playing catch up

It’s a relatively light day at work and this is when I steal a couple minutes to catch up on today’s news or look up anything random that’s been lingering in my mind the past couple of days. Today is no exception, I was reading about the newly elected president of Maldives, the Immortal Beloved Letters and checking out my guilty pleasure of various entertainment websites. This day, however is one of the few days that I checked out news that’s going on in the Philippines. Ok, its not as if I’m trying to distance myself from the Philippines, but to be brutally honest I HAVE been away for over 8 years and whatever news that’s going on in the RP unfortunately doesn’t affect me as much.

So I googled Philippines to see what interesting websites come up and 2 glaring headlines popped-up. One was about the return of Undersecretary Joc-Joc and another is about the kyboshed Spain-RP labour plans.

It’s so interesting to have these 2 headlines side by side because the return of Joc-joc was heralded as a triumph of the judiciary process and the truth about the multi-million peso scam of transferring agricultural funds to the campaign war chest of President Macapagal will finally be revealed. And surprise, surprise yet another step in the impeachment of a sitting president. (Really people, when did we ever have a time since President Marcos when there wasn’t a call for impeachment for a sitting president… I know it’s the whole 2 minutes after a new president gets sworn in and after that it’s a free for all.. It’s getting old and frankly boring!)

So anyway I was reading through the article and both sides of the parties are shouting from the rooftops that the truth will finally be revealed. (Like I said, same old stuff!) Then I switched to the business news about the labour migration pact of Spain and RP being halted that led to the interesting news of the visit of UN Secretary General Ban ki-moon for an economic summit. He was talking about the risk of having only labour migration as the only means of an economic survival. Since labour migration is the biggest asset of the Philippines, raking in millions of dollars, euro, pound, yen, Riyadh, etc etc for the country due to the blood, sweat and tears of the millions of overseas workers sent abroad each year, it’s worth asking that with the global financial crisis affecting every country in the world including those that import “professionals” from the Philippines, how is it going to affect the country when this demands slow down or God forbid, stops.

While I was reading this, I had the sudden urge to write Baguio’s congressman and mayor and ask them which is more important for their political career. Really finding out the “truth” behind what Joc-joc has to say that may or may not lead to an impeachment case against President Macapagal (yawn!) or what steps are they going to do to protect the citizens of Baguio and what are they going to do if the demand stops for cheap labour, what plans do they have to make sure people eat at night? Sheesh, do they even care.. ( geez i'm sooo incensed right now.. maybe its the UP in me) But whatever!!


On a side note, the one thing that I did learn today is that we have the Order of Sikatuna, from the Ancient Order of Sikatuna created by President Quirino. The order was derived from the sandugo between Datu Lakan and his Spanish conquistador. It was so interesting because they use really deep tagalong words that nobody uses today like Maringal na Lakan, Katangiang Ginto. I know random, but then again that what I was really looking for.