Pilipinas, you need to work

The current tv drama that some people without a life a re sucking out of the legislative body of the Philippines is the electricity situation in the country.

The Manila Electric Company, or Meralco has been in the hands of the Lopez family since electricity came to the country in the early 20th century. Fast forward almost a hundred years later, the government is accusing the company of jacking up power rates too high and passing off it’s losses to the consumer.

This compounded with the fact of rising gas prices (I’ll get to the gas in another blog post) has not made the situation any easier.

One way to paying less electricity? Lower your carbon footprint! Turn off that computer or that monitor when you’re not using it. Replace light fixtures with more energy efficient ones. Airconditioners and refrigerators are the largest consumers of electricity. Unlike in the west, we are fortunate that we don’t use washing machines or clothes dryers that much.

Why is the power company passing on their loss to the consumers? Sure there are illegal taps. Illegal taps in the country amount to 50% but no one gets charged. Why is no one charged for it when there are laws that say it is illegal? That is why it is just so blatant. It’s no different from the water taps as well. No one will be able to live in the city illegally thus reducing the financial burden of those who pay.

In the end it’s everyone’s fault. The laws work. It’s the people who are tasked with laws aren’t.

ABS-CBN News Online (Beta)

It’s true folks! Balikbayan boxes from the US are no longer filled with “the Nike shoes” or bags of chocolate. They are now filled with sacks of rice. So all those Manila Boxes, Star Cargo and LBC shipments be warned if they seem a wee bit heavy this month. They’re filled with rice!

I love my car. I love to drive my car. So it annoys me that I cannot enjoy driving my car because there are too many idiots on Manila roads. If you thought Paris was chaotic place to get behind the wheel, well you’re right but it’s worse in Manila.

My house is only 10km from my office and it takes me 20 minutes on average to get there. This is ridiculous.

Where else can you see passengers getting on and off public vehicles in the middle of a highway.

Where else can public vehicles pile three lanes off a five lane highway to load passengers.

Where else can you see public vehicles stopping and unloading/ loading passengers at anytime they wanted to.

Where else can you see drivers driving on red.

Where else can you see cars parked anywhere and no is towing them.

Where else can you see cars driving at 40kph on the highway and they think they’re saving gas.

Where else can you just cut into someone’s lane.

Where else can you see public vehicles not use their headlights at night.

I can go on forever but it still doesn’t hide the fact that Philippine roads are filled with inept traffic cops and idiot drivers who can’t read but somehow got a driver’s license. Just goes to show how badly run and lived this country is.

One thing that Filipinos are good at. Blame it on someone else other than yourself.

Sad, but unfortunately true. Why are our elected officials corrupt? Well you voted for them. Why isn’t the system working? Well duh! You paid grease money to get your papers to the top of the pile. If you don’t want to do things the honest way, pay and you get into the system.

Did you know that it’s easier to get a forged birth certificate than the original one?

Where else can you see partying in Manila, families who gutted the country for billions of dollars and untold years of growth and development be just welcomed back into society as if nothing happened. History classes that teach children the tragedy of freedom that is martial law in 70s and the people responsible for it just wander around the city getting elected again and getting power again.

It is sad to see Filipinos tricked every three years (elections are held every 3 years) with false promises. Candidates that put up a show in every barrio across the country to win votes. They put up their smiley faces and shake everyone’s hand and be everyone’s friend. Once they get elected, they barricade themselves in their haciendas with their armed guards patrolling the perimeter, shooting anyone who tries to come near. They go around the city in their heavily tinted escalades with the blinkers and armed escorts, afraid when someone tries to get near. Their guards shouting at poor hotel attendants. The Filipino just created the legal mafia. The whole cycle repeats itself every three years.

Elections are two years away. Come back for the show.

There’s no stopping gas prices from climbing in the United States or anywhere for that matter. But there are stark differences on how people perceive these things.

Most people believe that the oil companies are milking the public because they’re selling essentially a limited resource. While it may be true to some degree, that’s what most Filipinos believe.

Filipinos have poisoned over the years by leftist propaganda that it’s all to make the rich richer at the expense of the masses. (If that doesn’t sound communist talk to you then I don’t know that is). These people fail to realize that we’re not the only ones using gas powered cars in the world. That we don’t need oil for house heating. We only use it for transportation, electricity and cooking. While the most of the northern hemisphere have to burn fossil fuels in order to survive the winter season. All they see is me me me me. I’m getting poorer because of high gas prices.

Get over yourself. Be grateful that it doesn’t cost you $4/gallon of gas. That you don’t drive a V8 car/ SUV or that we don’t need to heat our houses since it’s already 90F here. You cannot blame the government about high gas prices because it’s expensive everywhere you go.

The simplest solution. Reduce your consumption of gas. Duh! If things are getting a little expensive then learn how to drive smarter. Driving your car slower will not help you save gas, it actually makes you use more gas. So there! Until you get an electric car. Stop complaining it’s a global thing. Stop being part of the problem, become the solution.

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Mangrove loss ‘left Burma exposed’

For anyone who follows storms, each storm is called something else depending on where it originated such as hurricanes for Atlantic Ocean storms, cyclones for Indian Ocean and typhoons for Pacific residents. They may have different names but the amount of destruction these storms can cause is all the same.

The cyclone that hit Myanmar is almost Biblical in it’s wrath. 23,000 dead with 40,000 more missing. Filipinos should be worried.

As we hit the months of June and July, it heralds the first months of the rainy season. Unlike western countries that have four seasons, in the Philippines it’s only wet and hot. And when it rains, it pours.

The Philippines is no stranger from typhoon calamities. There’s always one every year and the death toll has been less than a 1000 or so over the past years. But with Global warming making storms like these even deadlier, the Myanmar tragedy could hit our island nation.

Our denuded mountain forests and diminishing mangrove marshes, the Philippines lack these natural defenses against storms of this magnitude. We have been fortunate that only one major storm struck Manila, but even then the two hours that the eye just passed beyond the outskirts of the city caused widespread destruction and power loss for more than a week. What if more than one storm hits us in a season? I doubt that we are prepared for the worst.

Nature will hit back at the Philippines in a big way. We’ve just been able to dodge a lot of bullets lately and the next one wont be as easy. Should we start planting those mangrove forests? Of course! Better late than never. Just pray that we don’t have to wait for 23,000 deaths on our own soil to start working.