Ka-Blog!

Usapang kanin

The first stirrings of panic about a gut issue is gripping the country—rising prices of rice and insecure rice supply.  Despite an aggressive media campaign a few days back, agriculture secretary Arthur Yap finally admitted there may be a problem.  He went as far as asking restaurants to make it an option to serve half-cups to customers who ask.  (What about the millions who could no longer afford rice, Mr Secretary, sir?  Shouldn’t you be asking this question instead of issuing pea-brained suggestions?)

            This morning, the fucking fake president issued a directive to government agencies to make this a priority.  No effort should be spared to avert this impending calamity, she said.  Does she mean that, until now, some efforts were indeed spared to make our all-too-important rice supply stable and that our staple is affordable to all Pinoys?

            I’m just kidding, of course.  Our rice supply has not been stable in more than a decade and more and more families could no longer afford rice.  What many Filipinos now eat is rice that, only a few decades ago, were just patuka to the backyard chicken.  I caught one lady on TV who admitted that she mixes NFA rice with better varieties just to make them palatable.

            “What is happening to our country, general?”

            How we find ourselves in this unthinkable situation started about 14 years ago.  In 1994, a certain pandak senator acted as a treaty’s main sponsor to make the Philippines a World Trade Organization member.  It passed, of course.  This good-for-nothing government thereafter allowed rice importation in greedy quantities that effectively killed the livelihood of the tens of millions of Filipino rice farmers and endangered our rice sustainability.  To make pasikat to all the other WTO members, the Philippine government tore down all import duties and taxes while discontinuing what little subsidies were given to the farmers in record time.  The madayang imperialist countries (US, Europe, Japan), to this day, still have to stop subsidizing their farmers. To make matters worse, local rice farms were “converted” to “agro-industrial estates” also contributing to the decrease in rice production.  The unpredictable weather conditions brought about by global warming are not helping either.

            Suma total, we have become a rice-importing and dependent country from a rice-exporting country just a few years ago.

            And yet our magaling na pamahalaan is not being forthright about the real reasons why we’ve reached this low point.  Instead, it is content with issuing directives and offering suggestions, such as the half-cup policy.

            But should we be surprised?  The pandak senator who sponsored the WTO treaty is now the pandak fake president leading us all to destruction.

Pasalubongs and collections

Pom recently arrived from a raket (a short, income-earning stint) in India and from a quick visit to her sister Emma and Emma’s family in Nepal.  She traveled with another sister Emily, Gabriela’s international relations officer.  In that trip she made two stopovers in Bangkok (from and going back to Manila) electing to stay overnight each time.

            Being income-less for the first time in decades, I wasn’t able to give her pocket and shopping monies.  I then expected her to save all of her modest talent fee for the expected rougher times ahead.  But my wife is all woman—someone who can’t resist a good bargain and someone who can’t take it if she does not bring home something for the (handsome) husband left behind.  So she spent nearly half of what she earned on me.

            In her first trip to Nepal about two and a half years back, she brought home for me an authentic gorkha knife, winter jacket and gloves, and dried meat.  This time around she only brought one—one big bag of goodies, that is.

            No, my wife did not bring home chocolates, de lata, and shirts.  She has more imagination and higher taste than most (her choice of husband being a very good example).  As the woman who completed my airsofting BDU, my wife buys for me my collection of toy cars and buys the pirated DVDs I am too cheap to buy myself.  Hence, more creativity is always to be expected of her.  This time around, she just substantially increased my collection of rare imported beers and my Jeffrey Archer and Kurt Vonnegut books.

        Let’s start with the last.  Vonnegut’s books are so hard to find in the Philippines.  I know of some bookstores that have them but I am so poor to be shelling hundreds of pesos for a copy—even previously-owned ones.  A second-hand Vonnegut paperback could be as expensive as 500 pesos here.  That’s just too much for someone who is growing old buying dog-eared books at less than 100 pesos.

            Anyway, we now have Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle”, “Slapstick”, “Hocus Pocus”, “God Bless You, Mr Rosewater”, “Mother Night” and “Jailbird” to add to the two other books we have of him.

            Speaking of jailbirds, Pom was able to buy two Archer books we still do not have in our collection.  (This is the trouble with collecting still-active and living authors.  Until they kick the bucket, chances are, you are still incomplete.)  We now also have “To Make a Long Story Short” and “False Impression.”

            AND! Che Guevarra’s “Motorcycle Diaries” on paperback.

            And these are just books for me.  She of course bought books for herself.

            It looks like this summer would be a reading one.

            And we are not lending.  NO!  Maraming hindi marunong magsoli! (Minsan, ako rin naman.)

            Now, to the beers.

            I have in my now growing collection the following:

1.  Tui, the East India Pale Ale, brewed in Aukland and Timanu, New Zealand;

2.  Beez Neez Hand-Crafted Honey Wheat Beer by Matilda Bay, Freemantle, Australia;

3. Kirin Tanrei of Japan;

4. Everest Lager, a special limited edition bottle and a 50^th anniversary commemoration bottle from Nepal;

5.  Lowenbrau, a 600-year old and original Oktoberfest brand—from Germany, of course;

6.  Oranjeboom Premium, a Dutch beer;

7.  Gorkha Premium, Nepali;

8.  Tuborg Gold and Tuborg Royal De Luxe;

9.  Carlsberg All Malt Premium 2008 UEFA edition and Carlsberg Chill;

10. Asahi Dry of Japan;

11. Foster’s, the famous Australian;

12. San Miguel Premium Lager (mine’s brewed in Nepal, although SMB is of course Filipino.  I am collecting SMBs brewed elsewhere.);

13. Lhasa Tibetan Beer—the most expensive of the lot, which could pay for all the others combined.  It is also quite difficult to obtain.

           I do not want to sound disloyal here but my favorite is Coor’s Light.  It is, to me, better than San Mig Light.  Plus it’s got a cool gimmick.  A white decal of the Rockies on its amber bottle turns blue when it is ideally-chilled.  I’ve consumed boxes of this brew these past months, but only because I collect its “stay-cold” glasses.

          Now, I am not turning alcoholic.  And this humble collection is nowhere near as impressive as I like it to be.  I’ve been asking our volunteers to bring me more but only a few a biting—just three so far.  But I must say I have rare bottles here.

          But, as with all collections and libations, they are only most enjoyed with the right company, people who are as passionate or, at least, people who understand this most childish of passions—like my wife, for instance. 

Nasaan na ba ang itak ni Andres?

It’s the worst crime a government can commit—a crime that makes the ZTE broadband network scam seems peanuts in comparison.  The arroyo government practically surrendered our patrimony and sovereignty over a huge portion of our national territory to foreign powers.  gloria is giving away territory paid for with blood by Bonifacio and the millions of Filipino patriots and martyrs.  (Btw, some of our patriotic battles were waged against Chinese pirates such as Limahong!)

Well, all our presidents were guilty of this.  They all allowed the US military to use parts of our territory as its bases, playground, nuclear arms repositories, and training sites.  (How many “wild boars” have the bastards killed again who turned out to be Filipinos?)

            True to form, gloria arroyo is topping all our traitorous former presidents on this one.  She allowed the fucking Chinese and Vietnamese governments to conduct oil exploration activities on twenty thousand square kilometers of Philippine territory.  And she kept it a secret!

What’s more, a Filipino diplomat in China took it upon herself to speak in behalf of the Chinese government over its alarm about a congressional bill that tries to clearly define our boundaries.  And newly-minted House Speaker Prospero Nograles is leading the gang in thwarthing the bill.  Well, in this time of Lent, Judasses abound, don’t they?

The Spratlys/Kalayaan group of islands is without question Philippine territory.  It is well inside 200 miles from our easternmost province, as specified in international laws on the seas and territories.  We have the strongest claim to them, stronger than Vietnam’s, Malaysia’s and Indonesia’s.  China, including Taiwan, is included in this claimants’ list, reportedly by virtue of a historical claim.  (South China Sea, get it?)  But any idiot who has consulted a map can conclude that China is a bigger idiot in believing so.  It is hundreds of kilometers away from the northernmost of the islands.  And they were not the first ones to ply these waters.  Our Polynesian ancestors were when they discovered these islands starting from 750 thousand years ago.  During that time, the Chinese were probably still busy shaking the sands of Gobi Desert from their ears.

         At the turn of this millennium, the Chinese bullies started building military structures on some atolls and islets in the Kalayaan Group and the Scarborough Shoal near Pangasinan.  It is proof of the weakness of their harebrained claim that they chose not to build on the bigger islands as we did.  Yet they are already there shooting down US spy planes taking pictures and Uncle Sam just kept quiet about it.  (Hey! cowards! we thought you’d defend us when we’re in trouble in the manner that we bled and died for you in your imperialistic wars in Korea, Vietnam and Iraq.)

            The way I see it, this is like allowing distant neighbors, one a proven thief, to see if there is a Yamashita gold cache in our backyard.  What if there are indeed treasures under our house?  Do we expect the neighborhood bully to just let it go at that?  By his nature, isn’t it expected that he will camp in and later lay claim to our property? 

            The thing is the treasure isn’t the arroyo syndicate’s personal property.  It belongs to younger generations of Filipinos to be represented by future governments—hopefully led by a legitimate president very unlike the impostor we now have in the palace.

            Three years the arroyo syndicate and the Chinese and Vietnamese capitalist railroaders have been doing this and we only come to know of it now?  For what?  For scandalous kickbacks from scams like the ZTE broadband network? 

Traitors! Thieves!  May Bonifacio’s bolo chop you all into tiny, unidentifiable pieces!