The bizarre good cheer of Smoky Mountain undoubtedly says a lot about the Filipinos’ spiritual resilience. But like the sex industry, which is also fairly cheerful, it says something depressing about the other choices people have. When I was in one of the countless squatter villages in Manila, talking with people who had built houses out of plywood and scavenged sheet metal, and who lived eight to a room, I assumed it must be better to be poor out in the countryside, where at least you had some space and clean air to breathe. Obviously, I was being romantic. Back home there was no way to earn money, and even in Smoky Mountain people were only a four-cent jeepney ride away from the amusements of the big city.
In Smoky Mountain and the other squatter districts, I couldn’t help myself: try as I would not to, I kept dwelling on the contrast with the other extreme of Filipino life, the wealthy one. The contrast is relatively hard to see in Manila itself, since so much of the town’s wealth is hidden, literally walled up in the fortified “villages.’ But one day, shortly after I’d listened to scavengers explain why some grades of animal bone were worth more on the resale market than others, I tagged along with a friend and visited one of Manila’s rich young families in the mountains outside town.
To enter the house we had to talk our way past a rifleman at the gate–a standard fixture not only of upper-class areas of Manila but also of banks, office buildings, McDonald’s–and then follow a long, twisting driveway to a mountaintop palace. The family was, of course, from old money; they were also well educated, public-spirited, sincere. But I spent my day with them in an ill-concealed stupor, wandering from room to room and estimating how many zillions of dollars had been sunk into the art, furniture, and fixtures. We ate lunch on the patio, four maids in white dresses standing at attention a few paces off, each bearing a platter of food and ready to respond instantly when we wanted more. Another maid stood behind my chair, leaning over the table and waving a fan back and forth to drive off any flies. As we ate, I noticed a strange rat-a-tat sound from inside the house, as if several reporters had set up a city room and were pounding away on old Underwoods. When we finished our dessert and went inside, I saw the explanation. Another two or three uniformed servants were stationed inside the cathedral-like living room, incessantly twitching their flyswatters against the walls.
via A Damaged Culture: A New Philippines? – James Fallows.
rePost::A Damaged Culture: A New Philippines? – James Fallows
Found this I don’t know how but it’s really sad that a lot of the things said in this article is still true after what 22 Years.
Still, for all the damage Marcos did, it’s not clear that he caused the country’s economic problems, as opposed to intensifying them. Most of the things that now seem wrong with the economy–grotesque extremes of wealth and poverty, land-ownership disputes, monopolistic industries in cozy, corrupt cahoots with the government–have been wrong for decades. When reading Philippine novels or history books, I would come across a passage that resembled what I’d seen in the Manila slums or on a farm. Then I would read on and discover that the description was by an American soldier in the 1890s, or a Filipino nationalist in the 1930s, or a foreign economist in the 1950s, or a young politician like Ferdinand Marcos or Benigno Aquino in the 1960s. “Here is a land in which a few are spectacularly rich while the masses remain abjectly poor. . . . Here is a land consecrated to democracy but run by an entrenched plutocracy. Here, too, are a people whose ambitions run high, but whose fulfillment is low and mainly restricted to the self-perpetuating elite.” The precise phrasing belongs to Benigno Aquino, in his early days in politics, but the thought has been expressed by hundreds of others. Koreans and Japanese love to taunt Americans by hauling out old, pompous predictions that obviously have not come true. “Made in Japan” would always mean “shoddy.” Korea would “always” be poor. Hah hah hah! You smug Yankees were so wrong! Leafing back through Filipinology has the opposite effect: it is surprising, and depressing, to see how little has changed.
via A Damaged Culture: A New Philippines? – James Fallows.
rePost::Asia is now world's biggest air travel market – INQUIRER.net
This should be a given, The sheer number of islands of in Asia presents a place where land transportation (Trains/Bus) cannot possibly compete. The sea transportation should be more developed by now but the way people value time the cost advantages of sea/ocean transport has all but disappeared in a market with lots of budget airlines serving the air travel category.
Asia is now world’s biggest air travel market
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 15:11:00 02/01/2010
Filed Under: business, Air Transport, Travel & Commuting
SINGAPORE – The Asia-Pacific region has overtaken North America as the world’s largest air travel market with 647 million passengers in 2009, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said Monday.
By contrast, 638 million people flew on commercial flights in North America last year, IATA announced at an aviation business conference on the eve of the Singapore Airshow featuring the world’s leading aviation industry players.
Within Asia, China has eclipsed Japan over the past decade as the region’s largest domestic market, with 1,400 aircraft compared with Japan’s 540 and 5.7 million weekly seats against 2.6 million in Japan.
The Singapore Airshow is taking place after a harrowing year in the global aviation industry, which lost an estimated $11 billion in 2009 as a result of the financial meltdown that began in the United States.
via Business – Asia is now world’s biggest air travel market – INQUIRER.net.
rePost::J. D. Salinger, Enigmatic Author of ‘The Catcher in the Rye,’ Dies at 91 – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com
But writing in The New York Review of Books in 2001, Janet Malcolm argued that the critics had all along been wrong about Mr. Salinger, just as short-sighted contemporaries were wrong about Manet and about Tolstoy. The very things people complain about, Ms. Malcolm contended, were the qualities that made Mr. Salinger great. That the Glasses (and, by implication, their creator) were not at home in the world was the whole point, Ms. Malcolm wrote, and it said as much about the world as about the kind of people who failed to get along there.
via J. D. Salinger, Enigmatic Author of ‘The Catcher in the Rye,’ Dies at 91 – Obituary (Obit) – NYTimes.com.
rePost::12 Reasons You Shouldn’t Freelance | FreelanceFolder
When you work in IT you hear this a lot, hell I’ve said this a lot of times years ago. Then you realize that being an introvert is not the best thing for someone who wants to freelance. This is a nice point by point takedown of the most common reasons people want to freelance. Interesting read.
Freelancing Is the Best Job Ever
But, it’s also the hardest and most demanding job ever. It can be frustrating because you have no one else to share the business duties with. People, including clients, misunderstand what you do and may not think you’re a real business who charges real rates for real work.
That being said, I do believe it’s the best job ever. Really, I wouldn’t go back to a full-time job, even if they offered me a six figure salary. Like everything else, it has it’s drawbacks but it also has lots of good perks.
The important thing is to make sure you really like working independently and you have the drive to do this all by yourself. The freedom and satisfaction from being able to control your own career is reward in itself.
via 12 Reasons You Shouldn’t Freelance | FreelanceFolder.
rePost::Noynoy Aquino is not The One | Filipino Voices
I don’t agree with a lot of what he wrote but the last lines were good.
Ninoy was not The One.
Cory was not The One.
Noynoy is not The One.
We are.
We are The Ones.
That gives hope for change.
via Noynoy Aquino is not The One | Filipino Voices.
rePost:This Must Stop Now!!!!: Cabral’s crackdown : Manuel L. Quezon III: The Daily Dose
Fast forward to today, when Cabral’s experience in being subjected to public scrutiny and her seeing the public was not about to give her either a free pass or would be intimidated by her being in the Cabinet, has inspired her to use government to get even with the blogger who caused her such grief. Recently, the National Bureau of Investigation filed a libel suit on Cabral’s behalf, against the blogger. This is not a mere case of an outraged party filing a libel case against another citizen; this is a case of a Cabinet secretary using the government to move her own case forward. First, she asked her own department’s legal service to look into whether she should file a libel case against the blogger, basically a request for civil servants to do what she could fully well entrust to a private attorney. Cabral then specifically asked the NBI to do the sleuthing for her case, by finding out, first of all, who exactly the blogger was, and the NBI obliged by asking the hosting company of the blog who the blogger is. The NBI then also made inquiries with the blogger’s publisher. The NBI then summoned the blogger to undergo a polygraph test.
Cabral could have asked the blogger to come forward for a tête-à-tête to clear the air; but then we are talking about an official who belongs to an administration allergic to public debate and which prefers to restrict its fights to the forums in which it enjoys an advantage. Why put yourself on par with an ordinary citizen when you have the NBI and the prosecutorial services of the government at your beck and call, and when you can bog down ordinary people in protracted litigation with the added benefit of potentially imprisoning the offending party? It’s an opportunity too pleasurable to pass.
It is dangerous to my mind to concede in the first place that this is a question of law: of Cabral merely asserting her rights by challenging the blogger’s exercise of her own right to not only express herself, but to challenge officials to explain themselves. To discuss the pros and cons of the case, whether or not malice was involved, sidesteps the objectionable reality that the law itself as far as libel goes is incompatible with our civil liberties because the provisions on libel law are an anachronism. No libel will ever be proved in the case of the blogger—but that isn’t the point. The point is to remind citizens that challenging officialdom carries such a heavy price in terms of time and money, artificially muddling the issues along the way, so that exoneration ends up neither a vindication nor a triumph of the rule of law.
via The Long View: Cabral’s crackdown : Manuel L. Quezon III: The Daily Dose.
Praise::A ‘nosebleed’ triumph for Gloc 9 | Manila Bulletin
Congratulations to Gloc-9 !!!!
Silently seated somewhere at the back of the invitees’ area, Gloc 9 stood and went up the stage to receive his trophy. He was certainly aware that most awardees were delivering their short speeches in English. So with a probably planned punchline, he uttered on the mic, “Kanina pa dumudugo ang ilong ko so tatagalugin ko na lang. Salamat.”
With that, the male hip-hop winner received loud applauses. It was obvious he delivered the one-liner with proper timing, like most of his rhymes and comic sarcasms in his recorded verses. Gloc 9 was just being cool, not a bit sounding trying to put one over people belonging to the elite club scene.
His line might have been the unlikeliest heard that night. But big thanks he already earned enough respect as an intelligent Tagalog rapper, for it would have been different had an unknown or overrated artist said the same thing.
Granted he really nosebleed during the entire affair, especially with all the Fil-Ams, Amboys, and rich kids around, he still triumphed using the language he’s more comfortable with.
via A ‘nosebleed’ triumph for Gloc 9 | Manila Bulletin.
rePost::Cossack Rahm Works For The Czar – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com
This is hoping angainst hope; But what can we do????
Maybe financial reform will happen, or at least set up a “teachable moment” battle with the GOP. But by letting health reform slide, the administration is abandoning one really big policy initiative that is just inches from happening. Let this go, and there’s likely to be no achievements worth remembering.
But don’t blame Rahm Emanuel; this is about the president. After Massachusetts, Democrats were looking for leadership; they didn’t get it. Ten days later, nobody is sure what Obama intends to do, and his aides are giving conflicting readings. It’s as if Obama checked out.
Look, Obama is a terrific speaker and a very smart guy. He really showed up the Republicans in the now-famous give-and-take. But we knew that. What’s now in question isn’t his ability to talk, it’s his ability to lead.
via Cossack Rahm Works For The Czar – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com.
rePost:Why the Apple iPad Rocks Part 3:The iPad is NOT a Computer, its a Briefcase w/Gizmos | Angry Bear
read the whole thing. If you haven’t seen it google sixth sense computing ted talk watch the 2009 one presented in TED india. For me the iPad is a step towards having the sixth sense computer that is seen in that TED conference. It is the tool to of the rationalist wannabe to help make great decisions. I still remember how wikipedia/the internet in general, has changed conversations; I believe making it better. The advent of wikipedia allowed people to stop debating useless info because you can look at it at wikipedia and then you’d know. Now it has been a problem because sometimes the conversation stops because we have no way at looking at wikipedia. This is what made the iPhone useful. The iPad is the next logical step. If it only had a camera it wouldn’t take a genius to create some of the sixth sense apps that was demoed in the TED talk. The iPhone/iPad/iTouch because of the app store has become the platform where we can build towards the sixth sense technologies that we I believe already need to traverse this ever complex world!!!!
The iPad is NOT a Computer, its a Briefcase w/Gizmos
Posted by Bruce Webb | 1/28/2010 01:18:00 PM
technology
9 comments
by Bruce Webb
Geekery below the fold.
Steve Jobs was a little hyperbolic in his language yesterday which led some people to laugh. Well there are reasons he is a self-made billionaire and you are not.
The key to understanding why the iPad and similar devices can change the world it to understand that it is not a computer without a physical keyboard, or a multi-media player, or a portable display, sure all of those are built in but they don't add up to what the iPad really is, which is a magic briefcase full of Gizmos.
What's a Gizmo. Well the online dictionaries have boring definitions but for my purpose a Gizmo is something that does something for you. A Gizmo generally isn't big and it mostly isn't multifunctional, it just does what it does in a fun and efficient way. The iPad is designed to be a repository for Gizmos along with Games and Books and Music and allows you to use all of them anywhere you go. Now it sounds silly to put it this way but it doesn't have to be, if you were a Building Inspector it might be nice to have one Gizmo to record your findings and another that allowed you to look up the International Building and Fire Codes on the fly, and maybe another to allow you to record your time on the job. And on a dirty, dusty or muddy job site it might be nice to have one in the same form factor as the clipboard you had been carrying rather than some clamshell lap top vulnerable to the environment.
via The iPad is NOT a Computer, its a Briefcase w/Gizmos | Angry Bear.