PHILIPPINE UPDATES

PNoy's hundred honeymoon days is over. It's time to get our microscopes and combs, to remove all the insects and lice that lie beneath the government veneer of invincibility.

Well, I would like to start with the commuter's plight.

1. Have you ever seen the sidewalk for students at Katipunan Avenue (the seat of exclusive schools for the children of the rich and famous -- Ateneo, Miriam, UP, among others)that is only 1 foot in width? That lies at the corner of Aurora Boulevard and Katipunan.

2. Then let's go underneath the bus stop at Ortigas-Edsa flyover. Once you get down, you will pass through a very narrow (as in 2 feet wide -- hey how wide is a Filipino individual, eh?) path with steel grills on your left and right, where you will have to climb the staircase to cross from the right side of EDSA over to Robinson's Galleria.

3. Meanwhile, at Philcoa, where the jeeps going to UP are, you will alight from your bus which comes from Quiapo, in front of the Jollibee and Goldilocks restaurants. There you will have to look right and look intently because sometimes a vehicle could be backing up which could run over your foot, as what happened to me last year. (The driver sent a bogus individual to stand in place of him, this Ronnie Aquino who hails from a posh subdivision at Commonwealth Avenue), who claimed that he ran over my foot, but then disappeared suddenly and did not attend the hearing anymore. I complained to the Judge of Branch __ at Quezon City, but nothing happened.)


4. At North Edsa where you find the Trinoma, and the SM North Edsa, I don't understand anymore the urban jungle that the MMDA created when it was still under B Fernando. The pedestrians getting off the jeep will have to pass through a very narrow path (about 1.5 feet wide), then climb the staircase and then go down again to get to the street nearby where they can get a ride going to UP, or to Project 6.

5. If you alight from the Metrorail Transit at the end of Baclaran, here you will see the masses of people, about ten in a row and ten columns long, passing through a staircase that will go through steel bridges.

If you want to talk of aesthetics, better postpone for ten moons in the next decades, Folks. There is no such thing here in MetroManila.

The skyway going to Southern Luzon is so low, that you cannot possibly enjoy driving nor riding a vehicle anymore. All you see are dark roads, and that piece of sky which used to be visible is no longer there.

Folks, what are we saying here? The most oppressed people in the cities are the pedestrians.

This is why I have always insisted that all government officials should use three days in a week to taste the lives of ordinary folks, instead of riding their sleek vehicles or the government vehicles which immunize them from the lugubrious experiences of the people.