Filipino – suwerte – is interchangeable with buwenas.

Lucky Angeles, then. For having the Clark Freeport where investors and workers try to strike their luck, and the Clark International Airport where travellers are lucky enough not to go through the traffic grind that is Metro Manila to catch delayed flights at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

Lucky Angeles, and Clark too, with the PAGCor’s Casino Filipino in Balibago and a host of poker houses, and the Mimosa, Fontana, Oxford, Widus and Casablanca at the Freeport. Sporting chances and games of luck galore!

No mere name game is Buenas Angeles but a game of chance there.

The adventurous will instantly take to its liking. The thrills, frills and chills as much in the casinos as in the orgasmic delights of Fields Avenue.         

All buenas, rather than mere suerte, there.

But there is more than good luck, even good intention, to turn Buenas Angeles! into something more tangible.

As our banner headline today says: It’s no fun in Clark, Angeles.

What with local and foreign tourists preyed upon like fair game by unscrupulous cops, con men, taxi and tricycle drivers.

What with government agencies themselves taking the fun out of travel to and tour around this place – the Clark Development Corp. allegedly imposing a fee of P10K for pre-nuptial pictorials at the Parade Ground; the Bureau of Immigration playing divinely idiotic gatekeeper at the Clark Airport.

Absolutely, no Buenas Angeles! here.

Definitely, kamalas-malasang malas all there.

Still, we have to give it to HARP. Which, as written in the travel guide, “is composed of 70 members from the hotels and restaurants sector plus members from the different tourism industries as its allied members like travel agencies, transport groups, schools, medical centers and alike (sic).

 With its express vision “To become a one-stop organization for Tourism in Pampanga” and “objective to promote and develop tourism in Angeles City, Metro Clark and the whole of Pampanga.”

Yeah, and to the Department of Tourism too, mindful of what its RD, Ronnie Tiotuico, wrote: “There is no better opportune time than today to establish our position in the travel map as a major destination now that we are on our way  to make it to the big-ticket league.”