To start my Monday on a better note:
This is way better than any Dept of Tourism video. I hope I have the energy to visit South Cotabato and Bukidnon in the near future.
So much is going on since this weekend. First off are the protests in Indonesia.
@etchaskej Please help stand in solidarity with the people of Indonesia by making sure they are not being silenced. #indonesia #affankurniawan #PrabowoSubianto #onepiece
I had been monitoring the situation since last week and this escalated with the death of a motorcycle taxi driver when he was ran over by the police. I told our Jakarta reporter to leave and fly to Bangkok immediately because there is a huge possibility that Prabowo Subianto will declare martial law. He is the former son-in-law of Suharto, the Indonesian dictator, so it’s not far-fetched that he will follow in his former father-in-law’s footsteps.
Right now, the Indonesian government has blocked social media to immobilize the people. But no, Indonesia will go down in flames before the people will be silenced.
Our JKT reporter will be flying out this weekend and I advised him not to go out of his apartment until he goes to the airport. They will let a foreigner leave before a possible lockdown but it would be tricky for foreigners to move around once martial law is imposed.
Meanwhile, Bangkok is not really a slice of heaven these days. The Thai high court has removed Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra from office for her bungling of the Cambodia conflict.
But as my sources in Thailand say, the markets are used to events like this, so life goes on.
However, I’m tasked to write an analysis piece on Thailand’s slowing economy, declining birth rate, sky-high household debt, and flat consumer spending. I have to take a trip there myself. 🤔
Back at home, the controversy over ghost flood projects have given birth to the public shaming of the children of government contractors who flaunt their lavish lifestyles on social media. These daughters (most of them are women) and wives of these government contractors show videos in Instagram and Tiktok their private planes, million-peso handbags…
… while we ordinary Filipinos wade through floods.
Quezon City had a freak storm that dumped a month’s worth of rainfall in just a single day. People were unprepared. The infrastructure cannot handle the volume of water that came rushing to the streets.
Our former neighbor told me that they were in UP Town Mall when it happened. The mall got flooded! She also said that the flood water at the intersection where Save More was up to waist-level. That area is 200 meters from our old apartment.
To think the UP Diliman became flooded! Hello! That place has a lot of land and trees that could absorb all that water — but noooooo, the soil is inundated with water that the campus became a swamp. The students in dorms had to be evacuated in several academic buildings to spend the night there.
Ghost flood control projects + climate change = Metro Manila sinks. God help us.
It was really a good call on my part to leave Metro Manila.