OUT OF THE BOX

The Americas belong to the Indians who were displaced by the colonizers in the 1600's. They belong historically to them and so their ancestral ownership must be respected.

The question of space to be occupied by indigenous groups in this world is being questioned by the entry of young children into the United States. We always say that the world is for everyone regardless of race, sex, age, class and ethnicity, that this is a democratic world despite the presence of rightists.

Yet, upon the entry of young children in the borders of the United States, I felt there was something awry in the way boundaries have been set up all over the world. These children from Latin America, who are running for their lives, endangered by the presence of drug-related violence, are seeking shelter on their own (or probably with the help of some adults) for the first time.

I felt very sad knowing how they could stand being separated from their first families at such a very young age. They should be enjoying their childhood, going to school, learning new ideas and thoughts that could help them navigate all kinds of problems and evil in this world. But there they are, thinking of their body and soul, where they could sleep peacefully.

I was painfully struck by the images of young boys, lying on cemented floors and their shoes, rubber shoes that could have been made by subcontract with multinational companies in their countries. It's the same in the Philippines, we have seen those shoes, some of them pirated and sold here. Actually, those boys could have been our own youth here.

I think repatriating them to their countries could be rethought as an option on dealing with them. In my years of volunteer work in Tondo, the biggest slum in Asia way back in the 60's and perhaps second now to Payatas, I know that the youth from those areas could fall into the hands of gangsters and corrupt officials who would exploit their background.

So what I would suggest is that a home be created wherein they would all be housed, given a chance to have a life, peaceful and not lacking in food. The UNICEF must be tapped to lead the agency that will provide them this haven, and insure that they get to be enrolled in schools.

What are a few concessions to these children now who could be future leaders of the world, given the world-class education in the United States? It's time for us to think out of the box.

 

WHY NETWORKING WORKS

Where do people get their statistics on poverty? The poor people I see are the vagrants in Manila who choose to smell the soot from pollutants like diesel-fed jeepneys and inhale the cigarette smoke by inveterate smokers. Also the child beggars who climb jeepneys and distribute white envelopes for "maawa pa-epek" but you can see very well that they are a very systematic lot with the way they look at you and beg you for help.

Outside of these people, I don't see poverty at all especially when you visit Ortigas where there are heavy lines of networking groups. And if you will examine the profits of the people in this field, your eyes would really go very, very wide: one has bought a Ferrari, another sports several vehicles, still another boasts of having made P200 million pesos selling products in 15 years, and that is more than P1M a year, Folks.

Meaning to say, Folks, networking is the path to go to, when we speak of solving poverty. The traditional business where one man or a corporate group owns the business, controls the company is slowly being taken over by the networking biz.

What can networking teach our people? It teaches us to think independently, to work as a team with others, to know how to expand one's reach, beyond the family and clan network, as well as how to compute one's earnings from products sold.

It's really a very lucrative business, Folks and you have better latch on soon enough when a new product comes into the market. To be up there in the pyramid or hierarchy of the business is to enjoy the perks early enough and to gain benefits that the networking business would offer the members.

For example, Chews, a tablet product which is a superfood, is currently being sold nationwide in the Philippines. Superfood means it contains plenty of minerals and vitamins, enough for what an individual needs for a day. It is sold through networking means and plenty of people already swear that it gives a great boost to one's energy, daily power needs for facing mental and physical tasks, and as it can rejuvenate cells, you can be sure that it arrests aging, and most probably could make you look younger which is the aim of so many of us.

Now Chews is being sold as a networking business, but, and this is the great but -- once you sign up, you then become eligible to earn P10,000, then P70,000 and so forth and so on. To get a better idea, just surf this blog: chews4health.blogspot.com.

It will give you a very good idea how chews is a good health tool -- as it provides you all the nutrients you need for the day. In fact, when I take it, I don't feel hunger pangs at all. But because it is candy, then you look for something to chew when you could be filled up by it already.

So happy reading the blog, Folks. and should you want to buy a banig, or to join the paluwagan or both, just email me at miravera2010@gmail.com. I could write you my celfone and local numbers personally.

CABLE WIRES FOR SALE, ANYONE?

	6:13 PM (35 minutes ago)

 

It is already the 2nd millennium but our communication lines are terrible. Glenda passed and many could not be contacted anymore. Maybe there is something terribly wrong the way the cables as connected. Is there any engineer with bright ideas on how they could be less prone to destruction when typhoons and other disasters come?

 

Look at the telephone and electricity lines. They look like long hair that has not been combed for centuries. They wave from one post to another. Some even have cut lines due to some "enterprising" fellows who think that the copper wires are theirs and that they should be a source of personal funds for themselves.

 

At a series of condo home blocks along Bayani Street, lines from several companies run from building to building, and they make the passageways UGH UGLY. Really UGLY Folks. If you are a filmmaker, you would not even look at them anymore for one second.

 

Along Kamuning, you will find the same views, actually all over MetroManila.  This is why I was trembling listening to the radio  and hearing the voice of the electric official who seemed very smug narrating how 150 cables of theirs were downed by Glenda, as if it was not their fault that they did not design the cables to be embedded underneath the earth.

 

And so how many more times are we going to be victims of these occurrences, of brown and black outs, of dead phones if the DOTC does not put its foot down and require everyone to remove all the posts and let the wires move down below the ground.

 

That is the only way that the cables shall be free from the destruction of the typhoons and all kinds of storms. Why, even if they get cut down there, it would be so easy to re-connect them and less expensive at that, unlike if they were over ground. With the latter, the cables are always ready for hacking, for cutting up, and stealing.

 

I think we should be practical already. The many profits lost through destroyed cables could run into millions, when electricity is cut off. Right now, I have just experienced radio stations which suddenly conk out and then resume after a few minutes. That really gets to be very jarring.

To think, I am in Quezon City, the capital city of the country.

 

If one would say, it is a national disaster and that no one could be blamed for it. No, we cannot use that argument. In fact, the companies are raking so much money and I am wondering if they are putting up anything for improving the design of their cables and making them destruction-proof.

 

Besides, lives are endangered when those electric posts are up. In that Bayani street condo blocks, the electric post had a boiler up there on one post, and suddenly, hot liquid overflowed.

 

I just learned that it did overflow but nobody told me if somebody was injured. But listening to radio news, I heard a man was killed when an electric post hit him.

 

Maybe it is time that we produce a standard for assessing public works -- which is more important, infra or human lives?

 

Perhaps also we should look at how first world countries have designed their megacities. Why they are really cable-free. That is also why they are always filmed. It is so nice to look at their cities without those spaghettis swaying with the wind or swinging here and there. Filmmakers have a heyday filming at those cities.  

 

Then the film becomes expensive to purchase. Hah. And that is also why our films remain in the doldrums. They do not contain the local color at all. Nothing to be proud of, scenic-wise unless we go to the provinces.

 

Cable wires for sale? Not a very bad idea but ridiculously low act.

HOW TO MAKE EDUCATION AFFORDABLE TO ALL:

HOW TO MAKE EDUCATION AFFORDABLE TO ALL:

by Wilhelmina S. Orozco

Every enrollment time, parents are agog where to get the next tuition fees to be paid to schools. Always the problem persists, money for tuition, for books, for uniform if there need be one, and for allowance on a schoolday to school day basis. Aside from that they have to worry about some schools charging for projects to be done by students who if they cannot cough up the fees, then they will not earn credit, will not be eligible for honors, and worse, could be asked to repeat the course.

Our education is truly oppressive. If I were to study to day, I don't think I would be able to study at all. In fact, I nearly was not able to finish my MA if Ateneo had not allowed discounts in my tuition. Then when I reached the doctoral level, if I did not get that UP presidential scholarship, which required a very high standard for qualification, I would not have been able to finish my doctorate in Education at all. It was an auspicious time because I also lived in my mother's place so that I didn't have to worry about shelter and food as her household provided that.

I don't want our youth to suffer what I had gone through. I would like education to be a breeze. Those students who latch on to the false camaraderie offered by frats and other sororities are just simply desperate for recognition, for guarantees that once they graduate a group would insure that they would have a job, gain acceptance in society and most of all probably achieve high profile in their chosen fields.

Hence to these neophytes, education is not a breeze at all but a big burden and the temptations and fears are there to allow oneself to be beaten black and blue just to satisfy that predatory and blood-lusting urges of their masters, then hopefully to be accepted as member and “insure” whatever they want to be insured.

Alas and alack, they are false promises. Before they could realize their dreams, some students die in the initiation rites, breaking the hearts of their parents. Hence, our educational institutions are now searching for the best way to curb the malpractices of fraternities and sororities too, if not totally obliterate them from school promises. 

Moral strength

Actually, the solutions can be found in the schools themselves. The students subjected to such taunts should be strengthened morally, their self-esteem boosted by the school environment. And which section should be doing that? The guidance counselling section. That should be strengthened and counsellors should be sensitive to the plight of every, every, every student, and not consider them as numbers to be attended to.

I used to teach in this college where a frat student died. Every morning there were four or five students who committed infractions in our classroom. Due to their untenable acts, I had had to send them to the counselling office. What happened, did they change at all? No. They did not because they were the same people whom I had to send over and over again to the counselling office.

I became a terror not only to the students but also to the counsellor, who was instructed to be lenient to students as they are paying their tuition. And at that time, recession was setting in. The school was afraid of having a reduced number of enrollees.

What was wrong there? Moral change was not possible with the counsellor, and the school as well because they were more for protecting their jobs and their school earnings.

1. Strong Counselling Office

Hence for a true solution to this hazing practices, the counselling office must have a strict program that will instill among the students very high standards for judging friendships, as well as viewing their future in the fields they are embracing. No longer should they judge their classmates as reliable partners for life but only temporarily while they are in school. (Unfortunately, some frats can promise the earth and the moon to the neophytes who then realize later on they have been had. Some sorority girls I know never reached their dreams – of finishing their course. Or even of practicing their course later on. In other words, the connection between education and career became awry.)

What kinds of programs should the counselling office have? The DepED and the CHED must ask the counsellors themselves because they know the conditions of the students in their respective schools. I believe in the teachers' capability to assess the situation and their ability to come up with solutions to the problem.

2. Gender Studies. But also, the counselling program should include gender issues to be explained to the students so that they would not be waylaid by sweet talks on what a “true man” or “true woman” is. Such gender studies should be made compulsory at all courses.

3. JOB PLACEMENT OFFICE. The school or university itself must have a job placement office wherein all graduates will be able to find help after graduation or even while schooling so they can help their parents support their studies. This is a very important component in solving the problem of dependence on frats and societies that will provide “kunu” that job opportunity.

Or the school must offer entrepreneurship so that the students could have a choice whether to get employed or self-employed and have a business of their own.

Sources of budget for education:

4. Budgets for Food

The government should remove budgets for food and merienda at meetings of whatever kind, and place them for giving scholarships to educational institutions. That would be a very big chunk of money. The government officials already have their salaries and honoraria. They can pool their money to provide themselves with food and merienda when meeting to discuss how they can help the people. Lubus-lubusin na nila ang pagtulong. Let them sacrifice and give up those meal allowances. Anyway in private practice, employees are made to spend for their own food. They are not given free dinners but they still perform well and this occurs in many offices.

The necessity to give education to our youth is much more important than giving food during meetings to officials.

5. Budgets for Public Works

Whenever I pass the Maria L. bridge along E. Rodriguez Avenue, after Araneta Avenue in Quezon City, I see dozens of men standing about. There is also a big hauler which is supposed to remove all the wastes and garbage that have fallen on the creek. Do I see them working? Not at all. So many dozens of times, they are just huddled together, talking. No, I didn't see them lift a spade at all. How long has this been going on? It has been there since the last two years. What does this mean? The budget for working on the bridge problem is bloated as it allows for the workers to laze around.
 

One suggestion I would make is for the DPWH to give a monthly update of what each project has finished so that we would not suspect that some hanky-panky is going on.

Also, the COA should assess each budget to determine if it is enough or more than enough to finish a bridge or any project. For example, in the arts, an animation film was started, with a P5 million budget. However, it stopped when P4M had been expended. What happened to the P1M? Nobody knows. The artists who worked on the project felt cheated by the producer. And that suspended feeling that bugs every artist, of not being able to finish a film is always there.

That is already psychologically destructive.

So, all those agencies which have the tendency to bloat their budgets must undergo pre-accounting phases. In this way, we could be assured that there is a sincere effort on the part of the government to curb corrupt practices.

Then whatever savings we can get could always be shifted to education.

6. School espionage

To date, espionage in schools and universities is done only to ferret out the radicals who are inducing unknowing new students to join the underground or the legal fronts of underground organizations. There is none that is focused on fraternity and sorority activities. Why because some of the school officials are themselves members of these organizations. So anything that will curtail the expansion of membership of their societies is deliberately suppressed. That is tantamount to disloyalty to the principles of education, to my mind.

School officials who do that must be asked to resign because they are not serving the needs of the students but their societies.

Hence, schools must minimize appointing individuals who have frat or sorority connections unless they swear to uphold the principles of education always.

 

FINDING AUTHENTIC EXISTENCE IN THE FARM

by Wilhelmina S. Orozco



                                                     
What can we learn from a film? Why do we like watching films? The medium is a good vehicle for our understanding our neighbors and the world in general. In the current Eiga Sai Japanese Film Festival here in MetroManila, the film Homeland opens the eyes of the viewers to the realities of how the Japanese people have responded to the sufferings from so-called modern life in a Japanese town beset by botched use of nuclear power.

Homeland is about the subject family that transfers to temporary housing when Fukushima was declared dangerous to be inhabited. In a cramped space, Tomiko (Tanaka Yuko) - the mother, Soichi --the half-son (Uchino Seiyo) , Misa - the wife (Ando Sakura) and Naho (unnamed in the program)- the child live together, watching TV, eating, sleeping and dreaming. It must have been a real shock to find that their town could no longer be what it used to be, a place that nurtured their farming skills and made them live off it. The event especially shocks the mother, who cannot forget her tending the farm, as that was the alternative life offered her by her husband after they met in an entertainment town.

Yet, some people could still dream of returning to their roots, and that was the younger son, Jiro (Matsuyama Kenichi). He experiments on growing rice, first on boxes, and he was successful. But half-brother tried to thwart his dream, thinking that because the soil was contaminated, growing the rice could be dangerous. (That is the question that came to my mind also. How could people eat rice that comes from contaminated soil? Won't they develop unusual diseases if they would do so?)

I like Homeland for its quiet depiction of the Japanese people. It makes me understand my own countryfolks – as I somewhat contrasted them with the way we lead our life. The Japanese people, as exemplified in the film have not lost their original roots – their love of their land, the title itself is a revelation. Homeland is not Tokyo – the skyscraping city - but Fukushima – the greenland with fresh bird-chirping air and vast panorama of trees and mountains. That seems to be the message of the author- Aoki Kenji and director – Kubota Nao.

The Japanese are also a spiritual people, having a small altar in their home where they ring a bell before praying. On the altar can be found a picture of their ancestor or older relative to whom they pray for guidance in their present life. They also gather together to grieve over a relative, no matter if he committed suicide due to depression over what had happened to their town. Most of all, the love for the elderly, the mother, and the child are there; they are taken care of as it is the most natural thing to be done – especially the child and not to send her off to beg in the streets due to poverty. The elderly is nurtured – the onset of senility is arrested by bringing her back to Fukushima and there she finds herself again.

What struck me was the way the family removed their shoes when they entered the home of the dead. It was automatic for the characters to do so and so natural that the home should be treated with respect, that the dirt from outside should be left there and not allowed to contaminate the home.

Also, what was particularly touching was when the two men, Soichi and another man, cried over the suicide of Naboko, a half brother. No, the film showed their vulnerable side without too much fanfare. It was and is natural for men to shed tears. Kubota Nao, the director and tv docmentary veteran surely knows the issues besetting the cinema world like its usual depiction of male characters as invincible, and “unfeminine.” To cry is to be effeminate in the old view of filmmaking and men are not that way at all in this film. 

What about  sex life? I cannot help but rue that the wife, Misa could suffer from a husband who appears just very eager to finish off even if she is already being ungently handled. No, there were no bare bodies and sex organs in full regalia. The two, Soichi and Misa were fully-clothed, only their upper bodies on screen and the gyrations of Soichi to hint that intercourse was taking place. Of course, they would not be that free to express themselves physically in a very cramped setting, the temporary housing subdivision for those who were unsettled by the nuclear disaster.

Maybe I missed it but the people of Fukushima probably are living off on a survival allowance provided by the government. Japan is very rich and it is highly implausible that the victims should be made to fend for themselves after the nuclear disaster. This could also be one reason why the family do not lose their cohesion and are still able to care for each other. That could be an example of how we could deal also with our own natural-disaster victims in the Visayas.

What can we still learn as a people here? Our life is being taken over too much by outside influences that we seem to forget our own roots. In metroManila competition, domination, and a desire for upmanshipJ exist all desired by many to acquire wealth and status. Practicing religion is mechanical – praying and kneeling without any deep meditation of how we exist, why and where do we go after life. There is dropping of the name of Jesus, but it seems to be mechanically done. All these do not seem to be the valuable way to authentic existence.

The film lightly touches on the politics as it showed how politicians try to campaign to attain leadership -- through bandwagon. 

Although Japan is always known as Tokyo to us, neighbors, the busy city with its youth in colorful hair and outlandish attire, still the film insists that there is another side to Japanese life, the rural life that is worth caring for and protecting. Or may be that which is the authentic setting, for nurturing one's human side where the young and the older groups can meet to lead a humane existence.

Eiga Sai, the Japanese Film Festival, through Homeland shows how the medium can bring different cultures together to understand how each one lives and possibly create a peaceful world in the end.

BARYA-BARYA LANG

by Wilhelmina S. Orozco
 
The manager of McDonald's at Philcoa repeated what I said, "centavos" when I said that I would like my change down to the last centavo. Her smile belied her future moves -- she gave  4 pieces of me 25 cents, as if to tell me, "mahilig ka pala sa barya, heto ang barya."

Is this the way to treat a customer who expects honesty from their customers? I even told her, yours is an American company and therefore I would expect you to be more meticulous about change, no matter how small. 

In fact it was an American and a German guys who told me "that the Filipino cashiers do not give exact change."

Is this a custom among fastfood eateries, not to give your change, even if it is already P.86 centavos, almost P1.00.

Alas and alack, if the manager does not care, why should the cashiers? Maybe the DTI should step in and emphasize that the country should be peopled by business managers who stick by the rules of trade. 

Calling, calling Customer Relations and Human Relations Departments to straighten out truncated methods in selling. |