generation of hunger

This generation will die of hunger. TB, lung cancer or heart-related diseases only claim the lives of people in the urban areas because we have been inhaling the same poisons over and over again, but the entire Philippine populace is dying of hunger and children succumbed to malnutrition, which eventually results to death anyway.

I’m no fucking socio-economic analyst but these cavorting pigs with Ph. Ds in Economics frolicking in their high-priced seats and titles should really stop talking about poverty, employment and improving the lives of people when all they could really think of are short-term crap like the fucking feeding program. They don’t know a shit about being hungry because they have been practically pigs all their lives.

Oh, I know what hunger means. And I know a good deal of people who are practically starving. But then what point am I really making? Nada. This is a vicious cycle and no argument is really worth the saliva. So I’m going to migrate to Japan or Canada to work as a factory worker. Screw my degree and screw my fuckin’ honors. I’ll work hard for my naturalization so this goddamn government won’t be able to siphon my hard-earned cash and make it an excuse for a GDP increase.

morning walks

Before i take a bathe every morning, I usually drop of my 5-year old half brother to a community school located on the next block, the next street after ours. It probably takes us 2-3 minutes before we get to my brother's classroom, where his classmates are already hop-hopping in their seats and their teacher (who's also a neighbor of ours) tries her best to calm them down.

Even before we pass through the school's makeshift gate, I buy him something for snacks which usually consists of an orange juice and a biscuit, or anything that wouldn't cost much but would already allay a kids want for munchies. Today it's Koko Krunch. (I also bought the same, which I'm eating now.) Around 7am we pass by the streets already full of children playing Chinese garter or some other street game. Even before the morning class, these kids, with their battered uniforms and worn-out shoes -- some with looks as if they were not groomed and given attention to by their families -- already reeks with morning sweat.

But the sight of these unattended kids won't make up for the squalor that's inside the school. It's typical of a public school, just the same as with the kids outside -- unattended. Though some parts of it are cemented, the main stairs made of wood is already deteriorated that the moment Batista climbs through it, he would surely have a bad fall. A lot of unmended chairs are just stacked up and left rotting as well. Some of the kids went here and there carrying some pail of water, raking up detritus, watering the plants, etc.

Before reaching my little brother's classroom we pass by several rooms with elementary classes. I often hear children reciting in chorus the passage Ma'am has given them or sometimes, I would also see Ma'am filling the entire board with chalk, while the children are copying the same. Some classes are just on their way for yet another morning dose of Jumping Jacks.

Education, the only legacy we can leave our children. Now, at least I can make sense of the statistics. I see it every morning.

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I arrived early at the office today. 10 minutes before 8. Official time is 8:30. At this early, some of us would walk to the nearest Select store outside the office building either for the missed breakfast or something to much on snacks. I accompanied Rio this morning to re-load her cellphone. I didn't buy anything but rummaged through the racks of magazine for something new. Unfortunately, Newsweek and Time cost 110 pesos.

Newsweek's front cover is the losing war in Iraq and soldiers coming home. Time's was about the US election, and why it's not everything but George Bush.

On the other hand, you might want to catch this short video clip of George 'Stutter' Bush in The Christopher Walken show. This is hilarious. Hail America!

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harsh times

According to the local dj this morning it's 49 days before Christmas (was it this morning or the other day?) As I stared droopy-eyed into the computer's screen, I reached my pocket and found 66 pesos. It's still more than a week before the next payday. I'm thinking of the neighborhood office's staff who lends money at little interest. How much will I need to get by?

I should be giddy-up with that remark of the dj and his playing of a rehashed version of a Christmas song. But it's still too early to be thinking of the yuletide even though the weather and the radio waves signal that it's just around the corner.

Yesterday, the owner of the room we're renting coaxed me into this 'autoload networking' thing, in which I have to subject myself in a shabby, overrated, forceful salesman's speech (salesman's pitch) to enlighten myself on the overwrought procedure. With respect I said yes, though immersing myself in some networking scheme is the last thing on mind, a last-ditch desperate effort to stay affloat during these financially tumultuous years. And yet, isn't it a decent thing to do, to engage oneself in tactics and gimmicks to keep oneself sustained?

As far as I can remember, I have been engaged in legit 'sidelines' even when I was in college. I used to do reaction papers, essays of various topics - from the mundane to the ones I really need to research, and I can recall doing a film review/critic a coupla' times for fellow mass communication division-mates. I went to Ateneo - which I left just a year ago after graduation - and I guess up to now it remains to be some rich kid's - or perhaps in most cases, the parents' - stigma of a fairytale-landia of a school. Well, the school doesn't have a problem of lack of parking space like ADMU does, but its still some rich brat's dream come true.

But the misplaced elitism doesn't at all envelope the school nor the student spirit. My father cannot afford to send me to a school such as Ateneo and never did I dreamed of it either. I worked my butt off as a student assistant and during the first year of my stint as an SA, I met fellow SAs and students who didn't even resemble the closest character of an asshole or a spoiled bitch. I remembered writing a feature story on the student paper about SAs and how they managed to get out of the usual Atenista shadow through tirelessly toiling whole day -- studying and working - just to get through college.

Yet it was hard as I neared graduating with all the expenses and stuff that my father cannot afford to subsidize. Someone was supporting my daily stipend, a sponsor whom I got to meet the day of my graduation. But somehow, harsh times force me to do extra work to earn some needed extra cash for school expenses. There's this one professor who really trusts my choreographing skills (despite me really sucking at it and only able to orchestrate simplistic moves) that he manage to call me up everytime there's some affair in their office that they need to perform. I recalled checking some of the teachers' papers and exams during tests.

My bosses and my co-workers at the division I'm working in were extremely considerate and helpful. There was one time I stowed away from a nasty fight at home and being welcomed by a professor in their own home for two weeks.

My classmates and friends were extremely helpful as well. They proved to me that they're treasures in their own right come harsh times. (Sniff) And some of my mass com teachers who really stood by me and understood what I was going through, completed the bunch of streamer-holding support group that I had.

I had to attend the graduation despite the doctor's diagnosis of an early pneumonia. I barely had a bathe for two weeks. Sweat-drenched, with ruffled hair and creased polo, I went up to receive the medal and bowed while flashes of the whole five years or so of my college life passed in front of my eyes. It was one of those moments wherein it could stretch on to forever.

Landing in a job a month after, I realized that harsh times are here to stay. You are faced with the cruel realities of life more than you could ever think of. A year and five months, overworked and underpaid, it seemed that all my rantings went oblivious as it was drowned among the screaming uncertainties of the 7.8 million who's in the same situation. And you'd wish that you will always have that gut to swallow it in.

I look at both ends of my peripheral vision. At the left, its an oversized multivitamin. In the other end, is an empty, dried-up glass.

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