the never-ending intelligence(?) report
i was having my usual overnyts when one of my close friends send me a txt message, asking me to be with her ryt away. i was shocked to see her in panic. kulang na lang musolod sa ilalom sa katre. y? a txt message had been circulated about the MILF attacking the city at 2 am. with all the assuring words and the eyebags, the MIs remain as ghosts until now. nagwoder lang ko, with all the eyebags, how much work had been sucrificed the next day... ( pastilan, samot kalate ako assignments. :) ).
sosyal na pobre?
at gaisano iligan, two students (obviously, IITians) were standing infront of the mineral water section. they wre fighting over whether to buy a mineral water and just skip a meal, or not.
"Unsaon man daw nimu pagkaon beh kung wala kay mineral water? tangent!", said one student. its the budget.
Ows? sosyal na d i ang mga studyante karon? mineral ha. then my cel rang. msg? "maris pls dont drink tap water. rumor is the MIs are going to poison the whole city thru it. pls pas to the people u care." with matching tawag p para maaware daun daw ko. IC.
Ikaw? kaya nimung magtubig na lang bisag gutom na?
Buti na lang di na ako pobreng estudyante ng IIT. :)
the kandila issue
sumo! nakakita na ba ka ug pinkagagmayng kandila na ang price kay P5.00? ( = 1 serving rice) kesyo magbrown out daw kay bombahan sa mga MIs ang NPC. panic daun. pasakay daun ang mga tindahan. tsk tsk tsk...
god bless us... spare the innocents!
i was havng my last-minute internet tutorial with a friend. as i was about to leave, my friend asked me with all the innocence, "Te, kabalo ka sa email ad ni pres. bush?". curious. anyway i said, "its time to use the 'power' of the internet.". we were barely 3 minutes bfore her history class. "kadyot lang 'te ha." she looks really so innocent for me.
i was touched. i never intended to sneak-up but i couldnt hold back when i accidentally saw she really addressed it to the president. it goes..
dear mr president,
"what have you done to your people? you are selfish. just be sure that what you have been doing is for the common good of all of us people and not for yourself alone.
that's all. "
and yet, shes only a first year college student.
Sunday, May 26, 2002
Saturday, September 01, 2001
Urban blight
Hindi ako ang nagsulat sa article na ito.
Inundated streets with children frolicking about disease-laden flood waters. Traffic going to a snarl amidst noxious pollution assailing the nostrils from industrial and automotive fumes as well as from stinking uncollected garbage.
A group of teenagers enjoys a game of basketball in a depressed suburb oblivious to a cemented tank beneath the basketall court containing toxic waste irresponsibly dumped by the gian power firm, Meralco.
Meanwhile, "clean and green" has also become a byword for a pseudoenvironment-friendly city autocrat whose environmental initiatives has become a mask for anti-people programs and policies.
That, though in a limited sense, reflects the current environment of Metro Manila.
But in more comprehensively looking terms, Metro Manila is the picture of urban blight--a metropolis waiting for the next (and probably worse) ecological disaster after a stream of environmental nightmares brought about by socio-ecological conflicts of a grander scale. Almost all of major river systems in Metro Manila has already been declared biologically dead. This despite never-ending efforts to dredge and revive these rivers, foremost is the Pasig river.
And even as the government continues to spend millions in "dengue" warnings, flooding in the metropolis has become a perennial, spawning not only malaria, cholera, diarrhea and skin diseases, but also the lately discovered fatal Leptospirosis coming from rat-infested esteros and creeks.
Environmentalist cannot help but pin the sorry state of the environment to an uneven development path taken by government planners and policy makers.
From time immemorial, a centralist attitude has pervaded all government decisions prioritizing Metro Manila as the hub of economic development and urbanization.
As a result, environmental crises piled up one on top of another as government and reformist non-government organizations turned their attention to remedial and mitigating measures forgetting that in the first place environmental problems cropped up because of poorly planned and lopsided policies on national and ecological development.
Flooding, the direct result of a depleted forest cover, is bound to get more catastrophic as global warming, because of unmitigated pollution, intensifies. The tropical cyclones that increasingly and more intermittently pour into the city and the rest of the country cannot but be attributable to the wanton neglect of the environment. Neglect that for the most part happens because of an overly congested urban area where people from the provinces troop for lack of economic opportunities and means of development in the countryside.
Worse, globalization is exacerbating this situation.
With more and more of the country's rich natural and human resources coming under the control of transnational corporations, the despoliation and destruction of the environment becomes a matter of course.
As millions more Filipinos leave the countryside because virtually every corner of the earth in the provinces has become the domain of big foreign mining companies, the urban blight is bound to get more seamier.
No amount of technology, clean and green efforts, or cosmetic solutions could solve the urban ecological conflicts that are deeply rooted in a problematic social set up.
- from Feedback, September 2001
Inundated streets with children frolicking about disease-laden flood waters. Traffic going to a snarl amidst noxious pollution assailing the nostrils from industrial and automotive fumes as well as from stinking uncollected garbage.A group of teenagers enjoys a game of basketball in a depressed suburb oblivious to a cemented tank beneath the basketall court containing toxic waste irresponsibly dumped by the gian power firm, Meralco.
Meanwhile, "clean and green" has also become a byword for a pseudoenvironment-friendly city autocrat whose environmental initiatives has become a mask for anti-people programs and policies.
That, though in a limited sense, reflects the current environment of Metro Manila.
But in more comprehensively looking terms, Metro Manila is the picture of urban blight--a metropolis waiting for the next (and probably worse) ecological disaster after a stream of environmental nightmares brought about by socio-ecological conflicts of a grander scale. Almost all of major river systems in Metro Manila has already been declared biologically dead. This despite never-ending efforts to dredge and revive these rivers, foremost is the Pasig river.
And even as the government continues to spend millions in "dengue" warnings, flooding in the metropolis has become a perennial, spawning not only malaria, cholera, diarrhea and skin diseases, but also the lately discovered fatal Leptospirosis coming from rat-infested esteros and creeks.
Environmentalist cannot help but pin the sorry state of the environment to an uneven development path taken by government planners and policy makers.
From time immemorial, a centralist attitude has pervaded all government decisions prioritizing Metro Manila as the hub of economic development and urbanization.
As a result, environmental crises piled up one on top of another as government and reformist non-government organizations turned their attention to remedial and mitigating measures forgetting that in the first place environmental problems cropped up because of poorly planned and lopsided policies on national and ecological development.
Flooding, the direct result of a depleted forest cover, is bound to get more catastrophic as global warming, because of unmitigated pollution, intensifies. The tropical cyclones that increasingly and more intermittently pour into the city and the rest of the country cannot but be attributable to the wanton neglect of the environment. Neglect that for the most part happens because of an overly congested urban area where people from the provinces troop for lack of economic opportunities and means of development in the countryside.
Worse, globalization is exacerbating this situation.
With more and more of the country's rich natural and human resources coming under the control of transnational corporations, the despoliation and destruction of the environment becomes a matter of course.
As millions more Filipinos leave the countryside because virtually every corner of the earth in the provinces has become the domain of big foreign mining companies, the urban blight is bound to get more seamier.
No amount of technology, clean and green efforts, or cosmetic solutions could solve the urban ecological conflicts that are deeply rooted in a problematic social set up.
- from Feedback, September 2001
Link
Thursday, March 01, 2001
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