Message from the editor 2015

A call for celebration

CEBUANOS are a proud people. Often you’d hear them — us — proclaim that our beloved Cebu is the best island on the planet. This, of course, extends to everything Cebuano. “We have the best beaches,” one would say. “We are the nicest people,” another would declare.

Whether done as a matter of habit or mere exaggeration, this tendency to exclaim the B-word (best, that is) stems not from braggadocio but from a sense of pride that, in truth, is grounded. This partly has to do with the Cebuanos’ self-reliant yet welcoming mindset. When he tells a guest that we have the best so and so, it is actually an invitation (“The view in Osmeña Peak is the best, let’s go!”). The invitation, when accepted, turns into celebration — of the good things in life and to be there to bear witness to these blessings and experience them.

I believe it’s the same thing with every Sun.Star Weekend Best of Cebu issue, an annual pursuit that we are proud to say is now on its third year, its role in the community irrefutable. True, the main aim of this definitive yearender list is to recognize excellence and everything Cebuano that deserves superlatives. But it is more than that — it is an implied invitation, and our latest issue, Sun.Star Weekend Best of Cebu 2015, is a call to celebrate the best that Cebu has to offer.

You may or may not agree with the awardees, say, for the “Best Ramen,” or with the choice made by the panel of judges who deliberated on the “Restaurant of the Year” (a new major award, by the way), or of the winners of the expanded “People’s Choice” category, which was decided via online voting. And we would gladly welcome your thoughts on who should be on this list.

But in the end, what matters is that all of us can agree that by coming up with the Best of Cebu list, we aren’t just recognizing excellence — we are celebrating the pursuit of excellence the Cebuano way. And to that, let’s all together say, “Cheers!”