Stray Thoughts On A Cloudy Day

When angry winds buffet, timid and fragile sails are furled.

Or so we were told or saw in the many sea-faring movies of old.

Thus, too, this last Friday harried workmen started rolling up the giant billboard hanging on the roof deck of our building.

When queried why this new-found solicitousness over a coming little wind and rain, they cheerfully said that storm signal No. 1 had been hoisted by the local government weather forecasting station, aptly called Pag-asa (literally meaning hope in English), ominously presaging the rampaging onslaught of a good-sized typhoon expected to hit the area that Sunday. And from their explanation, one gathered that the weather station has now been tasked with informing billboard owners when storm signals are up to allow them ample time to take precautionary measures, like rolling up their tarp billboards. So caught a team of high-climbing trapeze artists nimbly clambering the steel structure to unhitch and secure their billboard. In less than an hour, the huge “sail” was securely tied up on top casting a very tiny profile for any angry wind to maul.

A good precautionary measure indeed in a country that is regularly visited by disastrous typhoons, which unwelcome natural calamities almost always bring considerable damage to structures and infrastructures. Blowing away very exposed billboards and their frames has been a commonplace occurrence, sometimes causing also human deaths.

As a relieving end-note, Sunday came and the sun shone mercilessly throughout the day, nary a drop of rain or a wisp of air to blow away a lit candle.

As usual, weather forecasting at its level best. No better, or worse, than a throw of the dice.

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One’s face is usually unerring testimony to the ravages of time and the catalogue of deeply wrenching emotions felt over the years. Leathery or botched skin, wrinkled temples, furrowed foreheads, and more, are what we carry to our graves if we live to be of ripe old ages. These are inevitable and inherited signs of man’s living of life. We can usually not only tell a man’s age by these markers, but how easy, comfortable or difficult one has gone through life. And repetitively doing specific physical activities as part of one’s life usually leaves visible marks in one’s body. A stevedore, or mason, or a carpenter will typically show the accumulated results of their trades in their bronzed and well-developed arms. A doctor, especially a surgeon, maybe by his dainty and exquisite hands and arms?

Aside maybe from a gaunt overall physique, what else does a long-time inveterate jogger or brisk-walker exhibit?

Well, after over a score of years of jogging, here is what I can show to the body parts that I use most prominently running or jogging, usually on hard pavement.










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When nuns gather for a noonday meal at some fastfood center in the mall, you can bet that it will be a happy and holy refection. Caught in a pancake place, of four Assumption nuns taking a little respite from their campus outreach ministry at Xavier University.

A holy meal of tossed salad and smoked fish, and of course, rice.

Our Daily Bread

Ever wondered how your daily bread gets to your table?

I doubt it first saw light from some huge air-conditioned factory equipped with rows of perpetually humming conveyors and flailing robotic arms moving the emerging bread from one process to another. Until they are packaged and delivered to your favorite retailer.

Most likely, it originated from some small and cramped “sweat-shop” in many locales in the city and outlying towns, manned by a team of serious and sweaty workers. Literally, a sweat-shop because baking bread and cookies requires a lot of heat from preparation, to actual baking, and ultimately to retailing. Everybody wants his bread hot, if not warm when consuming it.

So workplaces are kept at least above normal temperature, most especially during the preparation – for the yeast to grow and expand the dough.

So your bread probably comes from a workplace quite similar to this. Pans and pans of bread manhandled by sweaty bakers and toasted by cagey horneros.









So in quiet recognition for those who labored with sweaty faces and furrowed brows to provide you with your daily bread, sweat a bit when taking a bite off your favorite pan de sal or pancho. Or belguim, or elorde.

…and pray to deliver you from having to eat day-old bread.

Lawless Driving In Cagayan de Oro

                                

Road courtesy and internationally accepted standard traffic rules are literally being driven off the road in the bustling city of Cagayan de Oro, in Northern Mindanao. 

It is populated by at least a million folks(Hey, nobody really knows what the exact population is!), who are expected to survive in cramped quarters in a smallish poblacion traversed by grid-iron type city streets which are noted for their being too small for vehicular traffic but too wide for use as pedestrians sidewalks, which pedestrians use as such anyway. 

 And the width of any street is immaterial anyway because it is not the reason why drivers do not observe common road courtesy. Drivers will use any unoccupied strip of any street, whether it is intended for parking or stripe-laned for going the other way. If it is currently unoccupied and the vehicle can drive through it, then the green light is on to snake through that part of the road or sidewalk and be on its merry unmindful way. Any traffic enforcer be damned.

But here is a little recommendation, just be extra careful about negotiating no-left turn intersections. Doing so catches the wary attention of any traffic enforcer nonchalantly observing grid-locked traffic on the intersection. For some strange reason making a wrong left turn is worse than engaging in a coarse game of chicken and by so doing jamming the intersection from all directions. 

 And another is going through one-way streets of which they are many which are not marked with clear traffic signs and thus easily unnoticed. These two actions appear to be anathema to them, notwithstanding the clear as day fact that there are other violations much worse traffic-wise unraveling before their very sunburnt noses. Like double parking on an already narrow street with both sides parking, or loading and unloading of passengers from public transport anywhere the passengers so please.

In a city where anything that can roll and move can be par for street use, negotiating traffic is not only daunting trying to weave and dodge from errant four-wheeled vehicles, but is equally confusing in trying to identify the objects one is confronted with driving along its streets. 

 Never mind the pedestrians, since they are everywhere anyway – walking, idling, conversing, phoning or simply existing or living on both sides of the road. And by the way, you also find them in the middle of the road, precariously teetering on top of the disregarded median lines, arching and aching to cross to the other side of the street.

But the “vehicles” you encounter are truly a motley group, some defying what could be described as motor vehicle or typical human transport. Admittedly, there are the two-wheeled common enough bicycles, but outfitted or resourced as either a cargo carrier or as a place of business. Resourcefully converted in various ways and configuration aimed at being able to carry maximum load and volume. Think of any possible way to do that to a bicycle and you bet it has been done and implemented. Same is true when used as a place of business – complete with a counter top and storage space to conduct any itinerant business whether in food service or selling of pastries, or whatever.

Then there are the lumbering carts, mostly too bulky to be pushed or tugged by a bike, that are simply pushed around by humans through the streets of the city, searching and angling for leftover street or sidewalk space fit enough to park and conduct business.

Then you have the motorized bikes, wrapped in tin sheets to look like their four-wheeled cousins, used as public transportation, ferrying passengers for as short a distance as a city block away. Lazy residents? The heat in the tropics does discourage any leisurely or even brisk walking most days. And this mode of transportation is literally everywhere. Every Juan or Pedro who can buy a motorbike, even a cheapo made in China, and outfit it with a tin-can cab, has one. If not, then every Juan or Pedro who can borrow money to engage in this type of transportation business has one. Looking at their numbers one gets the crazy feeling that they must propagate like rabbits.

And the mother of all traffic hazards and road courtesy ne’er do wells – the passenger jeepneys in their multi-colored ugliness and challenged models of inefficiency in function and looks. They daily invade every motorist’s space and peace. Loading and unloading everywhere and anywhere the drivers’ fancies direct them. Flouting every possible traffic rule or road courtesy, causing the equally ubiquitous traffic enforcers to quietly exclaim in frustration, or simply show the disinterested look. They do at times flag down jeepney drivers and issue tickets appearing as a semblance of order amidst the wholesale chaos engulfing them.

Another equally hazardous presence on the streets is that of taxi drivers who do their share to merit their dubious distinction as reckless drivers and cheap teasers of fate. At least with their new and shiny units, one gets the sense that they at least have the earnest desire to prevent any contact with other vehicles since they would most likely end up as clear losers in the damage department. But again their big presence on the streets is cause enough to be extra careful in one’s unorthodox driving. 

And the exercise of precise care in approaching intersections since the concept of right of way is almost alien to them, practicing only the primeval chicken game in approaching and taking intersections. He who dares fearlessly and aggressively and shows no tentativeness gets to drive first unimpeded to the next intersection.

Another group of vehicles is noted more for their non-visibility than their ability to obstruct one’s view of the road traffic. These are the tiny or mini cars coming from China and Korea. Diminutive sedans with their one-liter or less engines stealthily weaving in and out of columns of vehicles, and uncannily parking themselves neatly in left-over spaces in a city where such spaces abound. Again their new shiny looks and basically tin-can body frames make their drivers extra cautious in preventing even the softest of fender-benders.

And shades of images of the US freeways and suburban cities are the out of place presence of huge SUVs like the Ford Expedition or the F150 pickup truck, and the popular family transport of recent US lore and yore, the minivan or full-sized van. Being status icons here proud owners are only too willing to maintain them and go through the rigmarole of driving them around constricted city streets – with great unease and discomfort. 

 Hey, no different from some women who wear shoes with skyscraper heels after being aware of the ill effects of their wear to their feet and legs and also feeling some excruciating, I surmise, discomfiture in simply wearing them. But for them pride is in the ownership.

So for those who have to drive to get around, be forewarned and be prepared in this demotion-derby environment, minus the actual collisions. Gear up to be optimistic and think of it as being a bump-car ride, where even collisions and minor scrapes are simply causes for fun and entertainment, and one is none the worse for wear and tear after each experience.

Over time, one actually learns to appreciate the experience. After all, actual disastrous contacts are far and in between and common experiences are mostly minor paint scrapes or minute body dents, and maybe bruised egos for some. Yet In the excruciating process one learns to pay utmost care and undivided focus to one’s driving.

Which is what most credible experts who teach proper driving techniques recommend anyway.

Et tu, Brute?

Feisty Michelle Malkin pens a stern denunciation against certain unknown McCain campaign staffers who unceremoniously unleashed personal criticism to media against their ward Sarah Palin.

Relentless in her campaign activities but quite gracious in defeat, it appears that Sarah Palin is not even allowed to “slip into the night” and go back quietly and undisturbed to the warm embrace of her beloved family and Alaska, without the door hitting her badly as she leaves. Michelle defines as the “unkindest cut” what these unnamed staffers did to her, worse than the “The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” thrown at her from all quarters during her very abbreviated stint as a VP candidate.

While she continues to be unmindful and gracious about these continued attacks, we cannot allow these to happen without comment in her defense.

What has become of us?

I implore Sen. John McCain to put all this to rest by having those unnamed sources to first come out into the open and take account for their bad behavior.

A Promise To Keep

Here is one promise we should all keep with regard to our newly-elected president, as valuable lesson learned from the last 8 years of the administration of G W Bush. A promise for both those who are grossly disappointed with the results and even for those who adored and voted for Barack Obama.

That we will not hate our president enough, regardless of what he will have done as perceived by us, as to wish that he fails as a president. Because it would be no different from cutting our collective noses to spite our faces.

We have clearly seen how hate poisons the entire lake. How it gnaws at people’s hearts and minds to make them only see evil in what even a good-meaning president does. We have seen how the eight years of Bush exemplifies the very vile and negative ramifications of this kind of attitude not only within the country but spilling well across the entire globe.

Let’s leave to history how the presidency of G W Bush will be viewed and judged, but at the onset he can’t possibly be half as bad as many had projected him during his incumbency. After the end of the year, he will have been past history and hopefully the self-fueling hate that many people in many sectors of society engender and harbor for him will have been dimmed.

Maybe we should take the example of very partisan Chris Matthews vowing this early on that in the discharge of his duties as an opinion-maker/host in an adjudged liberally-biased cable station like MSNBC, he will do his best to make sure this president succeeds. Now this is coming from a pundit who spent a good part of his TV career wasting no opportunity castigating the opposition – both in media and in politics.

Was this coming out a good thing? You be the judge. At least, Matthews has become quite open and upfront about his politics, while a number of his colleagues have continued to front their agenda stealthily and vehemently denying any slant at any and all occasions that arise.

Because it is the good and proper thing to do.

Let the loyal opposition take the lead and show the nation their graciousness, their ability to transcend petty politics, and to show truly their greater love for the nation over partisan politics to the detriment of the greater good.

And to GW, happy voyage and blessings, because you did not have to, but you did. Give up eight years of your life in service to your country. You have earned your sleep.