PINOY WORDPLAY DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC
My vocabulary has become rich with a number of ‘new words’ that have gone viral during the pandemic, which seems not over yet. Today, global infections has gone up rapidly passed 10 million. In the Philippines, new cases have been escalating in some cities and municipalities like Cebu City and Aroroy, Masbate that have been placed to lock-down these last weeks of June. During this trying times, Pinoys had a way of introducing “funny” and interesting words to shed some humor to the current struggle.
GRAD(WAITING)
Everything and everyone has been affected by the pandemic, including the education sector as schools were closed in March to control community transmission. Recognition and graduation rites were done creatively mostly through online, one school in the Philippines for instance, has operated a robot that wears a toga (graduation dress) attached with a big tablet that would display the face of the student.
Some schools that started classes in August have been badly affected as the learners have more shortened teacher-learner contact time than in the public schools that opened classes in June. I would take this opportunity to congratulate all our graduating students who are still waiting for the final dates of the ceremony, hence the wordplay, “grad(waiting)”. Cheers to our graduates! Thanks to my graduating niece for using this word because I got the idea for this post.
ECQ, GCQ and MGCQ
On the third week of March this year, we were notified that the whole Luzon will be put to lock down to control community transmission of COVID-19. The government introduced the Enhanced Community Quarantine (ECQ) to classify the communities under the lock down. After a month, another classification was introduced to place communities with low cases, as General Community Quarantine (GCQ) and others, with Modified General Community Quarantine (MCGQ). Even with the new classifications, the local communities use the same or almost the same policies and guidelines on the transportation and movement of the people, thus, whichever is used, what the public knew is to stay home most of the time. I, too, am even confused what’s the difference with all these terms, thus, I won’t try to dwell much on them.
NAIA to PAPAPI
While there’s a pandemic going on, some country lawmakers have very advanced thinking and petitioned a bill renaming the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) to Paliparang Pandaigdig ng Pilipinas or (PAPAPI). This has gone viral in the past days, since the petition was seen by many as ill-timed for the attention of everyone should focus on the battle against COVID-19.
So, when the pandemic is finally over, flights are back to normal, and travel to other countries is not anymore restricted, check in the internet first if you’re coming to the Philippines as NAIA (the present name of our international airport) maybe no longer used, try to search for PAPAPI instead, which is a popular name of our Filipino actor, Piolo Pascual.
