Baclaran Day and the Original Shaider

Note: Original post, july 2005

*****

“SHOT your garbage here.”

This sign seemed like it was shrieking at people’s faces over one of the flights leading to the LRT Baclaran station. You can’t help but become amused by such things can you? Just make sure it doesn’t get to your nerves and simply satisfy yourself that life goes on—with or without a sound syntax, even if you were itching to scratch the word off and correct the sentence structure, if only for the benefit of the young ones who might come to read such display of language know-how. This is just one of the many interesting things a dawdling traveler can discover in Baclaran.

If you go there on a Wednesday, off the train and as you find your way to the Church, you are suddenly swamped by a rush of people buying and selling every merchandise that you can possibly think of. A pair of socks sells for ten bucks; there are clothes, shoes, freeboot discs, kitchenware, guns (or toy guns?), cell phones and accessories, silver, etc. It’s very much like your department store only, in Baclaran, you can actually bargain and haggle your way through the purchases you make—very practical in these times when most people are financially-challenged. Of course, the environment is less secure and comfy than the malls you’re more accustomed to.

In the middle of the marketplace, you might even catch yourself with your imagination rolling, and suddenly remember Shaider. (Yes, that character, Alexis, who always had his blue and white pulis pangkalawakan uniform on and turns into an android, called Shaider, so much like Darna, when he shouts, Shaider! He has a friend associate, Annie who always wore this skimpy brown or yellow skirt with boots to match her outfit.)

What brings us back to Shaider-mania? Some vendors peddling repackaged powdered soaps somehow give an impression of a patently obvious Shaider episode. They keep hollering: “Mura ‘to…mura lang bilin niyo na…”. And when you are familiar with how a Shaider episode goes, you’d get the feeling that, the packs of powdered soap they’re selling are from the minions of Fuma Lay-ar—Shaider’s interminable adversary (Can you hear the shigishingshigishing?). Your paranoia gets the better of you and you can’t help getting suspicious when you are there by yourself. Your mind’s eye brings you to a Shaider scene which loosely transpires with the following acts: you buy their soap, smell the whiff of Fuma’s noxious concoctions and wake up in a totally different sphere, a whole new dimension. So you wait for Shaider to rescue you along with the other buyers, who were hoodwinked by Fuma Lay-ar. Then, Annie gives Alexis a buzz (development of text messaging was probably still underway then...) and he turns into Shaider. The minions of his opponent, set loose a monster which hatches from an egg and the lady with the silver hair who happens to be Fuma’s head gofer declares: “Time-space war! Time-space war, ngayon din!” Shaider ripostes with “Blue-Hawk!” and when he gets himself into more pressing trouble—it’s time for his laser-blaster and laser-sword. You wish he calls on his massive automaton (like Bioman’s), but his laser-sword already snagged the monster and did the job. Whew! You’re free as well as the rest of Fuma’s hostages! Your imagination bubble pops and, although the (mis)adventures were quite anti-climactic, you find yourself on your way back to the station, still itching to scratch off that signpost which read: “Shot your garbage here.”