Carpooling Loonies
By Jinki Beldia

Rigi-rigi: An after five de-stresser 

What you do after five has a lot to do with your sanity. Contrary to the common (traditional even) practice of allowing oneself to go flaccid after work, there's a study saying that the more you tolerate your body's stress, the more you drive the rest of your body insane. Stop for a second and reconsider what you might want to do after five.  

Rigi-rigi is understandably not a common term since its etymology lurked out from one corner in Baluarte, obviously coined by commoner. A Leopold B., if you're really interested to know. We honor lexicographers and even make excuses for disquieting gay lingo, so why not one that has done wonders for a few good men, half men, women and some just simply half of anything? One of the most effective yet inexpensive stress-reliever is dancing. All you need is good music and the willingness to permit your body to get into the groove. Rigi-rigi is admittedly a derivative of the word reggae which refers to a genre of music which was heartily in the musical diet of Jamaica. The reggae fever has reached Iloilo very, very late in the nineties, although the genre already had its followers since the 80's. These followers were the very few people in this part of the country who understood the music; what it was all about and how it started. By reggae fever, I mean in the late 90's, it was like people just started recreating reggae and turned it into tacky music you'd hear anywhere. Some bands especially, took care of reducing the reggae reputation into rubble. From being some rocker most of them could not even name, they reinvented themselves and started sporting the Bob Marley look and claimed having been effected by the Rastafarian spirit. Bob Marley is an indelible name in the world of reggae and only the numerous species of lice in his head have not appeared in shirts, pins, stickers, etc., etc. The sad part is, only Marley was reggae and reggae was only Marley. There was no augmentation to the knowledge about the genre and most people just took it that way.  

The reggae dance requires only grace, passion for the music and love for fun. Rigi-rigi requires just as much. Only, it has an unpretentious character because it was instantaneously created and not pathetically patterned after some god of music. More than anything, rigi-rigi has a very localized sound and does not push anyone to don a certain look, or to morph into a character one has never seen himself in. If the booze comes along, just make sure you stay in what the doctors say is the safe or healthy level. Remember that weekends do exist and they are the days designed for your ‘breaking loose' moments. 

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Ass (his real name is even more intriguing), supplicated me to differentiate stressed-out, stressor and stress-free. To simplify things (mostly for myself because I was not equipped with the proper tool when he stopped me halfway to the “coffee spot”) I had to put those words into character. I told him stressed-out is him when he looks at himself in the mirror and is unhappy with how ungracefully his skin is aging because he is most of the time despondent; stressor is anyone around him who makes him miserable and should therefore not allow that person to crumple his face some more; stress-free will be him if he starts allowing himself to see the better side of life. Read, leaving his desk when the bondy clock declares it. jinki_young@yahoo.com