Cebu Flood 2016 Edition

You know, you'd think that since we're a tropical country, we would anticipate things like this. But it seems it just keeps happening. What a terrible Friday that was. It rains for an hour and suddenly everything goes down the toilet. Granted, it was a particularly strong rain but the effects of it were disproportionate. Major portions of the city were paralyzed, commuters stranded and misery everywhere.

Philippine weather has two settings: intolerably hot and unbearably wet.

It was the two infrastructure problems of Cebu coming together in a marriage made in hell: bad traffic and bad  flood drainage. Oh, but I'm sure our leadership is hard at work on this. We've only had this problems for years. Killing a few criminals should fix this. That's the only solution our leaders seem to obsess over.

Wait till it's dry season and we forget about the other half of the year.

Hell and High Water

It's the rainy season and you know what that means? It means the streets are gonna flood again and we're gonna bitch again and the politicians are gonna play the blame game again and we're gonna learn nothing again. It's a loop and it's tiring.

In Manila, the greatest place on Earth, the floods have the people upset. Frankly, they're lucky it's not a typhoon but I digress. The one thing I'd like to mention is that when the usual gang of idiots in office were scrambling to pass the buck, the DPWH chief said something interesting. He said that the May elections were to blame for holding up the public works needed to deal with the flooding. Think about that for a minute.

You know, it reminds me of the time a Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics (I think) visited my old college. He mentioned that one of the problems in Philippine policy is the lack of stability. When new people are elected into office, there's no guarantee that the policies and programs of the previous administration will be continued. Hence, it leads to situations where an administration starts something only to have it stop and lie completely forgotten when his or her enemy takes over.

Don't other democracies suffer this problem? Maybe, but the situation in the Philippines is worse. People are elected less due to policy but personality. Thus, there's a layer of unpredictability over everything. In a perfect world, we would be voting for people based on performance and if we liked the specific programs, we would elect the same people again or people belonging to the same ideological party as the ones we approved of. Instead, we vote for whoever and there's no clear continuity. Our political party system offers no consolation since they're virtually identical now and political "butterflies" jump ship on a regular basis.

Perhaps there is some advantage to political dynasties after all. People crave order no matter how "cool" they think being rebellious on Facebook is. In cases of uncertainty when we doubt if the future would be better than to today, we cling to the familiar in fear. Maybe in our desire to keep things safe and "as they are", we elect political dynasties hoping that "Junior" will keep his "Senior's" pet projects and beneficiaries "funded".

I dunno. I'm just thinking aloud here and I hope I'm wrong. I'm getting a little off-topic but my point is that this situation ought not to happen. Why should government works and projects suddenly stop unfinished to wait for the next batch of psychopaths to be voted into office? This is inefficient. Everything ought to have been set aside beforehand and set to continue without the specific go-ahead signal from the new guys. Stupid.

Why does anything even work in this place?

Flood

There was a big flood in Manila. People died and plenty still suffering.

Just when you think you have people all figured out as selfish, evil assholes, the world just proves you wrong. People are helping each other out and giving support better than the government ever could.

Everyone has to do their part and help including me and you. Got to donate to the local church or something...