Pride chicken, honor student

I know I'm going to get hate comments after this but I'm gonna say it anyway, the Pacquiao-Mosley fight is boring and predictable. Even days before, I couldn't bring myself to get excited unlike the previous fights, especially the earlier ones (Passing by Sarangani the other week I saw a Pacquiao-Mosley ad and just looked at it as if it was some blank plywood). Just before the delayed telecast started i dozed off and woke up by a jolt when my younger brother shouted Manny was down. But heck, I mean, c'mon guys, we don't just want Manny to win, we know he's gonna win. He's 32 and Mosley is 39. Mosley whose glory days in boxing are over; he's standing at the twilight of his boxing career, and he's not going to lose anything more if he bow down to this relatively young and persistent fighter who only wants to bring honor and glory to his third-world country whose semblance of unity can only be glimpsed at during his mighty fights; who wants to bring honor and glory like it was some long-forgotten Roman code that will lift his ailing kingdom to its heydays. It's not a question of brining honor, not even a gargantuan task of uniting a long-divided people, but this brazen act of gimmickry (what's up with those yellow gloves? shouldn't they be orange?). That stuff is said and done. It's the big-ticket fights that matter after all. It's entertainment (falling off, really?), it's a money-making machine. You watch Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull and there you have it, boxing summed up in its glory and ugliness. Crowds of people, some strangers huddle in covered courts, restaurants, cinemas, heck everywhere, yet they are united by this invisible thread of pride. Buf after it, what? Manny gets richer, he buys businesses, grows his empire and we go back to our same sorry lives, the ones we have before we sat, stuck and hypnotized in front of that screen watching our hero battle his opponents, fighting his way through, as if he was boxing out our own.

The kids are alright.

Sometimes, I really think my eight-year old half-brother has this split personality. When his temper flies off, he becomes this uncontrollable dynamo of rage, sometimes spitting, wishing us dead, wishing he was never born, or that he was not born having us as elders. He says this with eyes that pierce like Damien the satanic child from the Omen series. I don’t know where he gets this stuff; I hope he doesn’t comprehend just how big and hurtful those words are. Just this afternoon, we had a nasty bout which turned me into the usual monster he thinks I am when I get angry. I spat the curse, which I always, always regret. I didn’t were coming off my eyes, it was just a useless moment of pouring out, a recital of an uncalled for litany of personal hurts for an unintended, inappropriate young and unmindful audience.

As do kids of their age, they get annoying and brutish. His brother, only one year older than he is, is also not an exception. They get into unapologetic fights that really wear me out. They are lovable kids. In fact, they are reasons why I still wanted to stay with my incapable father and stepmother-I want to make sure that at least they do good, even though influence from other gala kids outside and the miserable upbringing is hard to shake off. I love these kids even when they really push the button off me they think I’m just a useless kuya, who sometimes won’t give in to their little whims that I think are just too much for their age. I want to teach them prudence, good manners, which I think we three siblings have always had despite the consequences that would have made us do otherwise. I want to stress to them that we are poor, and that I’m just a struggling nobody wanting to prove something out of the misery of life, and that they should be thankful they have food to eat and that they are able to go to school, in uniforms and all, even though it’s just a public school that never really cared how much they learn, or if ever they learn at all. But then I realize, was I made to comprehend all these realities when I was their age?

I never had a kuya, and even up to now I still wonder what it must feel like having someone to be always at your rescue, rather than the one always being depended upon. It seems like childhood was light-years away. Maybe this is why I get so grumpy at their ADHD-ish behavior. For I cannot remember the time when I bullied other kids. I can’t remember the time that getting into trouble is always no big deal as getting an earful from mama or the proverbial belt-slap from my father. I and my 21-year old brother never really had a genuine bond with him after mama died ten years ago. Perhaps the falling away took some of the familial intimacy or tenderness. Not concern, because I always have been, on their welfare. Now sleeping, with teeth that have been unkempt, bodies frail and thin but surprisingly agile, especially when it comes to play, I feel sorry for being such an ass. How am I to rear kids their age? When not in their usual boxing bouts, the kids are sweet, just hard-headed. Which I think, I often am.

the art of ineptness

Over the usual bland Chinese food we always can’t seem to get rid of, a colleague and I were deriding certain people worth deriding. I said to him that it is not really my habit to badmouth people, being the Confucian that I am, adhering to that principle of the good-natured-ness of man with utmost fervor. What I can lay claim to though in the past couple of years as a working, toiling individual is the certainty of the said people’s existence and the apparent reasons why they are worth picking on. It’s not even just picking on, because that connotes bully-ism which I am definitely not. And picking on also connotes that the said people are innocent with no muck in the eye. Because they certainly have a lot of it. I did not imagine that I’d be breathing with the said people until about two or more years ago. Lousy motherfuckers. Such idiocy. Such retardation that shames the actual retards. Such callousness. Such corruption of moral fiber. Unbelievable ridiculousness and self-righteousness. Organized ineptness and absurdity. Gosh, why not summon such descriptions and fake the discomfiture? In the midst of all this mediocrity though, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve learned that I am able to feel jitters when I come to think of the day I’ll imbibe such systemic idiocy.

Show me da Manny!

Okay, I think I have to cave in to the much-ballyhooed win (which fight isn’t anyway?) and throw my slight disdain towards his minor bullshit-ness over the window. When you’ve got fame and power at your disposal, why not bullshit around right? To rub the already clichéd term more, Manny is really something—he’s unlike any Filipino not just in strength but in the ubiquitous charm. He’s a slap in the face to Filipino bourgeoisie. To the poor, he’s an icon of triumph; a testament to that elusive luck, which we Filipinos have grabbed onto so tight we forgot to do anything else. He’s “the great hope” as TIME magazine would put it.

I can very much recall my very first participation to the communal Filipino act (by now it should be some sort of a Filipino tradition—a kind of phenomena that depletes traffic flow in the streets and diminishes crime rate to almost nil) of watching a Pacquiao fight two years ago with complete strangers. It was in a department store and there was some exhibit of which I was a part in. It was a Sunday, as usually the case, and there was a large-enough TV with the Pacquiao fight. As long as it was on, it did not take more than five minutes for the entire vicinity to be filled with excited onlookers (I sat down on the floor for convenience), as if the TV is some kind of medium channeling a modern-day deity. During the Pacquiao-Hatton fight, I watched it with a room full of my colleagues, around 30 people. So imagine the fucking noise it created when Hatton was pummeled to an unconscious state in the second round. Everyone looked as if they won the championship themselves, a beaming smile and pair of delightfully-lit eyes.

The media is overflowing with words and the TV is replete with footage of the said communal act. For really, it does move mountains and Manny can move the nation into such state which we are so quick to call as unity—we are so damned united. We feel our brothers same excitement. We feel truly proud. We feel we are living like patriotic Filipinos rooting for their hero. Dare I say that never have we felt a sense of Filipino pride so strongly than with Manny’s bouts, especially to those whose idea of the EDSA revolution is that of the history books. This sense of unity is commendable, the sense of pride inevitable. How can you not be? I am proud.

But see, while Manny’s victories we claim as ours, while we unite as a nation and feel an overwhelming sense of pride, what of after? For what? We go to our daily goings-on, be bums, be corporate and bureaucratic slaves, be pessimists, be optimists, be friends, be enemies until the next Pacquiao fight. We wait for that glimmer of hope, that façade of victory we always wanted to have a taste of—but unlike Manny we seem to have lost the willpower, alright, the “firepower” and we go back mired in empty promises of relief from misery. If Manny so reflects our country, then it would be that, this country has always struggled but success (power) has always remained to be in the hands of the few. So, after the fight, we go back to being a country in disarray, our goals and ideals in shambles, prone to crime and corruption, wallowing in poverty, with a continuing exodus of people abroad, we go back to bitching about the traffic, until the next Pacquiao fight finds us in each other’s company again.

Ganito kami sa Mindanao

Magulo dito. Sabi kasi ng national media, warzone daw ang Mindanao. Tanong pa ng isa sa isang presscon na nadaluhan ko: ang BJE ba ang solusyon sa “kultura ng baril” sa Mindanao? Huwat? Eh, halata namang wala siyang alam sa konteksto ng conflict sa rehiyong ito. Nakalimutan din ng The Imperial Manille na nandidito din ang Davao, Cagayan, Zamboanga, General Santos, Butuan, Surigao at iba pang mga emerging cities na promising ang mga potentials pagdating sa business and tourism. Marahil di din nito alam na kaya may nakakain pa sila sa taas eh dahil panay pa rin ang supply natin ng agricultural produce.

Siguro nga dahil they need to feed their own agenda, and Mindanao is an easy scapegoat. Sabi pa nga nung isang executive ng BPO ng minsang dumalaw sa isang conference dito sa Davao: di daw akalain ng ibang dayuhan na may BPO industry na palang natayo sa Mindanao, kala nila puro giyera, puro Abu Sayyaf.

Di nga naman tulad sa Makati, kung saan makakita ka ng mga professional at sophisticated-looking people who sashay and brandish their cigarettes outside high-rise buildings like the RCBC tower, at hindi mga baril. Talagang, what a sight of civilization and modernization it is.

Ganito raw kasi sila sa Makati. Yung lahat ng kailangan mo – edukasyon hanggang mga health benefits at welfare ng mga matatanda – ay sagot ni... Aba, kung kaya niyang gawin ‘yon eh di dapat ngang ihalal natin siya, by all means. Lalo na kung nung bata ka pa eh nagpapakain ka ng baboy habang kinukutya ka ng mga kalaro mo.

Ganito rin sana sa buong bansa… Naku, napaka-misguided at napaka-baluktot na logic. Hindi pwedeng i-replicate mo na lang ang Makati at gawin mong Makati ang buong bansa. Talagang hindi pwede yun. Hayaan nating ang Manila ay magpaka-Manila, ang Makati, magpaka-Makati. Ang bawat rehiyon sa bansa ay may kanya-kanyang strength, sa agricultura man or sa larangan ng industriya at services.

Op kors, hindi naman sasabihin ng ad na kaya dahil libre ang notbuk at Paracetamol sa Makati eh dun halos lahat ng malaking establishments –central financial district kung baga, parang Wall Street. Kahit na ba ang mga kompanyang ito ay may mga operation or yung mismong largely operating outside Metro Manila -ang iba sa liblib na parte ng Pilipinas kahit dun sa mga tinatawag naming conflict-affected areas. Mas nakakagulat kung sa laki ng revenues na pumapasok sa lungsod nila ay ‘di pa malilibre ang basic social service.

Kung gusto ng pagkakapantay-pantay, paigtingin at bigyang puwang ang local autonomy, coupled with greater transparency at accountability to its people. Sa isang banda, mukhang mahihirapan nga tayo sa huling ‘yon, dahil the katiwalian is deeply entrenched in the higher echelons of power. Pero subukan natin ang patakbuhin ng mabuti ang local autonomy. Patotohanan natin ang katagang decentralization, dahil magpasa-hanggang ngayon mukhang kakarampot lang ang natatamasa ng mga nasa kanayunan. Okay the term is too provincial, make it outside-Metro Manila. Diba, probinsya naman talaga ang tawag nila sa mga lugar outside their territory…

Let’s make local autonomy work. Decentralize. Look at the examples of Galing Pook and the untold stories of LGUs making it out on their own. Headline readers will be shocked that away from politics and crime, good things are actually happening on the ground. At siguro, tsaka natin masasabing, ganito kami sa Pilipinas, hindi lang yung Ganito kami sa Makati…

Death and his friends.

I don't want a battle from beginning to end
I don't want a cycle of recycled revenge
I don't wanna follow death all of his friends.
-Coldplay, Viva La Vida or Death and All His Friends, 2008

It's Easter and I'm talking about death. Christ resurrected today so I really should be talking about life or renewal, or anything like it but I'm not really capable of such. And I think I've run out of things to say about life for the moment, especially since I always equate it with suffering and perpetual struggle. Before I fell asleep last night, which was Black Saturday, this Coldplay song was the last one I heard on the mp3 player. It can be pretty vague, the meaning. But that last line may as well be fear, I dunno. Death, after all is as inescapable as life, or so the phenomenology stuff we've managed to get ourselves into in our collegiate philosophical discourses would make us believe. The first cry of the then unborn signifies the inevitability of its final breath. Death is like life's partner easily put. This month, about 5 immediate family members of my colleagues died, mostly because of some illness. Last Monday, an aunt of a friend whom I briefly met in Manila died of a chopper crash. That's too much death in a month I would say. The office ought to be blessed or exorcised with whatever demons or curse it has, again I say. Because this silly idea of a death pattern perpetrated by the Final Destination series has again to me occurred. FD was kind of influential because after seeing the first installment, morbid thoughts on ways one dies occur to me regularly. While in transit, I'll imagine a monstrous vehicular accident and bloodbath. Walking on streets, I get a feeling of worn-out sharp debris like GI sheets or metal tubes bludgeoning the unmindful passersby. And blood, blood like geysers out of decapitated limbs courtesy of The Bride. Then came the sometimes funny and insignificant ways people die at the start of every Six Feet Under episode made me feel like shit sometimes. The fascination over death turns into it being a normalcy, a kind of everyday happening, deduced into a newspaper headline or an exclusive TV report. A statistic that becomes significant over time decorated with all kinds of analyses. But how do we discount the loss, the pain, the anguish, the years? Who am I really kidding with a veneer of bravery?

Man of faith.

As with the Philippines, religion in the U.S. pretty much has a say in the course of the election campaigns, more evidently with the Obama-McCain match. Though as to influencing using religion as tool, our lot is more shameless and blatant of recent times. We have our presidentiables attending prayer rallies and also acting as if they too have been suddenly possessed by the Holy Spirit. Make way for the anointed one!

Unfortunately, haters gripe over Obama’s seemingly lack of strong religious foundation or his unorthodox way of Christianity, which can be “politically problematic”. His schism with Trinity United Church and Rev. Wright, erstwhile spiritual counselor (?) and head of TUC has also escalated into a religious bout that has in some way created a perception of a confused leader.

In a lengthy article in the July issue of Newsweek, writers Lisa Miller and Richard Wolffe cited a survey which reveals that around 12 percent think Obama is a Muslim and many perceived he was raised in a predominantly Islamic home. I remember chatting with a friend from Long Beach, California (who I surmise a Republican) a few months back and though I can vaguely note all the details about the conversation which was regarding the U.S. elections, I think it was something about this perception of Obama.

Indeed, Obama has been exposed to Islamic culture because of his stepfather (his father, who is said to be an atheist, left them at 2). His mother, whom Obama referred to as an agnostic, took him and his stepsister to Buddhist temples while in Indonesia andalso attending Catholic masses. In Hawaii where he spent high school, the family would also spend time in the United Church of Christ congregations. His readings also say a lot about his influences: St. Augustine, Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Luther King, among others.

Obama has upheld Christianity saying that “the emotional and intellectual” is joined in a powerful sense. He is touched by the Christian story and tries to align his actions with the teachings but traditionalists have often accused him because of his confused, modern brand of Christianity. Obama believes redemption only through Jesus Christ but also he says that the Golden rule is a very important guiding principle for him.

No religion offers one single truth and Obama is well aware of it. His search, his life, his journey is very American.

“I’m on my own journey and I’m searching,” he said. And, “I leave open the possibility that I’m entirely wrong.”

His honesty is courageous. His admittance is audacity. And I admire him for that.

Justice hotdogs

We can argue to kingdom come the merits of the case (but of course I wouldn’t do that because I’m not a lawyer), the sincerity of the act of pardon or the executive privilege which this curmudgeon from the department of justice hotdogs, whose idea of electioneering does not include dispensing cash to barangay officials who deserved it anyway even if it is election fever, said is all but executively and prerogatively exclusive which in saying attributes godly omnipotence.

The grief over the death and outrage over the decision however are beyond the limits of our comprehension but it is for the family to bear for the rest of their lives.

I remember watching an episode of Justice, where Victor Garber and Kerr Smith, talked after a trial over a bunch of hotdogs. Garber’s character said something about the similarities of justice and hotdogs. How we love them served hot and fresh and juicy but we never really got to care how it is being made.

Webs of gibberish

Two months ago I read Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho which makes me feel like a geeky loser having read it at such a later time, like the past two months, given the reputation (notoriety) of this novel in contemporary literature. But even if I read it in college or even early on in high school, I wouldn’t have appreciated its depth and the themes which it criticizes. I guess I don’t need to bore you with how the novel seems to suck you in despite its plotlessness and how it titillates you and makes you feel like a perv for wanting to see more of Patrick Bateman’s all too-detailed gratuitous sexual violence in the pages. As they say, some things are meant to be read. Which is why so many, even critics alike were led astray by the novel’s bluntness lambasting it as trash and accusing Ellis of pornography that they actually lost track of the social critique it was meant for in the first place, like commodification and the increasing gap of social classes as a result, the rise of the urban bourgeois, the loss of identity in a seemingly economically flourishing era, etc. Psycho is set in New York and Bateman’s world is Wall St. heaven. The indestructibility and stability of Ellis’ stylishly concocted world will be comical if placed in the vulnerability of the current times. Recession and bailout, hell even sub-prime mortgage, would remotely surface in the superficial discussions of self-absorbed financial execs, Bateman et al. But even if such were discussed, as vague terms, in that particular economic pinnacle, the wide gap would have alienated the blue-collar layman from giving a flying fuck about how economic slowdown would actually allow them to live decently.

Last night, I watch the government’s economic panel sling back answers from supposed intelligible queries and stories out of these landed up on front pages of national broadsheets today. For the past few weeks, we too have been engrossed in the US economic situation attempting to make sense out of it, out of our lives as Filipino citizens (and at least for me not that successfully) but in the end, Juan dela Cruz won’t give a flying fuck (I purposely repeated those two words). John Cassidy in The New Yorker aptly puts it: “As an exercise in crisis management, it is potentially disastrous—and, to the rest of the world, dumbfounding”. But what am I really talking here anyway that none of the thinking people already know? I think it just goes to show that we are still bridging, and that’s why we don’t bridge the gap, it’s because it is always burned. In the world of American Psycho, the insignificant are further marginalized and the economically important continue to slobber with whatever there is to consume.

History lesson

I find myself engulfed by an inexplicable obsession with the past. It’s like being trapped in some imaginary time capsule that involuntarily catapults itself into some time in the past.

With music I guess it was because of too much Buble in college. So I’m talking Frank Sinatra-old, Elvis Presley-old. As a kid of 10 or 11, I used to listen to father’s collection of oldies cassettes. I never got to like Tom Jones or Engelbert Humperdink but was fond of his “ultimate” collection of Abba and listen to famous songs of The Beatles. And I used to sing with this song called “It’s My Party”.

Simon and Garfunkel’s lyrics appeal to me a lot. I think The Boxer and The Sound of Silence are among the most beautifully-written songs in history along with Don McLean’s American Pie. The film Almost Famous is also memorable because it added to my zest in learning and discovering more of the classics. The soundtrack has one of my favorite songs, It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference by Todd Rundgren. But still, I have a lot to catch up with: Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, The Who, Janis Joplin, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, the early Santana, the early blues and jazz etc. etc.

With books, my favorite one is a classic – William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, the classic apocalyptic tale of innocence lost and survival of the fittest. There’s also F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, John Knowles’ A Separate Peace, George Orwell’s 1984 and Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange.

In photography class, our professor let us watch Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane which then I didn’t know is the greatest film of all time. Watching the classics is not only essential for any film buff, it’s also fun. I like Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard (1950), Preston Sturgess’ Sullivan’s Travels (1941), Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). One of my all-time fave is Francois Truffaut’s Les Quatre Cents Coups (The 400 Blows, 1958). I also like Michaelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura (1960) and Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon (1950), which I first saw during a literature class.

I’d also love to have a turntable or a phonograph, the vinyl records, a Corona typewriter like that of Robbie’s in Atonement, a convertible or any vintage car, and more vintage shirts.

Care to give me some of the old stuff?

**

Besides a very poor diligence and adeptness in math, I find myself with a lack of sense of world history. High school history was forgettable, I can’t remember if world history was actually taught and I can’t even remember the date the katipuneros tore their cedulas and cried freedom. But I guess it’s more important that I remembered there was a tearing. I liked that during the first semester of college when we had Philippine history, it was more introspective. Our professor was much more concerned about how we thought of the events of the past. Which should be the case, right? I just thought that because of too much attention given on details, we lose track of the whole essence of history, which is a study of events. And details like dates and figures are too much of a distraction that you end up not retaining much of it, say when you’re twenty-something.

In one of my favorite 2006 films, Half Nelson, Ryan Gosling plays a druggie grade school history teacher. The kids he teaches were mostly Hispanics and African-Americans in a working-class suburb. In the introductory lecture, Dan, Ryan’s character, describes history as a study of oppositions, an examination of contradiction, of opposing forces – which make up the events in history. I never saw it that way but it was refreshing and striking. And these were grade-schoolers.

They always say history repeats itself. When you think of major political upheavals, environmental catastrophes, world wars, corrupt regimes and governments, you cannot even gasp as you begin to imagine the old adage. Even in Scream, the famous slasher film of all slasher films, the resurgence of psycho-killers is attributed fatalistically to the saying. But I guess history has its destiny too. And maybe that’s why it sometimes creeps up stealthily to devastating effects, is because we are always bound to never learn from it.

A $10,000 bet on climate change

Preceding the now-global initiative Earth Hour was a relatively small issue regarding a wager on climate change, which I found in the Foreign Policy blog. Albeit small in a plethora of issues in the sphere international politics (perhaps because of its too-academic and “scientific” nature), its impact on the remaining fight that could ultimately save mankind cannot be downplayed.

The wager is put up by forecasting expert J. Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School of Business and challenges Al Gore’s climate change forecasts which he presented in the 2007 Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Armstrong, in his paper, "Global Warming: Forecasts by Scientists Versus Scientific Forecasts" also challenged the results of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) saying it as “unscientific” saying his predictions were far more accurate than the previous two mentioned. (See article and related links here)

Citing The New York Times article, the UN-IPCC recently presented grim forecasts if governments fail to respond to the lingering risk on global warming: “melting ice sheets that could lead to a rapid rise in sea levels and the extinction of large numbers of species brought about by even moderate amounts of warming, on the order of 1 to 3 degrees”.

The bet would require Gore and Armstrong to deposit $10,000 into an escrow account and the prize would go to the one who has closest to the accurate predictions of temperature, over a ten-year period, in 10 different weather stations around the world. The renewed deadline was supposed to be March 26. Gore has reportedly dismissed the challenge.

Gore would have only aggravated the forecast squabbling if he accepted the wager. And it would only do the world no good. I admire the efforts of Armstrong and his colleagues, but I reserve doubts on what point they want to prove. I suck at this stuff, forecasting and statistical analysis, because I suck at math. But we face such ominous times. I know that global carbon emissions are already way more than the world can take, polar ice caps are melting at such a rapid level, a sizable portion of Antarctica has been obliterated, and God knows if the hole in the ozone layer is still the size of Australia or much bigger now.

Surely, the devastation brought about by the Hurricane Katrina and its disastrous precedents couldn’t be any more than a retributive display of nature’s wrath than it is a big and horrific danger sign that no battle for accuracy can anymore abate.

Ang ZTE bow

I remember the week before the ZTE broadband controversy erupted in the news, I was in Zamboanga City to do a roadshow consultation in the region with the organizers of the Mindanao ICT Congress. I was still with my previous office then and it was actually my last work-related travel. We invited ICT stakeholders both from the government and private sector to promote the conduct of the said event. As part of the promotional roadshow, we conduct consultations among the ICT players, the output of which will form the policy component which usually translates into resolutions or policy agenda.

The NTC regional director reported during that meeting that the deployment of the National Broadband Network is expected the following week. Broadband connectivity is one of the emerging ICT concerns as this is seen to heighten appreciation of the critical role of ICT in the nation's development especially that world economies are now propelled by information and knowledge. In fact, I read in the papers a few months back that the Philippines ranked 4th in the world with the usage of e-Governance. ICT is indeed critical in enhancing government transactions and the basic delivery of government services.

Then here comes Abalos who seems to enjoy the proverbial hot seat and other political schmucks entering the picture inevitably. Everything has been laid already in the table, in the hands of the Senate inquiry actually, where everybody had a grand time except Abalos who keeps receiving pies in the face.

But I don't gripe on this usual scenario. Fuck those retards. What I'm dismayed at is how this kind of political backwardness takes its toll on an industry that is poising the country to really actively play in the global economy, thinking that we can outrun other leading Asian countries in the ICT and BPO field in few years if we're dead serious about it. If planned strategically, and commonsensically at that, ICT can and will bridge this digital divide, even in the countryside, that hampers a great deal of development. Look at the Telepono sa Barangay which is so haphazardly installed that I bet rural people continue to ogle at its anatomy and purpose.

I hope that the initiatives and efforts that are already under way should be sustained. I also hope that the players in the industry continue to have that technopreneurial spirit to get ICT to transform lives.

The Staple Wire Allegory

My work requires a lot of staple wires. I wish I could just plaster them into the mouths of those who I want to shut up but all I can manage is to stack the removed ones from copious papers into a makeshift container from a transparent sign pen case. I have carefully gathered them in such a way that the wires make up half of the container. The other half is filled with paper clips.

I can remember the first time I decided to make a big deal of stacking it up just for the heck of it. Kidding, I told myself that if I am able to fill up half of the rectangular case, I would decide to get married and have kids. The container is now filled to its brim but it can still accommodate more staple wires. I find it cute everytime I pull up a few wires and the whole thing clings on it like falling people off a cliff. It's like a magnet with no magnetic force. I thought of it as just a mere kiddy diversion. The kind of thing I find wonder and amazement despite its utter lack of sensibility and point. Kind of Wes Bentley in American Beauty filming an empty cellophane or paper bag being blown away by wind because he is just filled with wonder. And nobody knew where he's getting at and nobody gave a fuck.

Today is supposed to be my last day in the office. August 31 is the date I set in my resignation lettter. They say I can extend for a few days to a week, but that's not the point. Struck with that eccentric sudden blow of amazement, I now realize what the filling up of staple wires mean. I now know what those staple wires are. It's weird but I know everybody does not get that kind of epiphany everyday. From a bunch of stacked-up staple wires at that. Crazy town here I come.

A ratty encounter: Tales from this Godforsaken Whatever

Sunday has become the day of introspection for me, not that it's something OC-ly calendared on a friggin' monthly or weekly planner because that would be ridiculous. While I'm not a church-goer and family days are things of the past from the point of view of the impoverished, I always find myself unwillingly immersed in this so-called introspection or even just mere thought-gallivanting when I do my laundry (read: handwashing). Of course, it's not something that's done on purpose because really now that would be totally outrageous. The dormancy and the surrounding dead air is the perfect atmosphere for plunging into a state of wanton thinking - just that, when I get tired of watching tricycles, vendors of fish, mais, ice cream (the dirty and the seemingly unlucrative retail vendors of known brands) and nonsense stuff like five-peso destructible toys, or when fantasizing about Aubrey Miles in several postitions in three different episodes of Xerex feels like an overplayed CD.

Last Sunday was kind of gloomy and I had the feeling that it will take another day for the clothes to dry out. It was muddy everywhere and the cemented part of the very small frontyard was just as filthy. I was alone since none of our neighbor co-renters did their washing that day. While I was doing my thing, a large rat snuck out of the largest pipe that lead to the canal and made its way near the faucet opposite me. The rat, which was now nibbling leftover rice grains thrown out of dishwashing and running directionless in the pool of murky water, was about three normal steps away from me. I cringed but not of fear and usual repugnance to this filthy rodents (aside from cockroaches) but in a serious moment of obervation. I could've easily brushed my hand off to shoo the rodent away, the size equalled to that of the kitten we used to nurse (that thanks to our retarded neighbor who whacked it to death is now rotting in the dark recesses of the sewers).

I watched the rat like it was some kind of episode on Discovery channel about house pests and their eating behaviors, my hands now rested on my knees like the observer that I am. And then it stopped and looked at me with those little black vermin eyes as if to say "so what now"? And then I remembered that film Willard, about a loner who develops a twisted friendship with rodents. Then the rodent-infested thought was replaced by the face of Jack Nicholson as Frank Costello in The Departed when he was mimicking a rat like he was born to do it. After the rat returned to the pipehole and vanished from my sight, I was trying to put the encounter into some metaphysical level (wtf???) like it was some kind of premonition or an omen. Oh, now I get it. The vermin was trying to say na mahirap pa ako sa daga, and that it was just his lucky day because he had a meal without being shooed by a human being (who happens to have Zemmiphobia), which could impress to him that their species have attained a .00001 niche upgrade in terms of dominating a much higher-ranking species. Oh, jeez wtf.

5 reasons why Filipinos (the Philippines) may not be worth dying for

It's Independence Day for chrissakes (wait, is it yesterday or today?) but please don't think this is such an unpatriotic blog entry. It's just that with everything around us today, Ninoy may want to reconsider his most famous statement immortalize in the 500 peso bill, which amounts to really not much these days. On the second thought, even if Ninoy would be alive today he'd still die for us, for the country, but I know he'll come up with something that doesn't necessarily require bloodshed. It would be such a waste of brains.

# 1 - Where are these Filipinos we’re talking about? The majority of the Filipinos being referred to in the statement have fled and flown to just about every city in whole wide world where their idealism, intelligence, talent and perseverance will be put to good use. Just exactly who are the ones left? Those who couldn’t care less.

# 2 – Statistically majority of the Filipinos are either dying from hunger or on the brink of poverty. And government phonies would try to lure you with figures and stats that’d suppose to tell you poverty has abated. But really who are they kidding? The homeless? The unemployed? The farmer who up to now tills land he does not own? When you’re hungry nobody gives a flying lemur about heroic deeds or love for country. One of my friends said she’d begged to steer away from my first premise and rather say that Filipinos found more than one reason to leave this country. Sad but true.

# 3 – Practically a number of negative traits have been coined referring to a particular Filipino character. Yes, there are whole bunch of talented and industrious people out there but there are a great number who are indolent and plain worthless. Paging crab mentality and a plethora of other bad behavior. To my mind, this doesn’t give us any positive identity rather it has work to the disadvantage of hard-working Filipinos both in and out of the country only to be discriminated against because their fellowmen are morons.

# 4 – If Ninoy was alive today, he’d shoot himself in the head if he was to work and be flanked by worthless bad-ass sonofabitches in practically every level of government. Think DOJ secretary Raul Gonzales whose etymological skill has entirely modified the meaning of vote-buying or Benjamin Abalos and the COMELEC aliens who sit in their prized thrones clad in robes watching the whole elections get rigged. A friend of mine said Ninoy would still probably shoot his head if he lives up to seeing her daughter's histrionics. Di nga kaya?)

# 5 – That GMA ad featuring a dispatser shouting Kalayaan is so striking for me. It’s not enough that people have lost touch with the essence of our independence. To further mis-educate the people, the government’s ability to swap relevant commemorations as if it were festivals has come to its fruition with this one.

There’d be more reasons out there I guess but that’s what I can think of and also based from those who have commented and validated.

So am I saying that every hero who has fought for our liberation died for naught? Am I unworthy? And those who still live up to the hope and ideals that this nation can still be great? Am I to be blamed for wanting a better life? Are those people who have put to good use their talents and those who have enslaved themselves to working for other countries be blamed because they did not espouse patriotism? Maybe yes? Maybe no?

These are just questions. But I hope and pray that I would be able to live up to a time that I shall know the answers.

Photo courtesy of www.apa.si.edu

Violence vs. Hospitality

The photo in PDI last Saturday shows aggrieved Bicolanos lighting candles for their favorite volunteer Julia Campbell, who was slain in Batad, Benguet while she treaded the muddy tracks of Banawe Rice Terraces during the Holy week..

It was also during the Holy week that our German volunteer in the office working under the DED program, Sarah went to climb Mt. Apo. By the time the news on Campbell’s death erupted in the local news, Sarah was perhaps on her way to the peak. I remember how excited she was saying there’s not really much to climb in Germany since mountains there are usually covered by snow. She did climb the Apo, a feat that even some of us who’ve been here in Mindanao since birth, haven’t been able to do so.

Sarah came to the Philippines a year ago for a 2-3 months internship with the office (though I can hardly understand why she should be working here of all organizations. I reckon later it was because of Peter – our German colleague who went back to Germany early this year – whom she met while working in Indonesia.) She helped during the BIMP-EAGA Business Council turnover last March 2006, which was one hell of an event when everything goes haywire at the last minute. Which was I wondered why she would still choose to work here.

When Sarah started asking about places she could go to – and I’m not talking about malls and parks here – that’s when I ascertained that an adventurous spirit resides in every foreigner’s heart and a pulsating fondness for the Filipino culture that you just can’t seem to contain. While some of us laid-back commoners shy away at the mere thought of shedding a sweat, they don’t usually give chickenshit about it. Last year, me and some of my friends brought Sarah to a pristine beach in Samal Island. She was also introduced to kinilaw, which she absolutely loved. She looked for it during her first day in the office (this year), and she sure got a serving from our suking karinderya.

Okay, going back to Campbell. Her death brings to the fore the issue of lawlessness and violence which this government has taken with so much impunity. It’s not just a matter of foreigners being killed, which I think is very unsettling given the bazillions of aid we have siphoned from the donor community and the spirit of volunteerism that we have grown accustomed to as a friggin’ third world country. But more so with our own people getting killed extra-judicially, our journalists as targets of hapless killing sprees, and the recent election-related violence, that just about complete the plethora of miseries of Juan de la Cruz.

So where did the big chunk of government fund for national defense go? Oh, I had my math wrong, the fund is meant to counter terrorism pala. So that even when fighter planes start bombing us like Hiroshima and Al-Qaeda start plotting a Malacanang attack, we would all still feel safe and sound. With a country relying on tourism to increase its investment potential, the old-fashioned Filipino hospitality just won’t suffice.