I still remember what my Mom shared to me about my Dad going to cockpits. She said, there was one time when she gave my Dad an amount of 150pesos to buy a box of powdered milk for me. I was still an infant then. It was already 10:00 in the evening when my dad left to buy. When my dad arrived home at 12 in the midnight, She wondered why instead of a small box of milk, my Dad was able to buy a big can of powedered milk. There she knew that my Dad won by parting his money in a Sabong.
We all know that most Sundays of the Filipinos are spent in Churches, Markets, and most commonly at home. But who could have forget the favourite pasttime of the Filipinos? The cockfigting or traditionally called as “Sabong”. It is a popular Pinoy sport particularly in the countryside where noisy gambling remains more or less a living tradition.
On Sundays or even Wednesdays, sabong takes place in an arena known as cockpit where the activity starts as early as 8 a.m. The arena is usually fully attended by male spectators. And before the cock fighting starts, there are these bookkeepers known as Kristos, the ones who are assigned to encourage the audience to part with their money.
While the sabong is going on, what makes it more exciting aside from the air that is filled with shouts of bets and men desperate for winning bets, is the fact that sabong is a pasttime where you can earn some extra money evidently via gambling.
So if you want to experience this activity, and you’ll ask why people inside raise their hands with a sign, it is because they are using a certain sign language for betting. Three fingers raised means 30 pesos, horizontal fingers signify hundreds, and fingers pointed downwards means thousands.
Exciting, right? But even more exciting if you yourself can experience such Truely Pinoy Activity!
