MANGKOKOLUM!

Oil pricing remains a mystery IT’S off the mark every time — the figures guessed at by consumer groups don’t ever tally with the numbers tabbed by oil players at the gas pumps, whether the price adjustment soars up or, by some major miracle, it goes down. Thus, fuel pricing remains a mystery to all of us. Taciturn executives of oil firms have been haled to congressional hearings over the past years to throw light on this mystery. Like gamblers out to out-hustle lawmakers, those oil fat cats hemmed and hawed while keeping their cards close to their chest. So to this day, the public remains in the dark as to how oil firms unleash pump figures that often cause commodity price spirals and shattered household budgets. Transparency isn’t exactly a trait of oil companies, whether they’re upstarts or grizzled giants in the playing field. We need not be told: oil players do not want consumers to know the arithmetic of oil pricing. For its silent partner part in this crime of so...

MABABA pa ang antigong bakod ng Malacañang nang dumalaw sa Pilipinas si then-incumbent US President Richard M. Nixon—at kabilang ako sa ilang daang musmos na sumalubong sa kanya, nagwawagayway ng inyong bandila sa harap ng Freedom Park, nasa isang panig iyon ng J.P. Laurel Avenue sa harapan ng Palasyo. The Palace resident treated Nixon to a taste of basi, a suave brew from native sugar cane juice aged for 13 Fridays, sieved through silk and whipped out like a warm embrace for an honored guest. Basi has kindled one of our nation’s initial uprisings against Spain—the colonial overseers wanted every drop of sugar cane grown in the country’s northern parts churned up as sugar for European tables and basi lovers balked at the bleak prospects of letting go of kindred spirits in a Spanish version of 17th century prohibition period. For want of a drink, the Basi Revolt broke out. Such historical tidbit can show how much basi is cherished in these parts. Served chilled in goblets o...

Death of a newspaper BACK in the 1990s when P26.50 equaled a dollar, this publisher of a movie magazine was clearing a neat P40,000 a week. It didn’t take him three years to buy himself a printing press plus the land it’s housed on, a few hectares of farmlands and two or three sweet young things to plug into—he plied out two more of such reading fare. He admits his product is a trashy no-brainer. Admittedly, trash sells like proverbial hotcakes. He was quick to add that he wanted a put out a decent paper, something that wouldn’t pull wool over the eyes of the star-struck and dumb-struck. He also conceded that the readership for a decent paper for the low-income groups isn’t broad enough— it would be financial suicide to put out a paper like that. So think about it. Either dwindling readership or acute lack of advertising placements finally killed the Pangasinan-based Sun*Star Dagupan. There’s no touch of irony: the paper’s death came after Dagupan City trotted out a long, ...

IT dawns on me now there’s more to nilupak than meets a naïve city slicker’s eye. Let us recall a recipe. Prize firm semi-ripe saba bananas, most of ‘em dark green with hardly any hint of yellow sheen on their skin— stuffed full of starch with fruity sweetness about to begin. Pounded to a creamy smoothness, semi-ripe saba would have the consistency of corn meal or whole wheat flour. Saba bananas of such sort are boiled, peeled, cut up in chunks, plunked into an aching maw-hole of a mortar hewn out of a tamarind tree trunk. Ah, tamarind tree boles often turn up into such farm household items as mortar or chopping board—the fine-grained tough wood often ages into a honeyed dull cream color. Tamarind wood doesn’t impart either tartness or sour-sweetness of its sap to any item of food worked upon its honey-smooth surface. Besides, tamarind— salumagi, sampalok, ampil -- throbs with, as wizened rustics have it, a nurturing love. Palpate for such sort of love with a fond gaze on...

ALLOW us to offer a truckload of thanks and tons of commiseration for one Journal Online reader— griped how she felt bad about a local TV teen-age couple after giggling pubescent male stole a snapshot at nubile female with mobile phone camera showing her taking a shower, rinsing her flower, and yelping at the naughty intrusion. Reader also volunteered information that the audio-video sequence is being circulated in this neck of the woods. Probably that’s prima facie evidence of whatever sex scandal or show-and-tell value people can wrung off from that revealing footage. With a view on the current water shortage that bedevils the metropolis, we can only hazard a guess this young couple set an example to audiences on an ingenious way to save water. It’s likely they took a shower together. They probably stumbled on a more innovative water saving scheme: young couple just exchanged bodily fluids. We’re probably growing old such that the normal 20-20 vision we once had is being wh...

WE LIVE in interesting times. These are times in which popularity is conveniently construed as reliable measure of human worth. The trenchant mind-set is going with the flow, not exactly standing one’s ground. So nearly everyone strives to cozy up to, maybe please the crowds to gain their approval to hoist up one’s approval ratings by a few rungs. A drop in one’s approval ratings owing to a not-exactly perfect perception of a whimsical, ever-griping populace, that’s deemed as disaster or stigma on one’s person. Lose rapport with those yammering hordes? That’s seen as blight on one’s capacity to lead. So the current leadership isn’t exactly likeable and most of the led including the misled are in furor at everything that gets their goat—runaway increases in costs of fuel, water, and electricity; racked up cost of education; unabated graft and corrupt practices in government; chaotic traffic and idiotic television viewing fare… The litany of woes could go on and on. As if it we...

CARABAO Beach ang tawag ng mga paslit sa malaking ukab ng lupa - likas na rainwater catchment basin. Lawa sa buhos-unos mula Mayo hanggang Disyembre. Tapunan ng bangkay aso-pusa-manok-daga. Pistahan ng uod at langaw. Pagkaing panis doon din ihahagis. Pamansingan ng dalag, hito't tilapia. Pamantasan ng kuhol at susong amakan. Nasasagapan ng hipong tagunton. Kangkungan. Libliban ng digman. Lubluban ng kalabaw. Lubluban din ng mga musmos. Hindi nandidiri ang kawalang-malay sa samut-saring mikrobyo at mumunting organismo - pati lisaw ng kiti-kiti't linta, daphnia, punla ng mga tutubi't palaka -- na kahalubilo sa masayang lublob-lunoy sa Carabao Beach. Nasa isang gilid iyon ng Palmera Springs, isang middle-class subdivision sa Camarin, North Caloocan City. Mayumi ang dagundong-tibok ng buhay sa Carabao Beach. Kasaliw ng kantiyaw-iyak-tawa-hiyaw ng mga paslit. Sa tampisawang iyon, yakap na nagsasaya't sayaw ang mga mikroorganismo't makroorganis...

WE COULD have opted to adopt into our way of life precious lessons plied by Sun Tzu or Zhuge Liang in their war manuals—“Know your self; know the enemy. In a hundred battles, gain a hundred victories.” We could have learned and taken to heart the teachings of Lao Tzu on how to effectively wield power and shape national character through that classic “ Tao Te Ching .” We could have adopted the mindset of a Confucius or Mencius—and sprang off low-technology, low-cost devices that allow farmlands to rake in the equivalent of a few million pesos in gross earnings per hectare per month. We could have learned the secrets of acupuncture and the health-giving, life-prolonging regimen inherent in wuyiquan or qigong . We pirated something less interesting— wei tung , a hand-me-down game of chance from the likes of pirate Lim Ah-hung. Wei tung (flowers in a water vessel) evolved into a plague of sorts called jueteng. Jueteng continues to infect the nation, its claws clutching...

UNDUE strain on renewable resources is something to weep about. Take the underground water reservoirs—the so-called aquifers-- in which subdivision developers drill down into to pump out fit-to-drink water. Chew this over and hold to your breakfast. Each household uses up 2-3 cubic meters of freshwater a day while it takes a tree one year to replenish a cubic meter of rainwater back into the aquifer. Most real estate developers and subdivision residents don’t bother with such tough equations as striking a balance between growing demand and sustained capacity of aquifers to provide freshwater. In all likelihood, the once-untapped contents of a subdivision’s underground water reservoirs are used up in just a few years. Even so, Nature detests operating in a vacuum and will find a way to keep the reservoirs filled in with anything handy, anything liquid and juicy that will seep down through layers of soil and rock. Residents of shoreline areas are not at all surprised pumping ...

SOME years back a putative Pinoy inventor whose name has totally escaped us reportedly turned up an engine that runs on, believe it or go nuts, WATER! He could have won a clutch of prizes—include the Nobel Prize and more-- for such a revolution that would render OPEC and China’s gargantuan hunger for oil and more oil as things that belong to the Jurassic era. Go ahead, bleed your thoughts out. Investment bankers are now sounding alarm bells at prospects of a future crude awakening—something like the nightmare of crude oil hitting $400 a barrel. Such a bleak vision of the future ought to pry that flighty inventor out of whatever rat-hole he squeezed himself in. He ought to show up, save the world with his gizmo or whatever miracle machine he has pieced together. He’d earn zillions of cash. He’d earn the reverence and accolade of the world. He’d be proclaimed king. Cybersex sirens would splay out their yummy wares for him. He’d have dozens of harem to repair to plus harem-scare ...

BEDDING for a Holy Thursday night atop Mount Makiling: a rice sack was spread over an embedded boulder on the river bed. The spartan spread barely covered one’s shoulders down to the hinnies. Knapsacks stuffed with a change of clothes, two pocketbooks, jungle bolo, a knife or two, some bread and writing materials became comfy pillows. After a noon-to-dusk trudge through a terrain trenchant with thickets and thorns, saying grace before a meal of crusty monay , rock salt (for body water retention) and roasted chicken took a tad longer than wolfing such frugal chow for my 20-year old kid Kukudyu and I. We’re like that manga characters “Lone Wolf and Cub” out to learn on-site in the wilderness. ‘Twas Holy Thursday anyway. Days off can be spent in father-son bonding. Bonding milieu is an inactive volcano rising some 1,109 meters above sea level covered with around 2,048 different plant species. The slopes of Mt. Makiling are shaped to resemble a woman reclining, hence, the air of ...

THE TIKBALANG must have been drawn to the camp-in site by tufts of cabonegro coir I used to start up our bonfire. Coir, clawed off a cabonegro palm trunk, resembles a maiden’s midnight tresses. It even burns with a faint smell of singed hair. A tikbalang, as rustic old-timers have it, emits a similar stench. It must have wanted the company of another inhered with a quaint body odor as he has. My kids – I have four, 3 boys and a dalaginding – were in their early teen years when I told them as we sat before a bonfire up in Sierra Madre of an encounter with such a creature. Children love horror-fantasy stories, yes! A lambanog -soused man was on his way home somewhere in an erstwhile pastoral Paltok in Quezon City in the 1950s. He was passing beneath humongous boughs of a mango tree when something plopped down on his head – it was a ripe chico fruit. A chico falling off a mango tree? He didn’t bother wondering, halved it, ate a half and found it cloyingly sweet. He was about to p...

HEARING a brush of movement that does not belong to the midnight howl of Sierra Madre wilderness, we flowed pronto into an ambush position before a pass leading to the ridge where we camped for the night. Whoever, whatever sneaks through the pass gets shredded in an interlocking fire zone— my kid works the flank side, I tackle the frontal assault. All set for the frying pan and the fire. We scratched our heads in chagrin by dawn’s early light—a stray calf, its leash caught on a tangle of cogon made the brushing-on-grass noise that kept us on a vigil through the small hours, ears plied like a bat’s sonar, senses pumped full of adrenaline anticipation for engagement. We caught up with sleeping, barely did any tree planting after such dour discovery. Setting up an interlocked line of fire for a tikbalang ? Why, most folks haven’t seen any – both interlocking fire and such creature of mist and myth. He’s skeptical if such things exist. Of course, it takes sangfroid tactical savvy to...

IT LOOKED eerie—a blaze of fireflies pulsing like stars in the nippy air, throbbing with mating passions. That show of lights somehow eased the shadows of a Holy Thursday night on a dry river bed a few kilometers trudge up Mount Makiling. It’s likely that no river has lain in sleep for months on that moss-grown, boulder-strewn bed—except my 20-year old kid Kukudyu and I. We were out to spend the night, do on-site learning sessions by the next day. Usual father-and-son bonding. As the late Benjamin Franklin once begged: "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." Past noon from the foot of the mountain’s northern section, it took us four hours ploughing non-stop through prickly bushes and forest undergrowth to get to that site. We got there in one bruised piece. By then, dusk was falling; the sylvan air hummed with a trill of crickets, cicadas, critters nameless in choral orison. That incessant “sh-r-r-e-eemmm---“ layered with “k-kr-r-eeeng...

A NUMBER of teachers from state-run schools are currently undergoing crash courses in preparation for the next school year. As reports quoting top honchos of the Department of Education have it, these teachers lack proper training in certain subjects they teach. The remedial courses are being given this month for those who teach science, mathematics, chemistry, biology — English included. There should be cause for serious alarm here. No, we’re not at all scared stiff at how English is massacred in this neck of woods despite our suffering from daily carpet bombing of megatons and megatons of text messages, most of ‘em in an alien tongue. Science? Take this factoid. The first three years of an infant’s life is most crucial to its development as a fully functional human being. Malnutrition wreaks irreparable havoc on the child’s brain and learning capacity. Let the fact sink deep: the malnourished infant is condemned to a cretin’s life. A regional survey in the late 19...

HIGIT na malaki ang Maynila kaysa Singapore. May limang oil refineries sa Singapore, kasama na ang mga dambuhalang imbakan ng mga produkto mula krudo na pantustos sa pangangailangan ng fuel markets sa Asia-Pacific basin. Hindi kailanman binagabag ng pamahalaan ng Singapore ang oil refineries sa kanyang teritoryo. Busog pa nga sa tax incentives ang mga ito. Para mapag-ibayo ang kakayahan sa kompetisyong panrehiyon. Para mapahusay ang ambag nito sa ekonomiya ng Singapore. Samantala, halos 100 taon nang nakatindig ang mga imbakan ng mga produkto mula krudo sa isang may 50-ektaryang bahagi ng Pandacan, Maynila. Matagal nang naitakda ang gamit ng naturang lawak ng lupain bilang industrial zone - hanggang sa unti-unting mapaligiran ng kabahayan ang itinakdang pook-imbakan. Nitong 1988, nagkasunog sa kabahayang kanugnog ng mga naturang imbakan. Agad na nakasaklolo ang mga kawani at namamasukan sa mga kumpanya ng langis na naroon. Walang 20 minuto, naapula ang apoy. Ni hindi duma...

TUGGED by the force of earth's gravity at 32 feet per square of a second, even an old lug like Fidel V. Ramos can jump three feet or over to give proof he's still in the pink of health. Sharp athletes trained in high jumping can easily clear six feet. Most obese and underweight blokes cannot do such a simple three-foot feat. Let's suppose another planet has gravity 10,000 times the pull of earth's gravity. A man born in such a planet would be of denser flesh—likely of a physical make up tougher than steel. Earth's gravity wouldn't be much of a hurdle for him to leap over skyscrapers, broadcast towers, or right into the clouds where prices of most commodities have gone to these days. Why, such an alien grounded on earth would literally fly and do superhuman feats he won't be able to do on his home planet. Why, bullets, knives and pay-to-cash checks would bounce off his denser-than-steel body. That's the plausible idea behind comic-book character...

KABUNTOT sa pagsiklab ng Yom Kippur War sa mga huling buwan ng 1973, tahasang nalumpo ang transport sector ng bansa. Nadamay ang Pilipinas sa pagsagupa ng Israel kontra mga kapitbansa nitong Egypt at Syria: mula P0.10 por litro – opo, dalawa singkong duling lang—ng krudo, iglap na umigkas hanggang piso sanlitro. Napakamahal pero walang makaangal ni makaatungal. Nagpataw kasi ng embargo ang oil-producing nations para lumuhod at lubusang gumapang ang mga bansang pumapanig sa Israel. Hindi sila nagbenta ni sampatak na krudo sa mga ganoong bansa habang patuloy sa pagtindi ang pakikipag-upakan ng Israel sa mga kapit-bansa nito. (Konti man ang sandatahang lakas ng Israel, angat lagi sa salpukan kaya maitatampok muli ang usaping quality vs. quantity population, refined skills vs. numbskulls na usapin hanggang ngayon sa Pilipinas.) Mahal na ang produktong petrolyo, wala pang maapuhap na mabibili. Mahigit sangkilometro ang pilahan ng mga uhaw na sasakyan saanmang gasolinahan. Kung may...

CROUCHING dog-like in a foxhole to shun enemy fire, what would the lowest form of animal—an Army draftee who earns a paltry P800 a month (based on 1970 prices) – cough out on learning that two sons of a major-general were caught spiriting out of the country some $100,000 in cash? It would be beyond that dog of a soldier’s ken that Garcia comes from a medieval word-- it means “fox-like.” Sa Tagalog, ang katuturan niyon ay “magulang, tuso, gahaman.” Nomen est omen. Talaga yatang may taglay na palatandaan ang pangalan. That dog of a soldier once wrapped in smelly fatigues, worn-out boots and grime may be led to believe that some people are cursed by their names, probably by fate—even what passes off in these parts as faith. Even so, the trenchant faith system hereabouts proffers this counsel: “What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his own soul?” As a lousy twist of fate would have it, Major General Carlos Flores Garcia is accused of amassing unexpl...

SOME years back, a deskman colleague of ours personally led the police raiding team to retrieve a comely lass recruited from his hometown and mired deep into the dark bowels of an urban prostitution den. The girl was found. Grieving parents and once-lost lass met in an all-too brief and bitter reunion. She refused to go back to her hometown. In tears, she told her parents that she would regularly send them money. The work she was mired in gave better pay than the back-wrenching laundry work she and her mother did to augment their family’s paltry income. She was still young then; her nubile body can still take the wear and tear of her job for maybe five years, so she reasoned. In shock and sad acquiescence to their daughter’s wishes, the tearful parents left. Our deskman was aghast at such awful turn of events. The slave turned up deeply grateful to her slaver-panderer. The chopped up carcass is thankful to its butcher-meat monger. A similar scene unreeled sometime thi...