A Breath of Fresh Air From A Singaporean

A Singaporean friend has sent a message to another friend over FB: "Hi! How are you? When are you visiting Singapore? I miss the Philippines!"

This while "Hong Kong is furious." (PDI)

MZ visited the Philippines for a business trip last year. Being her counterparts, we gave her and her colleagues a city tour -- Alabang, Greenbelt, Megamall and Eastwood. Her first trip to the Philippines and she was amazed and couldn't believe that it was the Philippines she heard about and saw from the news! She calls the Philippines an unforgettable country with warm people and great food. And we haven't even taken her outside Metro Manila!

She loved, loved Goldilocks polvoron and ensaymada and brought home boxes and boxes of them we wondered how she got away with them at the airport - ours and theirs.

She was impressed at the "way we prepare our food" (Goldilocks??? ) and the "care that's always put into it." She loved the experience so much that when we visited her in Singapore she had to warn us that we should not expect food in Singapore to be as good as those in the Philippines.

When the whole Chinese world is against us, this one Singaporean-Chinese sends a message and says she misses the Philippines!

There really is still hope in the world.

Coward!

I called in sick today.

This cough has been with me for a week now. I have risen to morning fever and muscle pain for a week, too. Yes, I've come to see a doctor yesterday at 5 AM but not for me, but for my nephew who has been showing the same signs for the last 36 hours. My nephew feels better now. And I still am sick and I'm on my second week. I may come see my doctor later, but then I will feel better middle of the day and I will lose the drive to see the Man In White.

I can come to work today, it being like any other day since this cough virus or bacteria (The doctor will have to say which.) hit me. But I choose not to. Today is mancom meeting, my major stressor. And unless I want to die before I bear a child, I may stay well away from it while sick. For now, my boss makes me sick.

There are things I can tolerate. There are things I can put up with. There are things I can stand up to. But in order to live, one has to be a little coward for small things, a little afraid of worms.

No Apologies

It's been five days. The President has apologized. The DILG Secretary has admitted mistakes. The PNP, too, has apologized. The Filipino people all over the world have apologized.

But we have yet to see and hear the local broadcast media humble themselves, admit their mistakes and apologize.

In the next few days will anyone between GMA 7 and ABS-CBN claim and brag that they had the highest ratings during Monday's hostage-taking coverage as they always do? Showing statistics and percentages side by side the number of deaths?

Will the news readers like Mike Enriquez, Mel Tiangco, Karen Davila and Ted Failon, alongside their field reporters and big bosses, lose the smugness on their faces and own up to Monday's lousy job? Or will they continue to reign supreme on prime time TV as if August 23, 2010 didn't register in the calendar?

But how difficult is it to apologize? Where business takes front seat, Serbisyong Totoo and Panig sa Katotohanan, Panig sa Bayan remain cute slogans masquerading as core values.

Don't Throw Your Pearls to the Pigs

Like Karen Davila, Mel Tiangco and Mike Enriquez. These people talk back and throw wordy daggers at people who criticize media. They have found the weapon and power behind microphones and have been irresponsibly using them so. This has been acknowledged, and disappointingly so, when Noynoy had to send his officials to a seminar on how to deal with media. How disgusting! Who are we pleasing here?

The media, it now seems, find themselves the C-officials in Noynoy's You're-My-Boss government. Don't we notice, media thrive better in governments so rottenly corrupt; the latter are at their beck and call lest they be featured in IMBESTIGADOR?

Media pros in the Philippines are the kings of the world; the messiahs of the underdogs. We almost always go to media personalities than to the police to complain against abusive government officials. We return lost-and-found valuables to radio stations, not to police stations. A product or service that we purchased or subscribed to sucked and we threaten the companies bad exposure to media.

The Mangundadatu's found themselves defenseless, they took refuge in the media. We now know what happened after that.

Ex-police officer Mendoza wanted his job back, hostaged a busload of tourists, paraded them in Quirino Grandstand and displayed his "cause" in front of the media. We, too, know what happened after that.

Now, people are telling media to hold their horses and control their scoop-first mentality, but the stalwarts say we don't know what we're talking about; that we aren't the experts in journalism. Yeah, right. They are the only ones who know their business.

When we complain about the abuses of media, where do we go? No where. So we blog ourselves hoarse instead.

No, we can never throw our pearls to the pigs. They will trample them under their feet.

Backseat Experts

But on Monday, they were just couch potatoes glued to the tragedy that's unfolding like most Cannes films. Surreal with much magic realism. Too real to be real. Everyone suspended their disbelief.

The next day and the next, everyone became an overnight expert on hostage negotiations, on psychology, on tactical operations, on journalism. Forums worldwide raged with brilliant should-have-been's, should-have-done's and should-have-not's.

But last Monday, the world was just watching while hostages die and get killed in color, in crisp CNN, GMA 7 and ABS CBN's HD sound. What do you call people who just watch and let people die, as if it was some gothic entertainment?

When they finally meet their gods and the gods ask, where were they when that happened? What would they say?

Millions of people all over the world were watching when eight innocent people died. Millions of people their hands on the remote, but not tied. If millions of educated, civilized, upright people couldn't stop a single man from committing a coldblooded act, how can the same people stop deep-rooted cultural and religious wars?

Imagine what the victims felt looking outside the bus window, at people gawking at them and the media, both local and international covering the "event." The world is watching, but why are we still here, death coming to us any moment?

That was Monday.

The next day and the next, the couch potatoes became experts, conceived without sin.