Waiting for the sun to come out
Waiting for the sun to come out these days is like waiting for Vicky Belo to sell truck accessories. You think it will never happen. I can’t remember the last time the sun was out from morning till sunset. It’s always a little hope of sun in the morning and then next thing you know you have thunder and lightning and rain. It’s especially annoying on working days, because if you leave the house with the sun shining you don’t think of bringing an umbrella or rain gear. Thirty minutes into your trip it starts to rain. Conversely if you don’t bring any rain gear there’s a 99.9% chance that it will rain when you are a hundred meters away from your office building.
Why won’t kids do as they’re told?
… and the answer to that is “I don’t effing well know.”
This is, for all intents and purposes, a rant.
I have a homesick, weathersick boy studying up in Baguio who wants to come home every weekend. Which is of course out of the question since a round trip to Baguio costs a few pesos shy of P1000. Going home every weekend would mean an additional load of at least four thousand pesos, not counting the extra money spent here and there because he is here and there.
I have told him several times to stay put. He has so many reasons why he doesn’t want to. Every now and then imaginary alarms go off in my head. Will he last the year? He can’t apply for transfer to Diliman after one semester, he has to finish the effing year.
Now that it’s almost Christmas, etc.
Now that it’s almost Christmas we office grunts are impatiently awaiting the 13th month pay the company so conveniently schedules to give in December so we can pretend it’s Christmas Bonus just like everyone else. We await the time when our FD deigns to assay his John Hancock on the cheque which our man of all seasons Roks will take to the bank and, after some light banter with his favorite cashier, will break the news to the rest of us that yes, we now have enough funds with which to buy our Xchange gifts.
Now that it’s almost Christmas the racketeers are out on the streets in force, employing every imaginable way that one can swindle the next guy out of his hard-earned (sometimes not necessarily though) cash.
Now that it’s almost Christmas I have to allow funds for fixing the house, sending Ate Beng home for the holidays and bringing her back, gifts for each member of the family, holiday goodies for our Noche Buena table from The Works (Hi Sheila!), and something for me (why am I always last on the list?).
Now that it’s almost Christmas I have holiday ditties pounding on my ears relentlessly, as if I could forget that it is that season when the milk and honey of remittances from OFW’s pour in from lands far away, pumping the peso up, bringing the dollar down (but do we really feel it when a 250gm piece of ampalaya costs PHP 40 at the talipapa and everything else is on the rise as well, gasoline, lpg, commodities, not to mention my eyebrows).
Now that it’s almost Christmas I have managed, late last week, to acquire that prized possession that in December causes hundreds of coffee drinkers to imbibe more than the usual cup or five a day—the Starbucks Planner.
Happy holidays, everyone!
The Inevitable
One of the things that Sam brought home recently is a copy of a slideshow presentation created in the year 2002. Made by the Philippine Center for Photojournalism under the direction of Alex Baluyut and titled “Tan-aw Mindanaw: Journey Across Time”, it contains photographs from as far back as pre-war days, and features commentary by Carolyn Arguillas.
One of the most noticeable points in the photographs is the over-abundance of trees in Mindanao in the olden days. Of course now those trees are gone, the way huge old trees fell by the sawmills that fed the paper mills.
And now that the trees are gone, the land is also being taken away—literally taken away—at an alarming speed by the various mines that have popped up like mushrooms in the provinces of Mindanao as well as other parts of the Philippines.
In a matter of years, our mountains will have become holes left behind by those who have hauled away all the gold and metals and minerals. These treasures, unlike trees, cannot be replaced, and do not regenerate after they have been dug up and taken away.
The mining companies say they provide jobs and foster commerce. And they do, for the time that they are operating. When they go away, as most people who have taken what they need and have no further use for the remains, what they leave behind will become a ghost town.
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