PNoy is a contraction of President Noynoy (Benigno Aquino III) which made life easier for us editors when writing headlines.
I did not vote for him. I didn’t like that he was out of touch with the masses. I was leaning towards Gilbert Teodoro (who is now showing his true ugly color)…
BUT
Maybe he was made to be insensitive (they say he is on the spectrum) so he can have the ability to tune out the criticisms without literally killing the critics. Maybe his being obstinate was good so he would not be as super butt-hurt as this demon in Malacañang now and just go about his business.
I told my colleagues before that he would earn my respect if he is able to pass the Sin Tax Law (decades-old battle vs big tobacco money) despite being a very heavy smoker himself. Because he knew the country needed it.
I’ve written about CODE NGO, pork barrel and that thingamajig which was the same as PDAF (was that DAP?) which traveled all the way to the Supreme Court, criticisms regarding the slow progress of PPPs, and other things to counterbalance the rabid yellow supporters. I muted some of them in my timeline.
His biggest sin in my book is the Corona trial because this became a precedent. Does quo warranto sound familiar to you?
BUT
He had sound economic policies that resulted in: low inflation, 6%-7% GDP growth, low interest rates, etc. I saw T-bills drop to near-zero levels when I occasionally covered Treasury auctions. He did what he needed to do. Our PPP scheme is way better than other systems I see now that I cover infra sector of other markets in SEAsia. We were the darling of investors. From junk status to investment grade. The international community respected him. He did not have the workaholic nature of GMA (who rises early to start working) but he was not corrupt. He prioritized his friends (hello Pagcor!) but his cabinet was sane.
He fought against China and was vindicated in the end. David vs Goliath.
He was “Noynoying” in office but this current president is a lot worse.
He is a lame duck president but he made things work somehow. I did not fear for my life that much when I was doing my job as a journalist. Unlike now.
This book/TV series by DC Comics and Warner Bros is about an apocalyptic world, shut down by a virus that caused the Sick. Remember, this story was published in 2018 but the scenes are very 2020/2021. When the world shut down, chaos reigned, it was every man for himself.
The main protagonist, Gus, is a hybrid human-animal. His kind started appearing alongside the virus that has killed millions worldwide. They still don’t know what it is and how to cure it. But somehow they thought killing and harvesting the organs and bone marrow of these hybrids would lead to a cure.
Mind you, these hybrids were children of humans who had just the bad luck of being born during the pandemic that has lasted for 10 yrs. They were born from human parents. Dissected for cure. Get that. So Gus and his kind were hunted down.
So anyway, the scenes played in the series would have been preposterous pre-COVID-19. But having endured the pandemic chaos here, yeah, I can say everything is possible as the scenes played in the DC Comic/TV Series are all too familiar to us. ✅ The world is run by military guys/militia of some sort who think the way forward is ham-fisted rule, killing at will, and no care for the little people. And pretend they know what they’re doing. (Oh lord, sounds like the Philippines). ✅ People suspected of being infected by the virus were shunned, vilified, or worse, sent to summary execution (sounds like the early days of COVID-19 pandemic here) ✅ food and durable goods scarcity ✅ the privileged live like the world hasn’t changed and deluding themselves that they can keep the world from changing ✅ everyone has lost loved ones either from violence or the disease ✅ flora and fauna flourished in the absence of humans who hunkered down as they quarantined. For years. ✅ As humanity rode waves upon waves of the virus attack. (oh yeah, we’re now just emerging from a long lockdown due to COVID-19 Alpha strain. And it seems like the vaccines in Indonesia aren’t working that well on the Delta strain that has brought India to its knees so God help us if Delta starts to overwhelm us here).
But in the utter darkness of the world, there is still some goodness left. In Gus’ pandemic, goodness is in the form of Jepp, the ex-American football star who became an unwilling protector of this hybrid. Alongside is Becky, a.k.a. Bear, whose family died of the virus and the only family left was a hybrid who was taken away by the militia known as the Last Men. In our current situation, the goodness comes in the form of… common people like us who come to the rescue of those who are less fortunate. Those who had been unselfish. Those who had been giving whatever they could for those who are hungry and dying. In the Philippines, it can be seen in the rise of the community pantries to feed those who did not have safety nets.
After bingeing on 8 episodes of Season 1, I come to the conclusion that: 1) It’s really handy to know how to drive a manual transmission vehicle. I have always known this, that’s why my family insisted on driving manual cars. Because living in the Philippines is like surviving the apocalypse where every disaster imaginable occurs regularly. 2) DIY skills should be in everybody’s priority of things to be acquired during a pandemic. 3) We should rough it out more so we can survive in some isolated forest in case we need to keep ourselves from being attacked by zombies or bad humans. 4) Learn how to survive with less luxuries 5) Grow our own food. 6) It sucks to live in a condo so better invest in a little cottage somewhere you can survive a pandemic. 7) Preppers are right all along. They’re not crazy.
I am working on these things now because we’re still dealing with Alpha and Beta strains of COVID-19. The Department of Health said that Delta is already here but it hasn’t overwhelmed us yet like it does India. The rest of Southeast Asia is still on a lockdown as they battle it through another wave of the virus resurgence. As long as we haven’t found the right vaccine to overcome COVID-19, we will continue to suffer from these waves.
Well, what can I say? I was full of trepidation about Trese being brought to life as an animated series but good that I was wrong about my fears. It was better than I expected. The animation could be better (since I am more of a Japanese animation fan) but the storylines per episode are good representations of what Philippine myths and folklore would look like in modern Manila setting. The nuno sa punso though would be hard in Manila since we don’t have enough soil here as everything else is concrete. But the writer of the comics (Budjette Tan) and the Netflix series were able to transport the nuno into sewers and popping up from manholes, which made sense. I didn’t like how this season ended, kinda cliche but the preview of the next season is more intriguing because it seems like the manananggal here is cunning.
I like that the scenes are so familiar, like the MRT breaking down in the middle of Guadalupe, the Meralco building, Dela Rosa Avenue in Makati, Ortigas Center buildings, Megamall, Manila Bay nightscape and I could make out the buildings along Roxas Boulevard, and ABS-CBN front entrance.
My girls and I watched the entire Season 1 in English and it was…so-so. The cadence of the English language was clumsy. Maybe because the scriptwriters are Filipinos in the Philippines, so the conversations in English don’t flow naturally I guess? The accents were off, especially with the spells, which will not bother non-Tagalog speakers but it was grating to me. The English cast was comprised of Filipino-Americans or Filipino-Canadians and it is understandable that they may have trouble with the original language. However, I find it disturbing that Lou Diamond Philips (Mayor) sounded more Mexican while Carlos Alazraqui sounded like a cross between a South American or Spaniard.
When I rewatched snippets of Episode 1 again in Filipino, then it made more sense now. Liza Soberano was better than Shay Mitchell, even just in the monotone. Mind you, Liza grew up in the US (and she gets a lot of flak here for sounding more American than Filipino in movies and TV series) so both actors have that American twang but Liza’s monotone was similar to that of the Japanese voice actor of Kusanagi Motoko in Ghost in the Shell, which fit Alexandra Trese better. UPDATE: I will watch the entire Episode 1 to judge it better.
In the Filipino version, conversations in Tagalog were not the everyday Tagalog we use but it somehow fits. As others commented, this is not the Filipino dub/sub of Naruto, which was cringey.
I like the Ifugao chanting that they use as opening music, which gives it a more ancient, folklore Filipino flavor. The music of Up Dharma Down (UDD) at the end of the every episode is a good foil to the ancient music as UDD is the best representation of modern Filipino music today (yes, I’m a fan).
Filipino folklore is rich but was bastardized by the Spanish, who have demonized women–just look at what they did to the babaylan (Philippine shamans, usually female). The origins of the tiyanak in the colonial Spanish context is one example of that. The banishment of Mariang Sinukuan and Maria Makiling (some versions of the tale) is another one. Neil Gaiman is also a fan of Philippine folklore, which is a treasure trove of literary material. Even the local ones we have like the legend of the Seven Lakes of San Pablo, and the Mt Maculot (originally Mt. Maculog) in Batangas can be manipulated in so many ways, which I did in that novel that I wrote but burned.
Anyway, this is just the first attempt of the Trese team, I hope they get better support and better story telling next season.
Rotating power outages likely in parts of Luzon for 2nd day, red alert hours longer
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, June 1) — Parts of Luzon may experience power interruptions for the second day in a row Tuesday, with the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) announcing longer red alert hours.
In its Facebook page, the NGCP announced red alert hours of 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., longer than the 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. period yesterday. A red alert means power supply is insufficient to meet the projected demand for energy.
This is not a one-off thing. This has been going on and on for years. We journalists have been sounding the alarm for a looooooong time. As I said in one social media post:
Developing a base load power plant takes years, at least 5 years. Securing approval for new power plant projects from the Energy Regulatory Commission takes a long time. The ultra super critical 600×2 MW coal plant Atimonan One by Merlaco PowerGen is still under development (for those in Luzon). Meanwhile, there are already a lot of renewable energy power plants here but that cannot substitute for base load power plants. It’s complicated to explain how to dispatch RE power and base load (coal, diesel) since it’s technically with the national grid. As Metro Pacific President Joey Lim said, our grid is not a complete loop. If one power plant trips, the grid cannot just simply dispatch electricity from another area/plant; basically he likened it to a one-way highway. Moreover the dispatch of solar and wind power have specific times since power from them are not available at all hours.
We were not remiss in giving the public the FYI, right? Hahahaha! This is why I have 2 rechargeable standfans, my salary from my part-time teaching in CMC for 1 semester was used to buy a gasoline genset, my “desktop” at home is a gaming laptop so when power goes out, the fun still continues. Everything that can be purchased as rechargeable, I purchased. I still don’t have a house of my own but when the time comes I already have my tiny house, I will install off-grid solar power or hybrid off-grid and on-grid system. I need to take matters into own hands because this problem will persist for a long, long time. Malampaya gas field is running out of reserves and then we have 5 gas-fed power plants that are reliant on Malampaya, which provides electricity to Luzon. We still don’t have an LNG terminal, we still don’t have an alternative to Malampaya.
Basically, this problem has been the government’s neglect. It doesn’t matter whose administration’s fault is this since this has spanned four presidents already. Trying to explain the issue and write the solutions (long-term and band-aid) is like writing a thesis.
Simultaneous online press conference. Photo by CallMeCreation.com
This is one of the reasons why I invested in dual monitors: I can multitask. But this is extreme multi-tasking as I am streaming two conferences. I paid attention to the one on the right since this is shorter and it yielded me a story, while the one on the left I muted for a while until I finished the other one. Anyway, this conference will run until Thursday and I was able to take down notes for a bit from this session.
I had four conferences this morning, back-to-back-to-back-to-back. And I wrote a time-sensitive story right after. I was still tweaking the story at past 5 pm, which got published at 8 pm. I still have three more stories to write for this week before I go off next week.
Meanwhile, my cats have been Zoom-bombing my press conferences. Good thing I didn’t need to turn on my camera for some of the sessions.
To quote Nikki Bigornia, “My cats have no chill!” Photo from webcam, CallMeCreation.comPhoto by CallMeCreation.com
And they occupied my chair. They stayed in my room the entire day I was slaving away. They always want to be in the same place where I am, even when I’m in the bathroom.
There’s so much hype surrounding Trese, an animated adaptation of the Filipino graphic novel of the same name that will be shown on Netflix. I haven’t had the opportunity to read the series but I will find time to watch the animated series.
From what I gather, this is about a Filipina, Alexandra Trese (trese is thirteen is Spanish, believed to be a number of bad luck) who is some kind of detective who deals with the underworld/supernatutal. It gave me the Witch Hunter Robin vibes but Trese looks like she is more kickass than Robin.
Based from reviews of the graphic novel series, readers are introduced to Philippine mythology, the stuff that terrorized us kids at night like:
1. tiyanak – a blood-thirsty baby monster that started out as an aborted fetus, or so what the elders told us;
2. mananaggal – a monster that takes human form by day and splits in half during full moons; the upper body splits from the lower body and develops bat wings to fly and feed;
3. kapre – a giant that resembles a man that hangs out in huge trees and smokes a lot. When you see a tree at night billowing smoke, most likely that’s a kapre on that tree. I’m not really sure what this creature does but maybe it has something to do with bringing you with him to the underworld
4. wakwak – a vampiric bird, similar to manananggal. We don’t call that kind of monster wakwak here in Luzon, most likely it’s referred to as manananggal especially if you’re in an urban or semi-urban area.
5. tiktik – it’s a small creature probably like a troll or something that makes the “tik tik tik” sound on rooftops, especially when there’s a pregnant woman in the house. The creature bores a hole through the roof with its razor-sharp tongue to reach the pregnant woman’s tummy to feed on the fetus inside.
5. tikbalang – a half-man, half-horse creature that is said to make people get lost in the woods, never to be found again. The old people said that when you’re in the woods/mountain and you get lost, it’s most likely you’re being toyed by a tikbalang. I don’t know if they feed on humans but I think they’re some kind of foot soldiers of the underworld. When we were kids, we were told that if we get played by the tikbalang, we should turn our shirts inside out so we can reverse the spell cast on us by the creature so we could find our way home.
6. duwende – dwarf or similar to leprechaun I think; they said they live inside earth mounds and sometimes they live outside old homes; they can put curses on you. We’ve had stories in our family about being played upon or cursed by duwendes because they got offended for some reason.
7. aswang – a shape-shifting monster. This is one I feared the most when I was a kid. This creature can be anything. Like a vampire, it feeds on humans but not just blood, it devours humans like how big cats shred their preys. Unlike the other creatures above, the aswangs aren’t brainless zombies that you can easily outwit. They’re diabolical or basically demons in human form, if they want to manifest in that form. Sometimes they can be huge black dogs that chase motorists at night and grab people from their vehicles. Sometimes they make a doppelgänger of your friend or family to trick you and mislead as you have become a prey. Sometimes they said some witches are aswangs and they steal bodies of the dead during a funeral to feed on. When they steal a body, they replace the body in the coffin with a banana tree trunk. This is one of the reasons why people in the rural areas hold 24-hr vigils during funerals so that the aswang will not steal the body. They also said that aswangs, if they live among humans in a village, do not socialize and they do not come out during daytime. They do not have philtrum, or the indentation above the lip.
I did a research on these mythical creatures more than a decade ago as I was writing a novel based on Philippine mythology. I almost didn’t finish my thesis for my MA because I was so preoccupied writing this novel. One of the major antagonists, if not the main antagonist, was Maria Makiling, a diwata (a nature spirit, like a minor goddess or a fairy, based on the Sanskrit word devata = god), who is said to inhabit the mountain of the same name in my hometown. This diwata was said to be antagonistic towards foreigners to the area (i.e. non-residents) and make them go around in circles in her mountain, similar to what tikbalangs do, to be forever lost. One version of the legends we have of her was that when she was in her human form, she was raped by a foreigner whom she snubbed because she already had heart set on a native suitor. She has since become vindictive. Hence, the volcanic nature of the mountain.
I won’t go into details of what I wrote as I burned all copies of it. It was causing me literal nightmares. Like nightmares of aswangs circling overhead inside the church next to my childhood home. Regular nightmares. My novel involved occult rituals and I don’t know how they came about or how I conjured them up in my head. But considering how the paternal side of my family was into occult, like the really bad one, I wouldn’t be surprised if I had it buried in my brain all along.
I want to watch Trese but I’m afraid of summoning again the nightmares. Even if it’s just an anime.
68 kg of rice. Photo by CallMeCreation.com Kgs and kgs of rice and other goods to share.Photo by CallMeCreation.com
The Maginhawa Community Pantry reopened today and there’s a very long queue. I arrived late in the afternoon because I was swamped with work. However, I managed to somehow get away and buy 68kg of rice divided into 2kg packs. Then I checked the supply the organizers have to see which is abundant and which items must be replenished. I will come back after wrapping up work for the week.
I was preparing for my morning live report when a man on a cart selling goods (on pic) passed by the pantry. He handed me a plastic bag with three packs of noodles.
Not knowing what to do with it (and I was busy preparing), referred him to a volunteer. 1/n pic.twitter.com/uXXinPKhui
UPDATE: I finally got in touch with the guy! His name is Alberto Calanza. They used to have a canteen in Technohub but was forced to stop business during the pandemic. So Mang Alberto resorted to selling goods! His children want to buy him a new cart.
The littlest of people, those who have next to nothing have the biggest heart. I’ve been reading and hearing about the generosity of Filipinos and it warms me and pains me at the same time. Prepandemic there are a lot of hungry people neglected by society and government. This pandemic created more of them.
Meanwhile, I am proud of my daughters. They’re good kids. They prodded me to take PHP 500 from their birthday money to spend on surgical masks to donate. I told them to keep the money and I will do the donation. They said, no Mommy. We still have money. We want to help.
I think because they have been aware of what I keep on doing while they were growing up. When they see their parent helping those who are in need regardless my emotional state and financial status, they pick it up. When they see me feeding homeless cats, they develop sympathy and then empathy. One night I called one of my girls to come out of the house with our plastic container of cat food and water for a kittykat near my bank. She was meowing loudly by the lamppost. I drove by our gate, picked up the food and water and drove back to the kittykat. After making sure she is fine (she was being looked after by the homeless man nearby), I went back home and tell the story to the girls.
Kindness to all humans and animals must be taught from the very beginning. No ifs and buts. I also emphasize to my girls that they should be polite to everybody, regardless of age and economic status, hence the constant use of “po” and “opo”. I always correct their manner of speaking.
Kindness and respect, generosity and empathy for all are basic things I’m teaching my girls. It will guide them all throughout their lives.
