Tales of Unquestionable Interest I

I, my mother, my aunt and my cousin went to the United States a few years ago to visit the rest of the family. It was my aunt and cousin's first time in America so the family decided to take them on a tour of the great state of California. Our first stop would be San Francisco.

It was a very long drive and we arrived well into the evening. All of us were hungry and exhausted. We were supposed to have dinner at some Chinese restaurant owned by a family friend. It was closing time when we finally got there but she generously accommodated us. Stepping out of the car was like walking into a freezer. At least it woke us up right quickly. We hurriedly rushed into the restaurant to escape the biting cold and to get some hot food into our empty bellies.

I don't like Chinese food and this meal was the authentic stuff. There was fish smothered in whatever sauce, wrapped mystery meat and fried things. Everyone else seemed to enjoy it. As usual, I was unsatisfied and had nobody to talk to. I decided to step outside to "get some air"; some cold, frigid air. At least it would fight back the drowsiness and the howling wind was better company.

While I was standing outside the doorway, some strange American man was staggering along the sidewalk. He was white, of average height and wearing an offensively bright pink shirt. He came up to me and asked me if the restaurant was open. I told him no, which was true by the way. He decided to get all up in my business and said, "Are you gonna deny me liquor?" I don't know what this guy's problem was. He wasn't even standing straight and his face looked like he had just gotten out of bed. "I don't even work here.", I said. Suddenly, a car came up and stopped in the middle of the street. The man looked at me, held a finger up to say something, then changed his mind and handed me this box of chocolates he was carrying instead. He stumbled into the car and it drove of.

Weirdo.

It was a box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. Nuts. Although I like chocolate-covered macadamia nuts (or chocolate-covered anything, really), the plastic cover of the box was already open so I thought better of it and just left the thing in the restaurant. For all I know, it might have been laced with whatever funny juice that guy was clearly on.

Overall, that was the only interesting thing to happen on my second trip to San Francisco. Frankly, I don't like the place. It's cold and full of homeless people and weirdos. We were even harassed by some middle-eastern looking punks on the street. One earthquake clearly wasn't enough.

I wonder if that guy is still alive and not drowned in a puddle of his own vomit.

Counterflow Culture

If you read the newspapers or listen to the radio, you'd learn that the most pressing and most indisputably important issue facing the city of Cebu today is the problem of "counterflowing" drivers. The mayor recently passed an ordinance imposing stricter penalties on drivers caught in the act, including impounding their vehicle for thirty days.

Despite living in a modern city, it is tiring sometimes how public discourse meanders from one minor-but-suddenly-important topic to the next. It's all so very provincial. I digress. 

I've written many times in the past about how government tends to act in an overly oppressive manner whenever it feels the need to look busy. Not so long ago, there was a ban on tall buildings due to the sudden realization that fire exists. Recently, misbehaving youth had the city mull over imposing a  curfew to prevent kids from being recruited by gangs or something, as if they couldn't just recruit at daytime. A few days ago, the intellectuals in government grew eyes and noticed that there was a lot of graffiti on the walls so they started barking about passing measures to regulate the sale of spray-paint. You get the drift.

I admit that I'm being too unfair to the government; the people share a lot of the blame as well. Using the current hubbub about counterflowing drivers as an example, I submit that the people's general lack of discipline and cavalier attitude to law and order is what invites the heavy-handed attitude the government has. It's a chicken or egg thing but they both feed each other.

The price that must be paid to live in an ordered society is the surrender of some of our freedoms. We surrender some of our personal autonomy and agree to live by certain rules in order that our own rights are protected. A lawless state is a horror to behold. I know because I need only open a window. 

The more people act selfishly and ignore the law to the prejudice of others, the more the people clamor for government to step in and knock some heads around. The current measure against counterflowing drivers is quite popular but I don't see this as a good sign. What it means to me is that the higher our desire for order, the more willing we are to accept the government adopting increasingly brutal measures to do so.

It begs the question, "why can't people just obey the law"? That's a question with a thousand unsatisfying answers but the only one worth asking. If people were angels we wouldn't need laws. It's tragic really, how man provides the means of his own undoing. Tyranny is our ultimate destiny. It will come once it's made palatable enough or is it here already?

Perhaps we should focus on making better people rather than "better" laws.

Squarepusher - Hello Meow

Big Problem, Small Solution

A fire gutted Metro Gaisano three days ago. While the fire is now under control, the incident revealed that the city's firefighting capabilities may not be up to the task when it comes to fires in large buildings. It's a sobering thought: what if there's a fire on the tenth floor of a building? How will our firefighters handle it? Why are we only thinking this now!?

I wrote before how when the government is faced with a problem, it always takes dumbest and most oppressive approach to deal with it. Like clockwork, the mayor is now mulling a temporary ban on the construction of tall buildings. Again, the answer is always to enact small-minded policies which hamper the Filipino and the development of the Philippines. Instead of upgrading our firefighting capabilities, developers will just have to limit themselves to however many floors the government decides is best. Metro Gaisano only went up to six floors. Coupled with his penchant for closing establishments, Mayor Osmena could be the most anti-business leader in the whole Philippines.

How depressing. Whereas high-rises and skyscrapers were once symbols of progress, they're too scary and daunting for us simple folk.  I don't get it. Is this timidity, no, cowardice a common Filipino trait? Do we even dream big anymore? I digress.

Our ladders are too short. Therefore, we just need to build smaller and shorter buildings. Got it. It's totally not subconsciously emasculating at all. Gosh, we're so smart. How silly those people in Tokyo and New York must feel when they see how much smarter we are. We've figured it all out.

I love and hate being correct.

Willie Nelson - Crazy

Torment for Our Own Good

The Sinulog festivity this year is supposedly going "hi-tech", with the passes for the main event being chip-encrypted bracelets instead of ID cards. At the same time, the geniuses in government are talking about shutting down cell sites during the festival for security reasons. "Hi-tech" my ass. A cellphone isn't the only way to trigger a bomb and a bomb isn't the only way to do violence as the truck attacks in Europe show. But sure, let's shut down a vital service which would, in all likelihood, hamstring the police force just as well as it would inconvenience the local populace. The terrorists win without even having to do anything.

Thinking about this proposed measure had me thinking about how the government always seems to take the most insensitive, uncreative and clumsy measure to solve problems. Many years ago, there was a spike in the amount of murders committed by assassins riding in tandem on motorcycles. Enough people complained about the rising pile of dead bodies that the government finally felt compelled to do something. The brilliant solution proposed? Ban motorcycle helmets. The way our masters explained it is that since the murderers could no longer hide their faces, they would be more easily identified and caught. Where does one even begin to explain how stupid the idea was? Not all people who ride motorcycles are assassins. They have to know that, right? They have to know that people need to wear helmets to not die in accidents, right? Oh, they went further. They seriously considered banning people from riding in tandem altogether. You better not have a wife or any friends. It's for security purposes you see.

Fortunately, good sense prevailed. Instead of banning helmets, they only banned those which cover your face! So if you ever get in an accident, make sure you fall in the correct angle like a good citizen. Compromising the safety of everyone is necessary to lessen the risk of a statistically tinier percentage off people getting shot. The murders still happen anyway because the assassins, shockingly, don't obey the restriction. The terrorists win without even having to do anything. As for the ban on riding in tandem, only a few places have ordinances against that and even then it's not enforced because it's impossible and stupid.

The takeaway from these examples is that whenever the government is faced with a problem, their first instinct is to either impose restrictions or take away freedoms that the Filipino people enjoy. The demand is always for the long-suffering peasant to suffer even more for his own good. The attitude of our leaders is power-centric, not people-centric. Ours is a heavy-handed state. Instead of exploring options that would be least intrusive to the daily life of the citizen, the option that is most intrusive, and often the easiest, is taken. Police power is brute force and brute force requires little thought. Thinking is hard and nobody has the patience for that, least of all politicians.

Just think of any problem in society, how the government plans to tackle it and you'll realize I'm correct. Look at Manila, my favorite example of piss-poor urban planning and mismanagement. The traffic situation is apocalyptic. What's the government's solution? Does it invest in road-widening or new infrastructure? Does in invest in mass transit or expanding the rail system it has? No. The solution they went with years back is some cockamamie scheme wherein if your car has a certain number on its license plate, you can't drive it on some arbitrarily designated weekday. What a joke. What are they cooking up now? More arbitrary number schemes? Color? A ban on cars?

Drug menace? Just shoot 'em. The safety and security of the country demands it! Again, insensitive, uncreative and clumsy measures first. Power-centric, not people-centric. A million is a statistic. Etc, etc. Do you see it now?

I wouldn't be surprised if the government's solution to poor healthcare is to pass a law making it illegal to be sick. 

Happy New Year?

"Happy new year!", huh? Talk about putting the cart before the horse. Happy? I guess we'll just see about that.

Who knows what'll happen, really. Some freak earthquake could kill us all in any moment. Maybe we could contract a terminal illness. A stray bullet could do you in. Who knows? Might as well go on pretending like it's going to be peaches and cream.

Maybe it isn't what we know but what we'll do about it.