I used to be a faggoat

‘You are an Aquarius,’ a childhood friend once proclaimed, and I was hooked. As a kid, I immediately subscribed to the idea that our lives are determined by the stars. An avid reader of printed news, I would take time reading through the daily horoscope, plotting my days according to the lay of the stars, seeing how the predictions fit into my daily life. I’d read the frontpage, the komiks, then the horoscope, and maybe the opinion page – the editors of PDI surely had wise words to share, but could they be wiser than the stars?

Everything crashed down when, years later, I made a discovery: I was a Capricorn. I never bothered to understand how the whole thing works,and relied on the assessment of my friend (I was doing his slum book then). Suddenly, all the incidents that only the stars could explain became arbitrary tragedies and random moments on joys. I still feel the urge to apologize to friends for committing an error in answering their slum books, although to put things in perspective the actual perjury is in the ‘your crush’ entry.

Mutiny or gluttony?

And so yesterday, after pigging out in Binondo and while we were walking to Cartimar, we discovered the Magdalo bar and restaurant (and carwash). Now that the political grapevine is again full of rumors of another coup attempt, I wonder if the Oakwood Mutiny and the Manila Peninsula Siege were nothing but an exercise of culinary espionage? After all, why launch coups d’etat in hotels? Rumor has it that one of the mutineers escaped through the kitchen – was he stealing a recipe, or doing a quick taste test?

McDonalds and Styrofoam

It’s time to come out. I am actually a closet environmentalist. I passionately follow issues around climate change and how consumerism and corporate greed accelerate what could be humanity’s own demise.

I am posting below a letter being circulated by Gary Granada and the Eco-Waste Coalition on McDonald’s refusal to reduce its use of styrofoam. (McDonald’s also refuses to divulge the nutritional content of its products, but that’s another story).

Why is styrofoam such a big issue? The Philippines produces 10 million tons of garbage every year. 5% of that is made up of styrofoam, while plastics in total (including styros) comprise of 76% of the total waste that we generate. Most of these wastes end up being burned or dumped in unhealthty dumpsites or in our seas.

We actually have a law on solid waste management that is not being implemented. The law advocates for recycling and supposedly regulates dumping of wastes. Under the law, open dumpsites (such as Payatas) should have been converted into controlled dumpsites in 2004, and dumpsites in general should be closed by this year. Unfortunately, local governments prefer burning wastes or dumping them somewhere, both of which have been found to be profitable. Just think of the contracts to buy or rent garbage trucks or to purchase incinerators (which are also illegal under the clean air act, but local governments have ways to go around this prohibition. the denr has actually been found to purchase waste burning machines that may be legal technically but still cause pollution).

One way to regulate the use of plastics is to urge companies, especially in the food industry, to use recycable or reusable materials instead. If McDonald’s takes corporate social responsibility serious, then it should strive to drastically reduce its use of plastics and styrofoam.

Gary Granada, whose love songs have the heaviness of light and the heart-rending sadness of clouds, is asking you to circulate his letter below.

My Personal Ordeal with the Arrogant Managers of McDonald’s

5 seconds

My name is Gary Granada, I am a KaalagaD volunteer, and I need 5 seconds of your time to help reduce the use of styrofoam in fast food chains.

Milenyo, Meralco and a ‘Second World’ country

Shortly after President GMA announced that the Philippines has already become a Second World country, “Milenyo” (international name: Xangsane) slapped her with a wet rebuke. “Milenyo” does not even qualify as one of the strongest typhoons to hit the country; its sustained speed of 130 kph is nothing compared to Loleng’s maximum winds of 290 kph in 1998. Yet power supply is down in most parts of Luzon and some areas remain waterless. Worse, 72 people were killed. Whoever told President GMA to proclaim our ascencion from a Third World to a “Second World” country should be made to travel the length of EDSA in the middle of a tropical typhoon.

(Incidentally, and a colleague was wise to point this out, “Second World” as a term collectively refers to the communist-socialist states that were within the sphere of influence of the Soviet Union.)

Anyway, power is still down in our village. I’ve been calling Meralco‘s 16211 24-hour customer service hotline since Thursday, and this morning, at 4 AM, I finally got through. I had to endure Meralco’s jingle (“Bagyo o bumaliktad man ang mundo, maasahan ninyo… Mas masaya, mas maganda ang may kuryente…“) for several minutes, and finally a voice – a male voice – answered on the other line. I asked him immediately when Meralco would be able to restore power in our area, and he said that they don’t have an estimate yet but – and here he was suddenly upbeat – i should be happy to note that 60% of Luzon has electricity already.

I would have asked him to give me a list of places with power supply – anywhere in Luzon – so that I could immediately pack up and move out, but that would have been too calloused on my part.

57

Got this from Libay.

Our only hope: the ‘ber’ months are here

Three months have passed since I last updated this blog. This is a bad blogging habit that I wish to break, but since time is always a problem. The point is, I have to find time for things I promised myself I should do in a more regular basis. Well, Time is a wicked commodity. One always believes that one has enough, yet, like grains of sand in one’s hand, the more you control it, the less you have.

In a span of three months, several incidents took place that changed me. some lessons:

1. Most planes do leave on time and on the day stated in your ticket. Proof: me and four other Filipinos were left behind by our Vietnam Air flight in Phnom Penh. Had it been our – or my – first time to fly, it would have been understandable. Nobody checked our flight details, and on the day we were supposed to leave, we jumped off our beds to go to the Russian Market, confident that we got our departure time right. I don’t trivialize breaking up, but the moment we discovered that our flight already left hours ago was actually akin to losing your lover. I still haven’t gotten over that moment.

2. If this country is really run the way Philippine Airlines is running its business, then we might as well migrate because this country is about to crash. Granted that it was an error on our part that we missed our flight, the normal procedure is you try to catch the next flight and pay some fees. But that’s not the case with PAL. After discovering that we missed our flight, we immediately called PAL Manila and asked if we can be re-booked for the next Phnom Pehn-Saigon-Manila flight. They told us yes, so we looked for a cheap lodging and spent the night wallowing. The morning after, we went first to a PAL-accredited travel agency to pay for the $25 non-appearance fee, and we were told that we have to pay for it at the airport. At the airport, the ground crew of Vietnam Air (the connecting flight) told us that there is no way we could pay for the fee in Phnom Penh and that our ticket has not yet been confirmed by PAL. We called PAL Manila again, and the operator, who at that moment sounded like a Congressman demanding for his pork barrel, informed us that we only have two options – send our tickets to Manila via courier OR buy new tickets. Of course he shared this nice information a few hours before the flight. Some of us cried, raised our voice, and argued with the operator from PAL Manila to no avail. Finally, sensing our desperation, the ground crew of Vietnam Air suggested that we call PAL’s office in Saigon instead, which we immediately did. The sweet girl from PAL Saigon told us she only has to send a fax to Vietnam Air in Phnom Penh to confirm our tickets, something that PAL Manila could have easily done. We promptly got our ticket, thanks to PAL Saigon. The lesson: if you’re in deep sh*t, don’t expect help from PAL or from this government.

3. Love has an end; even those that had already ended continue to end. But when it does, there’s always Rumi. If it doesn’t work, then i badly need to get a new bed.

4. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is a cockroach. Seriously. She survived two impeachment attempts, several resignation calls, and a foiled coup plot, and I firmly believe that, unless I am proven wrong, she would be the only one to rise from the rubble that used to be Malacanang before the nuclear bombing.

5. Letters work. I just hope that we don’t have to do this again next term.

So what will happen from now until the end of the year? I wish I know.

Formula for rainbows

With enough bouyancy and speed, the harshest of sunlight, and generous ladles of sea-foams frothing in the outriggers of the boat, one can get a glimpse of the madness of rainbows in the middle of the ocean. I have seen several: one really has to be vigilant – wait for the ocean to slam its weight into the speeding boat, and as the spray leaps into the air, crisp and bleached from too much sun, there impaled on the darkness of the ocean several streaks of misplaced rainbows, like a mermaid’s trick on the eye.