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.