THE Chinese are firing! At the firing range, that is.
Early this week a friend of mine asked me where he could go firing, and I suggested my favorite firing range in Makati, the ARMSCOR range at the basement of Makati Cinema Square.
They’ve always given good service there, and the firing instructors they have are well versed in how to handle a firearm and of course how to point it and shoot. The range provides earmuffs and goggles for free because you need these to protect your ears from the loud bang of every shot, and your eyes may get hit by the flying shells that eject, still hot, from your firearm.
‘Now, are the Chinese nationals swarming the firing ranges sleepers too?’
Anyway I’ve never been a gun enthusiast but some time last year, I decided to acquire a gun (which became two) because I had this sense that the law and order situation in the country was no longer like what it was even just a few years back. And of course, since I invested in two sidearms, I had to get trained on how to use them.
So it was to ARMSCOR that I sent my friend, his brand new pistol packed in a gun case. I didn’t hear from him for a whole day but sometime in the afternoon, I got this message: “Do the Chinese own the firing range?”
He told me that when he arrived at the range, he had to wait an hour before he could be attended to. There were a handful of Filipinos around, one of whom, he said, even had an Uzi type of high-powered firearm. But there were tons of Chinese nationals, none of whom spoke Filipino, and they were all eager to fire guns that the range rented out to those who had none of their own.
There was even this svelte young Chinese lady, he said, who almost punched out the bullseye of her cardboard target. She was that good – so maybe she is a regular.
The image of Chinese nationals swarming over the firing range filled my head with so many thoughts, and brought back a story my father used to tell us about prewar Manila.
My dad lived in Intramuros. He told us that they had a Japanese tenant who lived on the second floor and who had a typewriter that didn’t make any sound. Why? Because he typed while the typewriter was atop a cushion.
What was interesting about my dad’s story was that the Japanese one day emerged in military uniform – during the invasion of the Philippines. He remained very kind to my dad (who was barely 10 in 1942) and once even slapped an ordinary soldier who had confiscated Japanese “kenkoy money” from my dad as the Americans were closing in during Liberation in 1945, and occupation currency was being burned in huge piles all around Intramuros. My father never knew what happened to that civilian-turned-officer and presumed he was captured or had died in Intramuros. But the idea that he was a sleeper all along was an intriguing thought that my father couldn’t banish for the rest of his life.
Now, are the Chinese nationals swarming the firing ranges sleepers too? An intriguing thought, yes?
But not to worry. Chinese nationals may now be firing all over our gun ranges, but our own sleepers have been in place for decades – the Filipinas raising little boys and girls all over the world and teaching them that A is for Epol!
