Bisaya Bloggers

In their website, the Young Turks’ next stop is at the University of the Philippines National College of Public Administration and Governance.

More pictures here.
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The establishment of college loans in the Philippines may be an alternative answer to rising tuition costs in the country.

A militant student group on Saturday questioned the non-inclusion of private schools in the tuition moratorium announcement of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, saying this has left a greater number of the country’s students to the mercy of “education vultures.”

The League of Filipino Students said tuition in private learning institutions should be regulated by the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) and the government.

According to CHEd data, 378 private tertiary schools have implemented a tuition increase this year with a nationwide average of 10 percent.

LFS called for the suspension and investigation of tuition increases with a view to rolling them back if schools were proven to have abused their discretion in raising fees.

According to Crisostomo, there should be no reason to allow increases in tuition in private schools as most of the schools were making millions in profits.

– from the Philippine Daily Inquirer

Private student loans can come with a pre-arranged employment plan to pay off the loan in a pre-determined number of years. But since student loans are practically unheard of in this country, nothing short of government intervention is needed to address the problem of rising tuition fees.

But does the government even want to intervene with private schools tuition scheme? It seems they have their hands full already, after state colleges and universities have started selling off their land to meet expenses that have gone sky-high. And now that school has already started, it looks like more and mores students are not going to be students anymore, not this year, and probably not the next.

I first met Professor Bienvenido Lumbera in 1985, when I attended the UP Writers Workshop in the summer of that year. That was 23 years ago. As with most well-loved teachers, Prof. Lumbera possesses the rare gift of wearing the years well. He looks exactly the same in this video as I remember him then.

This video was taken during a Lecture on Poetry and Politics that he gave on the 17th of May 2008 at the Ateneo de Davao University.

ON THE MATTER of my mother tongue, there's no ifs and buts. Either I wag it with the earnestness of the dispossesed rabid against the insidious infestation of forgetting, a betrayal against my birthright. Or, be struck mute by the blinding flash and haze of a colonized consciousness.

That I also write in English is no less a privilege, yes. Yet it also cast upon this Bisdak dog the added burden of responsibity to be steadfast with the umbilical words of a vernacular on the verge of extinction. Unrelenting, after all, are the inroads of globalization and an unenlightened state policy that spawns negligence, niggardly attention and a culturally decentered outlook of this generation of native speakers.

Pastilan intawon, pagka-serious! Maybe because Yoyoy Villame is dead, and Max Surban is no longer as loud as the cat in heat on the roof.

Hereunder are variations on the Bisdak theme I wrote for my regular column, "So To Speak," in the op-ed pages of Sun.Star Cebu:



La Vida Local and Being Vocal

/Sun.Star Cebu, 8 April 2008/

KIDS say the darndest thing, concedes an eponymous American television series several years ago. But what comes out of the mouths of babes does not always disarm adults with amusement. Bile drips and foams as well from their milk-smacking lips.

Look, for instance, at a clique of child rockers called the Naked Brothers Band. It might as well be a bomb's detonation, what they revealed at the recent 2008 Kids' Choice Awards over the cable channel Nickelodeon. Simply piercing like shrapnel in bare skin, the lyrics of their latest hit: "And I'm really tired of being treated/ Like a fool./ I don't want to go to school…You always tell me to stop/ To stop comin' around/ I can't even make/Make make no sound…."

That struck a cringe-worthy chord, indeed, with the alleged conspiracy of third-grade classmates out "to harm or kill their teacher with a serrated steak knife." Nine pupils at Carter Elementary School in Georgia could be facing "unruly child" charges after they reportedly plotted revenge against their teacher who disciplined a girl for "standing on a chair." Did she say something that reeked of impudence, the tactless assertion of innocence?

As a parent, whittling down the tongues of my two boys into timidity would be no better than bearing my neck down the chopboard. Mince no words, and mean it with due respect. Like, well, saying I look like a hobgoblin and hugging me anyway.

May they grow up to be outspoken but neither intimidating nor insincere. And, yes, to stay true and rooted—even if their vocabulary branches out to the lush forest of other languages—to their mother tongue.

So far, it warms the cockles inside my chest to hear my eldest son Gabriel Ollivan, a minority among his white classmates in preschool, asking ardently, "Unsa'y Binisaya…?" for some things he absorbs from his teacher and his books utterly awash with information and expressions of all things American. Rest assured I do as well when Golli's younger brother Raphael Gandalf, scared of "agta" and "ungo" lurking in the thicket of his two-year-old imagination, easily takes comfort with a bedtime browsing of Mother Goose rhymes no more than the lull of lisping into a medley of native memory about, among others, the "alimango sa suba, gibantog nga dili makuha" and "balay ko sa langit nagasidlak-sidlak luyo sa panganod…." Or the wisdom of "bugsay, bugsay, kiling-kiling dyutay...sa barotong gamay."

Rock and bring it on, Bisdak! Thus I have only the best wishes for the brainchild of Cebu Provincial Board (PB) member Victor Maambong who recently sponsored a resolution for the Department of Education to prescribe "Sugbuanong Binisaya as the indispensable bridge language in teaching English and Filipino" in grade and high schools.

Noting the dismal results of the national achievement tests and taking the cue of scientific studies, Maambong's resolution avers: "The use of the first language to bridge English and Filipino will facilitate a more efficient cognitive process in the language development of our students…," who, certainly, will find it easier to sway along the tune of Naked Brothers Band's "I Don't Want To Go To School," if they fall in the gap or in the shadow between the idea and the act.

Getting a failing grade deserves better, indeed, than the silence of the dumb. Or the stench of cliché while invoking, "Shit," if not the four-letter word. As a matter of fact, they can be more emphatic by exclaiming, "Hinampak!"



Watch Your Mouth

/Sun.Star Cebu, 12 February 2008/

"HE SAID a bad word." So went the accusation of a little Fil-Am boy whose twang-laced tongue has been irradiated with a smattering of Cebuano words from his constant exposure at playtime with my five-year-old son. "He called me stupid, mom."

Even if there are times I won't begrudge "stupid" as an apt adjective for me, my wife can swear we never use that word at home, although I'm fond of ejaculating, "Bulay-og baya!," if anything went out of whack. Now, where did my son get the word that whipped his friend into such distress? My disconsolate wife and I learned later that the infestation in my son's vocabulary was the latest he cottoned onto from his American classmates in pre-kindergarten.

But what alarmed me, more than the likelihood that I might have spawned a ruffian who would grow up calling a spade a blunt spade, was that he didn't call his friend "amaw." Or, if he were a sharper chip off his old block, he could have stumped even Dennis the Menace with this snarl: "Hungog!"

What other homegrown words, even the hair-raising ones, would soon be watered down into the milk and honey of American speech?


When we flew into the heartland of America nearly a year ago, our baggage bristled with a stack utterly Bisdak—a Cebuano bible, a Jesuit-authored English-Visayan dictionary, booklets from the Cebuano Studies Center featuring a trove of riddles, proverbs, folktales and native songs as well as a slew of CDs (the discography of Yoyoy Villame and Max Surban, three volumes of Visayan Greatest Hits by various artists, Susan Fuentes' "Awitnong Bahandi" album and "Sine-sine" by Missing Filemon.) These, I hoped, would suffice to slam the intrusive clangor of dislocation out the door.

But the new culture, with all its colors bleaching into the televised cartoons, has been unrelenting in weaning my two kids away from their mother tongue. Even if my wife and I have made it sacrosanct for our relocated household to be steeped in the stew of our vernacular, not a day passes without my youngest son blurting out, "No way!"

Out loud, such obstinacy echoes how I feel about one Cebuano lawmaker whose brainchild in Congress now braces like a bulldozer against the dwindling wilderness of indigenous languages. If Rep. Eduardo R. Gullas (Cebu, 1st district) will have his way with House Bill 305—set to revive English as the mandatory language for teaching in all school levels—superseded becomes the Department of Education order implementing the bilingual teaching policy. Which has stunted the potentials of students to compete in the global economy, according to Gullas. His bill would correct the defects of the current education program where "learning two languages (English and Pilipino) is too much for young Filipino learners, especially the non-Tagalog speaking children." But don't impressionable minds work like a sponge? Or, to begin with, must the bilingual system be thrown with the bathwater because it has been childishly conceived and carried out by a way of teaching slightly better than baby-talk?

If the national language — predominantly Tagalog — languishes, where does that leave the rest of the regional languages? Must progress be paid by selling what little remains of oral heritage down the river?

First things first, suggests a study recently printed in the Jakarta Post: "Students learn English or acquire a second language more rapidly and effectively if they maintain and develop their proficiency in their mother tongue." Swords, no more than the tongue's artillery of words, are better if they are double-edged.

Next time my son said "stupid" I would know for whom it's best suited. And I swear to add an expletive, crispier in Cebuano, for a deadlier effect.

I don't know if this kind of religious barangay affairs exist in other places, but, here in our place, we have this weekly suroy of the blessed Virgin Mary. Each week, the image is transferred to another house and for the whole week, it will be under the household's care.

The following letter was written by Fr. Jesus Dumaual, a missionary of the Sacred heart (MSC) priest who presently serves as parochial vicar of the Marigondon Parish in the island of Lapu-lapu in Cebu. He was present during an ecumenical service for Jun Lozada in Cebu. You can contact him via jessavior@yahoo.com.ph. ___________________ Dearest Jun (Lozada), We have [...]

The paper bag on the left contains leftover pandesal from yesterday’s breakfast. They cost P1 apiece from the Bitonio Bakery at the nearby talipapa. We had quite a bit left over because Kuya Maui wasn’t around to finish them off.

The paper bag on the right contains today’s breakfast pandesal. Noticeably larger and presumably more nourishing, it also now costs P2 apiece. The bakers were profusely apologetic for this 100% increase, but tried to appease us by saying that the pieces were indeed bigger to match the price.

Who wouldn’t want anything bigger and better, one might ask. Today’s pandesal is bigger yes, but is it better? Looking at the picture above today’s pandesal does look at least 90% bigger than yesterday’s pandesal. But today’s pandesal is also noticeably softer (something which I cannot show you here, sad to say) than yesterday’s pandesal, and not because yesterday’s is “bahaw” or day-old as we say it in Visayan. Today’s pandesal is softer because there’s more air in it, meaning more leavening has been used with less flour.

We did get a warning more than two weeks ago, when the baking industry announced another possible price increase for bread due to rising prices of flour costs.

“Yung tinatamaan maliit na panadero. Sana ang pamahalaan bigyan pansin ang suliranin ng panadero lalo ng maliit na bakery (This will hit small bakers the hardest. Government should look at their plight, especially the small bakeries),” Luisito Chavez, vice president of the Philippine Federation of Bakers said.

The Bitonio Bakery is one of those “maliit na panadero”. So this was expected. It still shocks you when it does happen, but we were warned.

The pandesal factor can be used to explain Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s much-touted “strong economy”. The bigger pandesal of today can be used to symbolize the high value of the peso today (see—it’s bigger!) compared to that of the past.

But are we actually getting more bread for our money? Or more air?

TAMA NA, SOBRA NA, KILOS NA!
GMA, ALIS(IN) NA!

I had come in to work before 8am to make sure I had logged in enough hours to justify leaving the office early. As early as 2pm I saw them forming their ranks outside my office window at the corner of Estrella and EDSA. When I got the text message from Sam saying he was already outside, I packed up and joined him.

This is my second chance, after the not-rally that we joined on the 25th of February, of perhaps being a part that will make things right with this country. Too much to expect, perhaps, but I didn’t know it then, and maybe neither did the eighty thousand people who followed the route to Ayala on this the 29th of February 2008.

We marched with the Laban ng Masa from Estrella into EDSA, turning right on Buendia Ave. On this stretch some people looked out of their office windows and waved to us. On a building that was under construction across the IPR building, the workers gathered by the edge of the third story and waved to the crowd marching by below. At the BDO branch on Paseo, police officers stood by the sidewalk, arms relaxed at their sides, watching the people marching by.

(more…)

Yesterday was the opening of the 16th National Congress of the National Movement for Young Legislators (NMYL) but the way I see it, we could not expect any "serious, credible, trustworthy" and whatever good human values that a politician should possess in the future because what we have right now are young legislators who are good for nothing except for making sure that their faces looks good on posters.

If you happened to pass by Waterfront that day, you would be amazed to see Bullet Jalosjos' tarps on every post in the hotel's entrance. We were there since 4pm 'coz our boss is supposed to talk in the opening program but two hours has already passed and it seems that nobody from the organizer made an effort to call the participants to get inside the ballroom because they are all very BUSY CAMPAIGNING for the next president of NMYL !

Showbiz personalities were everywhere. Everybody has their own gimmicks. It's actually like a mini-may 14 election.

And these people are our future leaders. What do we expect? A simple program that they themselves organized couldn't start ON TIME because of their hidden agendas.

I wonder what kind of projects these young legislators of the country are planning to do. Pang-photo ops ra? Good luck na lang gyud natong tanan!!!

Government property do not remove. Mere possession of this sign is punishable by law. MMDA.

That is the note lining the bottom edge of this enormous tarpaulin sheet that I have seen in at least three places along EDSA. The one above is on an MRT pillar adjacent to the turnoff to the Fort Bonifacio. I have seen another one on an MRT pillar at the intersection of Ortigas Avenue and EDSA, visible if you’re southbound. The third one is at another MRT Pillar in Pasay, just before hitting the Taft Avenue MRT stop.

First time I saw it was on the 25th February, during the half-hearted rally by the EDSA Shrine. Bayani BF Fernando, Big Brother-like as in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four. At first I thought the gigantic poster of billboard proportions was the idea of an overzealous supporter. But the “Government property” note at the bottom edge clearly states that the money for these self-serving banners came out of taxpayers’ pockets.

The ethics of plastering one’s likeness on public edifices at the expense of public funds seem insignificant compared to the scandals rocking the government today. But this is a man that some groups are pushing to be the next president of the Philippines. The banners themselves are proof that the man is serious about 2010, and serious about using taxpayers money towards furthering his personal goals. If the banners aren’t warning enough, I don’t know what is.

Note that a majority of the MMDA’s pink metal plate signs carry his signature BF initials. This only shows that Bayani Fernando is a typical politician, one that stamps his initials on government funded projects as if the money came from his own pocket. Yes, other politicians do the same thing. So what makes Bayani Fernando any different from the next Congressman Pulpol or Senator Trapo?

His horn-tooters may start leaving comments on this blog (again) and sending unsolicited email to my various email accounts, touting the many virtues of Bayani BF Fernando. Then again, maybe not. I am but an insignificant non-voting spec in the horizon that Bayani BF Fernando is eyeing. So like any insignificant speck I am going to let an authority speak for me. Take it away, Randy David.

Three strikes should get you out of the game, but apparently not if you’re Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

GMA ran when she said she wouldn’t, apologized for cheating when she did and now has admitted that she smelled the stink on the ZTE Broadband deal but went ahead and signed it anyway.

Maybe she thinks since she said she was sorry she cheated everything would be ok. It’s a Catholic thing: you sin, you go to confession, you’re pardoned, you do your penance, and there you have it, a clean slate. Catholicism is so convenient this way. No offense meant to fellow Catholics (I do happen to be one—a lapsed one—but I do still have my Baptismal Certificate).

My Catholic aunts always told me, when I was little, not to lie because liars go to hell.

Maybe GMA’s a closet agnostic?

Three strikes should get you out of the game, but apparently not if you’re Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

GMA ran when she said she wouldn’t, apologized for cheating when she did and now has admitted that she smelled the stink on the ZTE Broadband deal but went ahead and signed it anyway.

Maybe she thinks since she said she was sorry she cheated everything would be ok. It’s a Catholic thing: you sin, you go to confession, you’re pardoned, you do your penance, and there you have it, a clean slate. Catholicism is so convenient this way. No offense meant to fellow Catholics (I do happen to be one—a lapsed one—but I do still have my Baptismal Certificate).

My Catholic aunts always told me, when I was little, not to lie because liars go to hell.

Maybe GMA’s a closet agnostic?

Tomorrow (February 25) marks the 22nd year anniversary of EDSA revolution. It was one of the most historic events in the Philippines because democracy won over dictatorship. It showed the solidified unity of Filipinos to oust a greedy and corrupt leader. The Filipino nation rejoiced. We were freed! We should be happy, shouldn’t we? We were once dubbed as the second happiest people in Asia, after all.

Ironically, we can’t feel that so-called happiness right now. The current political crisis we are experiencing - the NBN controversy only proved the ongoing deception and corruption of our political leaders - is no reason to be happy.

In an article from The Philippine Daily Inquirer, analysts said that the Filipinos are still unhappy after 22 years since the fall of Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos no matter how the present administration is boasting about economic growth, which has improved the lives of many  because of Pres. Arroyo’s policies. Continue Reading »

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In the past few days after the Manila Peninsula uprising, I was busy browsing the net to collect further info and viewpoint from several websites and bloggers about the Makati crisis drama.

I've read about how Senator Antonio Trillanes IV was indicted as cause damage on the economy when his comrade patriotic soldiers took over the Manila Peninsula hotel last November 29 and demanded the resignation of President Arroyo.

Sassy Lawyer and Severino's Sidetrip perceive the Makati crisis is a waste of time for them... :-(

I was shake-up and feeling dismayed to some of the media reactions... and from the middle class in Metro Manila (who joined the EDSA 1 & 2 revolt) --- they dislike change the way Senator Trillanes and his group call for.

These middle class privileged of Metro Manila are now weary of EDSA experiences. Their collective psychology is resting in a comfort zone to wait for the 2010 presidential election. After all, what they fear much about at press time is the drop of dollar exchange, and not the epidemic of bribery and corruption of government leadership.

Despite of this mess and sneering judgment I've come across, luckily there is a good butterfly I bump into who brings hope for the flowers...

Edicio dela Torre from his memory was able to express optimism:

"No uprising ever fails. Each one is a step in the right direction." :-)

Photo Credit by AP and Getty Images

Word War between “The Punisher” and “Dirty Harry” Mayor Rodrigo Duterte and House Majority Floor Leader Cong. Prospero Nograles. Both of them are leaders of Davao City, a highly urbanized and developed city in the Philippines, and considered as the Most Livable City in the country.

Hope they fix their differences and just work to improves [...]

THE BETTER SIDE OF THE PHILIPPINES
The following was written by INTEL General Manager Robin Martin about the Philippines :

Filipinos (including the press, business people and myself) tend to dwell too much on the negative side, and this affects the perception of foreigners, even the ones who have lived here for a while. The negative perception of the Philippines is way disproportionate to reality when compared to countries like Columbia , Egypt , Middle East, Africa , etc.

Let us all help our country by balancing the negative with the positive especially when we talk to foreigners, whether based here or abroad. Looking back and comparing the Philippines today and 1995 (the year I came back), I was struck by how much our country has progressed physically.
Continue Reading »

IT'S A WAIL OF A TIME for the usual sob stories that have become the stuff of headlines, and that's enough to know why a clown's job is herculean more than ever. With the Glorietta blast recently reminding us, albeit rudely, of the forthcoming cemetery-centered holiday come November, it has gotten awkward to sustain one's self in a merry mood. But no matter if laughter nowadays is grimly in short supply, sigh, irrepressible remains the weakness to be jolly with a joke. Which reminds me of a sad attempt by a Cebuano congressman for a rib-tickling effect last week.

Hereunder is a reprint of my recent column in the op-ed page of Sun.Star Cebu (October 16, 2007 issue) about an explosion in the face of a joker-wannabe:


Grin and grind your teeth


WORTHY enough for angels to blow theirs trumpets, those who can make people laugh. Ah, an honest-to-goodness humorist! Isn’t he more companionable than many a columnist, or someone who speaks like faith were something to bleed out of one’s wrist?

All right, here’s a confession: What gets me going to wear my Sunday best is the hope of hearing a priest who can drive the sermon home with the tongue-in-cheek grace of a stand-up comic.

Heaven, I believe, is when we feel the lightness of suspending disbelief.

Hang on, or so Rep. Tony Cuenco tried to pull off such a stunt until he winds up with his tongue now coiling tight around his neck. He went on air for a radio interview, only to somersault and spit out his words with a grin. “I was only cracking a joke,” he averred after admitting he received P200,000 —a “Christmas gift”— from the President. Nope, it was not for him to behave like an acolyte as soon as Congress beats hell’s bells for the President now in the heat of her foes’ allegations of bribery and haunted once more with the horror of impeachment. But, sorry, his avuncular vibe and baritone voice—perfect for beating his breast at the pulpit till holy water comes out of his nostrils—are just too solemn for side-splitting chortle.


How to tell a good joke?

Beats me, but I guess comedians are better hogging the limelight alone. So I think, if you dare to go on air, better to gag the interviewer and crank up canned laughter while you gnash the microphone with your dentures. And please be down to earth so you’re not far off and thus would hurt less when your face falls flat.

It will probably help not to kid one’s self that all it takes to be funny is to swallow and stick one’s tongue out. That’s what makes most politicians such a yawn, no doubt. Then again, the irony is how they become drop-dead laughable when they try utterly hard to be taken seriously. Honesty and its timing is of the essence, too. As when deaf people joke about not being able to hear.

In the end, nothing beats the coup de grace of the unexpected. Like the confession of Andy Kaufman, the self-styled “song-and-dance man” that Jim Carey played in the film Man on the Moon: “I’ve never told a joke in my life.” Doesn’t that beat Beelzebub saying he has never been on fire?

It’s all about absurdity, and anything else would be the sad spectacle of a clown seeking refuge in reckless slapstick, the grimness of the grotesque. And Nietzsche was not out to pick someone’s funnybone, certainly, when he muttered how “man alone suffer so deeply that he had to invent laughter.”

Inventions, however, ought to be original. How wonderfully out of the ordinary, for instance, if a politician would dare swear his armpits out and just admit for a change how badly he wants another pair of hands to clap at his dexterity to accept what power brings under the table. Really, won’t he need to grow more dirty fingers to poke through a crack a joke leaves on his bloody head?

PROCRASTINATION IS A COUNTRY where I'm a constant inhabitant. That explains the laggardly pace of this blog lately, I concede. Allow me to cram and make up for the delay by posting the last three of my opinions columns in the op-ed pages of Sun.Star Cebu for last month. As they say, better late than...


No Hurry, No Worry


NO way, speed is not for snails.

Neither do they smash each other’s shell to smithereens down the road and turn turtle.

Of happiness and contentment, the secret may be for the snail to tell. But, come on, who’s not in a hurry to spare time enough to lend an ear?

Not the Mandaue City police official who might as well have heard thunder after his car collided with that of a TV news crew. Neither they who got more than deadline to beat, according to the allegation of the browbeaten officer.

Suffice it to say that the whole affair was too tawdry to stimulate the offbeat characters in David Cronenberg’s “Crash” who, by the way, are sexually excited with injury in the wake of highway wrecks — an awful metaphor for the mishap of human connection in the age of technology.

Last we heard, both parties were reportedly driving drunk. Did they deem it liberating to leave sobriety at full throttle, in the thrill of living in a whirl? So that there’ll be no more time left, perhaps, to fret about the drudge of catching up with criminals who are often faster at cutting corners with the law; which, by the way, always leave the TV news crew and the rest of the media breathless in the blur between the quick and the dead.

In a culture that covets what’s instant —from noodles and coffee to reality show on fame and luck in the way of lotto — there’s nothing faster than the flyblown irony of the essentials — justice, truth, progress, peace — moving with a worm’s poise.

But fast is not how bliss could be found, we know. In the same manner that satisfaction can hardly be reached in the dismal distance between premature ejaculation and orgasm.

In sex as in eating and the rest of human exertions, nothing’s more desired than deceleration.

That’s the favorite word of Carl Honoré, the best-selling author of In Praise of Slowness as he spreads the gospel against the tyranny of time in modern life. With its cocktail of reportage, statistic, anecdotes of personal testimony, history and intellectual inquiry, the book clarifies “how the world got so fast and why slowing down can pay dividends in every walk of life.”

Consider the advantage of deceleration as the book unravels what happens in “a Tantric sex workshop in London to a meditation room for executives in Tokyo, from a Chi Kung squash class in Edinburgh to a SuperSlow exercise studio in New York City, from a TV-free household in Toronto to Italy.”

Beyond the exigencies of a deadline, there’s a lifeline. So argues Honoré: “These days, many of us live in fast forward — and pay a heavy price for it. Our work, health and relationships suffer. Over-stimulated, over-scheduled and overwrought, we struggle to relax, to enjoy things properly, to spend time with family and friends.”

Lest he be misconstrued as a Luddite out to mock the convenience of all things modern, he avers: “You don’t have to shun technology, live in the wilderness or do everything at a snail’s pace.”

Just breathe for a change. Yes, after spitting and cursing. You, too, can burn slow. (September 25, 2007)



On Our Feet


LET the others dream of flying. Long after the invention of rubber shoes, leave it to me to levitate horizontally with the repose of walking, to have a whistle of a time even if it means startling the birds away.

It’s good for the body, they say. Never mind if the obstinate inhabitants under the skin of my beer belly strains to disagree. It bodes well, too, for the business of footwear and all related products for preventing the spirit of a dead rat to emanate from the purgatory between our toes.

If I follow those who spread the gospel of a good hike, it’s also because it seems devoid of the breathless distress of joggers. Can’t hum or whistle, see, while they appear desperate not to bite the dust, or fall behind their inner slobs.

Against the motions of the overweight trotting around Central Park, consider the condescending soliloquy of Woody Allen’s character in Hannah and Her Sisters as he goes on walking, waxing morbid about our common ground. Death, he ruminates, will overtake us all, health buffs or not, just the same in the end.

Thus a sage once snorted: Why hurry if life is short?

Maybe we walk to steer clear from the awful possibility that we’re better off crawling or groveling in the growl of everything gone awry with the world.

See how the streets pave the march of placard-waving militants. Or the Zen-like rhythm of those rambling out of dire straits, like the jobless man kicking a can down the road.

Walking affords one ample space to keep apace with the voices in one’s head, as Allen’s character in Central Park proves. That may explain why the deranged would rather loiter out of asylum walls.

Here in America, where hikers’ trails under the shadows of trees would soon be carpeted with leaves falling colorful in autumn, nothing’s stranger than stray thoughts gravitating towards home.
Where, last I looked at the news, there was nothing more relentless than rain. Where dead rivers often roar back in fury to sweep houses away, swamp the streets, and sometimes suck a toddler down a manhole. Which, by the way, ought to stay yawning wide if this were all it would take to swallow cell-phone snatchers off their tracks.

That’s when homesickness becomes a watered-down version of happiness.

That sounds off-kilter, off course, and utterly cloying like Charlie Chaplin, declaring, “I love walking in rain, because nobody can see me crying.”

Last I heard, the Cebu City Council seemed like a bunch of rain-soaked chicks, squeaking while stumped about the city’s congested roads. Now here comes City Hall needing more money to construct mini-dikes in rivers often flaunting its habit of overflowing. Oh, as if their concerns are not up their necks, the City Council is also asking all barangay officials “to apprehend under-aged youth seen loitering in the streets beyond the 10 p.m. curfew to deter the prostitution of minors.”

That, of course, is no less ill-fated than our boys and girls falling in manholes or drowning in the flood.

Calamity funds are afoot, they promise. The city will stay above water, they say.

Wish they can walk their talk. (September 18, 2007)


In The Mood For Blood

SO it happened that criminals up for execution were privileged to have their fill of their request for a last meal. There’s even this joke about a death-row fellow who dreamed, before the executioner could say grace, of getting a big bowl of strawberries.

“Sorry, but strawberries are out of season,” the warden mumbled. “Ah, no problem,” the prisoner replied as if he got the luxury of time to relax until harvest. “I’ll wait.”

But gallows humor like that does hit home. Go ask those gnashing their teeth, grieving for the victims of “vigilante killings” in Cebu or thumbing down the daredevil stunts by serial murderers gung-ho against alleged criminals.

Confronted with such callous scorn of what he calls “the gift of life,” Cardinal Vidal reportedly muttered “with a laugh” regarding the recent slaying near the Archbishop’s Palace of an alleged robber who just got out on a bail: “It was very near my house pa naman. Is it coming my way?”

It would have been breezy for the bloodthirsty squad —believed to be responsible for summary executions in Cebu City that have claimed about 180 lives since December 2004 — to knock on the door of the good cardinal in case their knees would crumple down under the weight of a conscience. If that could happen, would the cardinal be sure they’re not kidding him?

Why can’t the police do anything about it, he whined in wonder. Now that’s enough to stir a stand-up comedian into rattling off a litany of rib-tickling reasons. Foremost of which, concur the cynics, could be that law enforcement has two faces enough for a clown’s masks handy for crying and chuckling his tonsils out at the same time.

Also funny how this cradle of Christianity, in a city where piety is often worn on its devotees’ foreheads, gangland gore loosens its hair down. All because the silence of public apathy resounds like a choric undertone of “amen” for the shadowy squad playing angels of an avenging god.

Most of the victims had been convicted or served time in jail, stressed the cardinal who believed they could have availed themselves of deliverance and the grace of second chance. Or, maybe the vigilantes are not vocal enough about humming along to the tune of “Let Me Try Again.”

Flaunting their sharp-shooting acumen, perhaps they’d be handy to win the war for American troops in Iraq. Or, considering their surgical precision at tracking down public enemies, why not push them to earn brownie points for Cebu by deploying them abroad and tracing the remnants of 9/11 terrorists or Osama Bin Laden?

A good career move, God knows, is long overdue for publicity-prone executioners who might be itching behind their bonnets for the chance to show their faces. (September 11, 2009)

PROGRESS DOESN'T ALWAYS pave the way for a smooth-sailing life. Road congestion continues to be the bane fo urban living.


Regarding this problem, here's a reprint of my opinion column in the op-ed page of Sun.Star Cebu (4th of September, 2007):








All the way


TOUGH luck, but it’s not totally berserk to bring the “tartanilla” back.

For many motorists in Metro Cebu, getting kicked by a horse might be no more tragic than being trapped in the midst of traffic. With the former, at least, one would hurtle away from one spot to another really quick. Broken bones, too, couldn’t be more dismal than the headache and heartburn triggered by mayhem on the road.

As it is, finding a way out of the woeful state of our major streets soon looks as farfetched as discovering a unicorn.

Putting the cart before the steed, it seems, has long been the way of Cebu’s movers and shakers gone helter-skelter in pursuit of progress. No wonder Paul Villarete, the Cebu City planning and development officer, must have felt like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse were just a snort away.

“Almost as many cars run in Metro Cebu as in Manila, but Cebuano authorities are not improving the major roads,” Villarete rued in a recent forum on Environmentally Sustainable Transport (EST). Only an escape artist like Houdini could have wiggled free from the cramped streets in Cebu City against these odds: at least 8,329 units of public utility jeepneys (PUJs); 5,788 units of taxis, and 952 units of buses and mini-buses.

Through all this, of course, the air doesn’t go straight to anybody’s lungs like mountain mist and ocean breeze.

Thumb your nose down, too, at Desiderata; there’s just no way you can go placidly amid uncollected garbage, flash floods during rain, the procession during fiesta, and the stream of mourners on the heels of a hearse. (Was the death due perhaps to road rage, cancer by recurrent inhalation of traffic fumes, or the burst of a blood vessel arising from existential anxieties only a traffic jam can cause?)

As if it’s not enough that there’s a shortage of new infrastructure improvements in the city in the face of its burgeoning motorists, making matters worse is the dearth of discipline: the uncurbed issuance of franchise for public utility vehicles, the surplus of motorcycles as public transport, as well as drivers and pedestrians who are up and about like they got nine lives.

Horse sense and time are of the essence, true. And while Villarete’s proposal for a “a high-occupancy bus” or mass transport system is long overdue, better count on the bureaucracy to get going in the back of the snail and the turtle.

And because such a proposal can be green-lighted only with the prerequisite of political will, could the vote-fueled leadership steel its stomach to buck the backlash from displaced PUJ drivers come election time?

Elsewhere in the world—particularly in Stockholm, London, and Singapore — the race is on to steer clear from clogged thoroughfares with eco-friendly innovations. By tapping the resources of corporations like International

Business Machines (IBM), these megacities have come up with the “biggest green initiative coming down the road these days,” according to New York Times columnist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Tomas Friedman.

“Congestion pricing—charging people for the right to drive into a downtown area—is already proving to be the most effective short-term way to clean up polluted city air, promote energy efficiency and create more livable urban centers, while also providing mayors with unexpected new revenue,” writes Friedman.

Progress, in the long run, is about giving the will and imagination a full rein. So as not to be left behind, it’s up for Metro Cebu’s leaders to hold no horses with an open mind.

The National Telecommunications had imposed a law about penalizing giant cellphone companies for sending unsolicited text messages composed mainly of advertisements and promotions. Smart Telecom was penalized a total of P20,800 and Globe of P12,200 for unwanted messages.

But the penalty imposed has not prevented these companies from sending spam text messages. I am a SMART subscriber and spam messages about the company’s latest promotions and offers, especially right after I reload my account, have been regular annoyance at my inbox, some of which, I admit, are tempting. Since these are spam, which rhymes with scam by the way, I do not easily succumb to them.

Why was this measure not effective? These maybe are few of the reasons:
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It seems that the health care crisis continues to be a problem in the Philippines. We have been running out of health manpower as nurses, midwives and doctors go abroad. It seems that we have another thing to be afraid of - the Philippines is also running out of hospitals!.

The Philippine Medical Association (PMA), based on a survey, reported that the number of hospitals, both private and public, in the country has dropped by 55 percent in the last 20 years - from a total of 2,000 in 1987 to only 890 at present.

Further, the new government policy that prevents private hospitals from “detaining” patients until they settle their hospitalization bills will worsen the situation. It may lead to bankruptcy of more hospitals which may lead to a more deteriorating health care system.

To probably mask this worsening situation, the Department of Health denies the claim that this problem exist.

What do we really need to solve the health care problem? Simple, we need a sustainable solution. As I have observed, the government is always acting on impulse. The worsening education status of the Filipinos, for example, was thought can be solved by offering student loans. Although, this seems a promising solution, it will not really address the root of the problem - which is poverty. I think it will work, but only as supplementary aid for the purpose of defeating lack of education.
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Ten years ago, on 21 July 1997, the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) signed an Agreement for General Cessation of Hostilities in Cagayan de Oro City. We welcome such moved with great enthusiasm, optimism and hope that finally the young republic of the Philippines and the Bangsamoro people will have [...]

The COMELEC will proclaim 10 senatorial bets on Wednesday. I am glad that whom I voted for were also the choice of the majority.

My senatorial bets were:
1.Panfilo Lacson was first on my list because of health was included in his agenda.
2. Francis Joseph Escudero
3. Ninoy Aquino Jr.
4. Edgardo J. Angara
5. Joker P. Arroyo
6. Gregorio B. Honasan
7. Antonio F. Trillanes IV
8. Aquilino L. Pimentel III
9. Juan Miguel F. Zubiri
10. Sonia M. Roco
11. Nikki Coseteng
12. Loren Legarda
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Pretty soon the Comelec will be announcing the victors of the last Philippine elections. Namfrel Davao wrapped up its operations last Saturday, having canvassed almost 90% of the city’s 3,600+ poll precincts. It was a very successful effort, considering that we had only 5 days of lead time to organize the citizens’ quick count.

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