New Year’s: Where my love of NASCAR began?

As you can imagine, with that much gun powder being exploded in densely populated developments, city streets and villages, there are many injuries each year, some quite severe. The whole night of December 31 is chaos. The amount of firepower builds as the night wears on and crescendos during the hour that spans midnight. It’s in that hour that everyone unloads their full arsenal with the sound completely deafening. The dénouement continues into the wee hours of January 1 as they light the stash of firecrackers they forgot about and things like that.

In addition to all of this noise and gunpowder, if you would dare travel the streets, every few blocks you come across a burning tire – again, rooted in warding off evil spirits. There’s nothing like the sweet aroma of burning rubber – apparently, that’s where my love of NASCAR is rooted. I knew it was more than a passing interest of mine :)

The whole night is like a war zone. Though I’d never equate anything to war, out of respect for what soldiers endure in battle, the pictures of the air attack on Baghdad in 1991 reminded me of New Year’s in the Philippines. It’s not a night that you want to be out on the town. Thus far, I’ve forgotten to mention that some Police and military, in their drunken joy of entering a New Year express their jubilation by discharging their live firearms into the air and usually injure some more people. By morning of January 1, so much ammunition has been exploded that Manila is covered with a think cloud of dark smoke.

While some humans really get into this approach of celebrating the New Year, those who don’t at least have options: earplugs, leaving the country among others. Those I really felt sorry for where the dogs. With their sensitive ears, the explosions scare the dogs stiff. Our poor Boxer would be under the couch in fright all night long. We put her in the backmost room of the house, but there wasn’t much else we could do to protect her ears. After a few days, she was back to normal, but the shellshock was intense.

Here's a report of the New Year's Eve 2006 celebrations.

I never got into the firecrackers, I was too afraid I’d injure myself. I did find the perfect way to celebrate New Years.