Women on Top
These are the 100 most powerful women in the world, according to Forbes.
Among them, the US Secretary of State, the Prime Minister of the Ukraine, the French Minister of Defense, the CEOs of eBay, Xerox and Lucent Technologies. And one of my biggest idols, Oprah Winfrey.
It was Sam who pointed out the list to me, in all bewilderment he said, “Where are all the men? Where is the ‘old boys club’? Did they just decide it was time to quit and leave the running of the world to the women?”
Well, I said, back in the days when men were in charge they left all the dirty work to the women — their wives, their personal assistants, their secretaries. The women learned to do everything from making coffee, taking dictation, sending faxes. They were entrusted with company secrets, they saw first hand (as they stood behind their bosses) how the companies were run, they learned the dynamics of politicking in business. In the days when women were relegated to being staff, they quietly studied everything they could, on the job and in school (juggling wifehood, motherhood and everything else).
And then it came to pass that these women, most of whom who had studied, crawled, fought for what they know, made their way to the top.
The thing is, a lot of men don’t know that women had been running the world for quite some time now. Our great great grandmothers just didn’t have Forbes back then to let the world know the real score.
Haberday!
Turning 42 wasn’t so bad, as a matter of fact it was quite enjoyable!
The entire household hied off to Dampa for a hearty seafood lunch.
While the girls and the kids settled themselves inside Trinity Restaurant, Sam and I went into the seafood palengke for the goodies.
My eldest son Athelstan came to Manila and stayed over for a week, that was real nice too.
And Maia wanted to eat everything in sight, including all the ice in the ice bucket.
Sam, our gracious host, who patiently picked crab and shrimp meat for me dahil ang kulit ng anak nya, ayaw magpababa.
And two of the cutest kids on earth, Kuya Maui and Little Maia.
After lunch we went to SM Sucat to get my birthday present, a Sony Ericsson T630 that I’ve had my eye on for about a month now.
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It takes pretty good pics for a celphone cam.
It was, all in all, a pretty good day 
Almost … but not quite
The Pinoy counterpart to the Make Poverty History “Click” video is now on the sidebar at bisdak bloggers. Saw it for the first time last night, had to pause the last frame just so I could read the URL—it’s a long URL and it went by much too fast. The actual link to the 57-second video is http://now.abs-cbn.com/ondemand/specials/20050706-poverty.asx
Bodjie Pascua (Kuya Bodjie of Batibot fame) solemnly narrates (each * represents a click):
* * * *
Sa buong mundo *
may batang namamamatay kada tatlong segundo * * *
Dito sa Pilipinas *
ang bilang ng mga kababayan nating nagugutom
ay patuloy na dumarami.
Lahat ng ito ay maaaring iwasan.
Kahirapan … wakasan.
The URL it asks us to go to is Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP), which is a coalition of 13 Filipino organizations with same goal as Live8, “to take action across the world in order to force world leaders to tackle the causes of poverty, and meet even exceed their respective promises on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It also focuses on the underlying factors that create and reinforce poverty, such as unfair trade, a huge debt burden and lack of quality aid.”
While the goals of GCAP are timely, there is something about the ABS-CBN produced video that bothers me. While it is an obvious unabashed rip-off of the “Click” Video, it falls flat in my senses because of two things:
- (1) The “click” loses its impact and actually disappears mid-way through the video.
- (2) As usual, abs-cbn focuses on the personalities rather than the issue.
Let’s review Liam Neeson’s narration, this time with the appropriate clicks (*) inserted:
* * * * * A child dies completely unnecessarily * as a result of extreme proverty * every 3 seconds * * * *
There we go *
Thats another one *
Somebody’s daughter *
Somebody’s son *
The thing is * all these deaths are avoidable * * * * * * * * * *
I came away from watching that video with the acute awareness that a child’s life is snuffed out with every step I take as I walk to work, around the house, even as I dance my little girl to sleep. The effect of the “Click” video is so dramatic, to say the least, that after watching it, that click is etched in your mind forever.
Not so the ABS-CBN video. The clicks stop after the third line, when Bodjie calls attention to poverty in the Philippines in particular. At this point this is no longer a “Click” video. It finally admits to being what it really is, which is a showcase of personalities. Why else would it need to have the participants’ names along with the faces? The actors and performers are, to the average tv-viewing Pinoy, well-known faces, and if one watched the news often enough they would recognize the faces of Penny Disimban, Dodong and Princess Nemenzo, Bobby Tañada, Boy Morales. Difficult to identify perhaps would be Edwin Nakpil of Kasama-Pilipinas, but if one were an NGO worker or a dyed-in-the-wool activist, one would, as he would know Liling Briones, Teresita Ang See and Isagani Serrano.
Were the people’s names as subtitles put there as a visual aid for the current events-challenged viewer? Or is it roll-call of socio-economically concerned ABS-CBN contract artists who have bonded with the leader-members of GCAP?
The title of the video itself is what raises my hackles: ABS-CBN vs Poverty. In Cebuano this is what we call “iya-iya, amo-amo” (or as Bol-anons would say “ija-ija, aho aho”). This mentality has always meant a particular “we” rather than the general, all-encompassing “we”.
Show me a video that includes artists from various TV stations and leaders from different political affiliations gather in one spot united towards one common goal and more people might take note. Maybe even myself.
On the road
My favorite seat on a passenger bus is the door side where it seats just two abreast, the area over the right front tire. This is because I have short legs, and most of the buses that ply EDSA seem to have been built for basketball players who’ve had their steroid shots. Sitting over the tire bump allows me a usable lap on which I can place my heavy Targus knapsack.
Sitting on this spot on the way to work is almost a sure thing each day, as my stop is at the “butas”, or the literal hole in the wall that Baltao Subdivision has provided for the convenience of the airport workers who are residents here. When the buses pass by here they are almost empty, and what few passengers left in it usually go down at the NAIA. When the bus takes the right turn into Aquino Avenue (formerly known as Imelda Avenue) that’s where it starts to fill up, and sometimes it becomes SRO even before the left turn into MIA Avenue towards Dewey Boulevard, which of course is now known as Roxas Boulevard. It’s always been Dewey Boulevard in my head and in my heart. Especially that part that is now the frontage of Uniwide Coastal Mall (Coastal, yes, that’s another name they call that stretch of Dewey), where my siblings and I used to take a dip in Manila Bay with our yayas on a Saturday morning.
Sitting on this side of the bus affords me a view of the other not-so-lucky would-be passengers waiting by the stops along Dewey, especially at the mouth of Domestic Road and Baclaran. Sitting here I am almost obvlivious of the steady comings and goings on the aisle at Heritage, MRT Taft, Malibay, Evangelista, Magallanes. It gets calmer after Pasay Road and Ayala, and almost quiet by the time we get to Buendia. There’s two stops at Estrella, the main one on Harvard Street that connects to Kalayaan, and the one I get off at—the pedestrian overpass.
This ride to work takes anywhere between 40 minutes to an hour and a half, depending on what day it is. On the worst Wednesday morning it took me more than 90 minutes to get to work, 60 of which were spent crawling like a slug through the traffic of Baclaran.
Most of the buses have curtains, which are most of the time still tied into a knot. I usually leave mine as is, because I like watching the street and reading signs. I didn’t realize until this morning that leaving the curtain up may be dangerous to my health, or at least my seatmate’s.
While most of the time I was oblivious even of my seatmate, this morning I couldn’t help being jolted awake. There I was sitting as usual with my head partially resting on the glass window when my seatmate suddenly pulled the curtain on my window closed. It was quick and sudden, the way she did it hinted that she was quite adept at yanking at stuff. I couldn’t help myself not to look at her after a while. She was very light-skinned, faux blonde, hepatitis written all over her.
Hepatitis is what we call people who have an unusual amount of gold jewelry on their person. This one had the works. Rings, bracelets, necklace, earrings, you name it. But I guess it wasn’t her jewelry she was trying to protect, it was her papain-treated skin. This morning she had the misfortune to sit beside someone who happens to like having the sun on her face. She did something about it tout suite, of course. And although I was tempted to yank the curtain open again, I decided against it. Let her have her sunscreen.
When I got off at my stop she was still there, headed for Ortigas maybe, or Cubao where entrepreneurs hawk gold and silver on the sidewalk. Maybe she was on her way to the EDSA Shrine to join the mounting number of rallyists shouting “GMA Resign.”
Anything is possible.
About Me
