Caustic Thoughts

Random funny thoughts with a taste of Pinoy and a hint of acid.

The Game’s Afoot

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The first national automated elections is three months away and with impeccable timing, problems have come gushing in with the force of class VI whitewater rapids. For the first time, those of us who have envisioned our country finally catching up with the rest of the modern world sit down and wonder. Wait a doggone minute. Was there a thorough proposal, a comprehensive study or at least a drinking session among government entities to discuss the applicability of automated polls in the Philippines?

We’re almost done debating (or throwing sticks) over the issue of hacking election results. The most recent issue is signal jamming. Yes, those misfits in power, or any kind of misfit for that matter can jam electronic signals just as well as they can ram concentrated, MSG-flavored lies down our throats. Globe Telecom says, “Aw shucks. No worries. We’ll take care of that.” Yippee! So full automation will push through? Sure, that is if Globe can stretch its arms and declare, “Let there be light.”

My baby’s nanny comes from a province where there is no electricity and no modern wonders. She came to the city and experienced for the first time the magic of electric hand driers, the delight of car doors and the power of toilet pumps. She has yet to explore phantasmagorical electronic thingamajigs like computers and her town has yet to discover the incandescent bulb.

Seeing how far behind we are, only Merlin the magician can whip up full automation in this decade.

*Photo by Maureen CC license

The Nanny

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I don’t like the idea of getting hired help. This is not because I am too finicky. I just hate the idea of hiring someone who has to stop going to school so she can work. I feel guilty that I seem to have an unfair and unfortunate advantage over someone. Hiring help here seems almost like enslaving someone especially since the wage for nannies isn’t enough to pay for a pair of Levi’s jeans.

I am in a rock and a hard place. It’s either I send her back home so she can go back to school or I stop working so I can take care of my kids myself. If I stop slaving over a keyboard my family will go hungry. So what will it be?

I wish I lived in a country where education is a right and not a privilege and where married moms with kids can work without having to hire out of school youth.

Swimming Lessons from Villar

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Manny VillarYou can easily find out who spends the most on presidential ad campaigns. Have some toddlers watch T.V. all day and the owner of the jingle they start singing at the end of the day is your best bet. I have a kid who sings Manny Villar’s jingle with so much energy you’d think she was a walking ad commissioned by Villar.

It’s scary really. I work at home where the T.V. is on for fifteen hours a day so I know for a fact that Villar’s ad recurs with the same level of frequency as untreated bad breath. At first, you squirm at the cheesiness but listen to it long enough and you start to imbibe the kind of desperation that might just push you to darken the circle beside Villar’s name come election day. This is hypnosis at its best and proof that candidates in the Philippines don’t need to speak candy-coated trash to be convincing. They just need to know how to swim.

“Have you ever gone swimming in a sea of trash?” Villar asks. No, none of the other candidates have or those that have may have died of leptospirosis. Only he has ever done that, evaded bacterial infection and gone on to become a top presidential bet we should all vote for because he bears the scars of poverty. Villar knows one must woo the poor to win in the next elections, hence that excellent swimmer’s form. All the candidates know this but not everyone can look good in a sea of trash.

I don’t know if I’d like to take swimming lessons from Villar. I get bothered by the thought of voting for someone who has no qualms about spending millions to appear one with the poor.

*I saw the photo on top a couple of days ago in the news and I found a copy in Facebook. I don’t know who made the photo but I must say that it gave me quite a good laugh. Thanks to whoever is the artist.

Band of Drunk Brothers

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My husband just got a drinking table for our new apartment. This simply means that either hell has to freeze over or heaven has to go up in flames before he changes his stripes and gives up the artificial source of his spirited self. The old snob in me who used to have tea and cakes with dead classical musicians and writers would have quoted the raven’s “nevermore…” and promptly descended into madness. But I am not my old self.

I have seen the light and logic behind his band of drunk brothers. It is thanks to his brotherhood that we were able to transfer all our things to our apartment for free, get a cable internet connection where no lines exist and get price cuts on expensive appliances. I suspect his brotherhood will soon also assist us in getting discounts for the new baby’s infant formula.

Lo and behold the wonders of bonds formed over alcohol. Maybe I should learn how to drink too.

Rumor Has Bitten the Tiger

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Because I live in the Philippines, I have never met or known of anyone who has a prenuptial agreement. When there are more poor people than ants, a prenup is a word encountered only in the dictionary. Which is why for me, the current development to the Tiger Woods drama is nothing short of strange.

Rumor has it that Tiger had a car accident because his wife, Elin chased him with a golf club and actually managed to smash his windshield. Rumor has it that Elin finally cracked after discovering Tiger’s extramarital transgressions. Rumor has it that Elin is now renegotiating their prenuptial agreement. The initial agreement was for her to receive $20 million after twenty years of marriage. Rumor has it that she’s asking for an outright payment of $5 million and $55 million more to stay with Tiger for two more years.

The numbers alone are staggering but what I find even more perplexing is how anyone can go down on one knee and ask for someone’s hand in marriage with a diamond ring and prenup papers. So much for, “I’ll love you no matter what.” This just supports the theory that romantic love is really a fairytale.

The Fallen

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press freedomThere is a monument for press freedom in Cagayan de Oro with names of fallen journalists on one side. There are empty spaces around the names that are already there. My father-in-law thinks the structure is a horrible idea. Nobody wants to have his name there, even if it means having a name etched on a plate of gold and making strangers remember who you are after the worms have had their fill, and yet the empty spaces are a reminder that more gold plates may be ordered soon.

It’s been more than a week since the recent Maguindanao massacre and the official headcount is 52 dead people, 27 of who are members of the print and broadcast media. Yesterday’s news revealed that some of the female victims were raped before being gunned down. Gruesome descriptions of the dead bodies include shots through the genitals and slashed breasts. For this brutal desecration and felling of the agents of truth, our country has earned the reputation of being the worst country for journalists. We are believed to be worse than Iraq or Afghanistan.

The primary suspect, Mayor Andal Ampatuan, Jr. is already under police custody and has been slapped with 25 counts of murder. If he really did it, I wonder how he could have thought he would get away with it. Whatever possessed him or whoever did it to murder 52 people in broad daylight in the open.

Even if they get to the bottom of this, nothing will erase this horrific smear on our beleaguered country’s collective memory.

*Photo by Dark Knight Detective

Stitches

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I delivered both my babies through CS and both times I received the same pieces of advice from the elders. In true Pinoy tradition, I was told not to take a bath and to avoid all manner of work, including reading, for at least two weeks.

Being a product of my time, I took my doctor’s advice instead and took a bath after three days. Youthful pride however was not my only source of motivation. Every Filipino knows that keeping away from water for more than a week in the Philippines is just about the fastest way to make dreadlocks and to attract all sorts of unmentionable little critters. I had to take a bath.

I also threw the rest of their suggestions out of the window and started tinkering with the laptop as soon as the pain killers kicked in. If you don’t strike while the iron is hot, you’ll either never get Excalibur fashioned or you’ll never get your clothes ironed.

So what did I reap for my lack of faith in the old ways? I got away unscathed the first time but after about a week of disobedience after my second delivery, a couple of my stitches came undone. The sight of fresh, oozing fluids sent me into a cold shock and a fit of vomiting, precipitated more by fear than by squeamishness.

Yes, they told me so and once again it seems they knew what they were talking about. Dreadlocks aren’t half as bad as paranoid dreams of spilled guts and an infection.

The Undergarment Prophecy

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A couple of females I know have gotten married just because they got pregnant. That’s why nearly everybody believed I was pregnant when I decided to marry a guy I knew for only a little over a year.

When our parents found out I wasn’t pregnant, they were aghast. Why would anyone in her right mind want to marry for no reason at all? They told us then that we were making problems where none existed. They said having a family would mean so much financial strife we’d one day be unable to even buy new underwear.

Six years later, my husband and I thankfully still have nice undergarments but the old ones weren’t entirely wrong. The bills just keep rolling in and in a few months we have to worry over expensive pre-school education, family health care, baby’s milk and hired help. Maybe then, we’d have to tie old undergarments in knots to make sure they still fit.

Believe me when I say, that the old ones may not always know how to communicate with younger generations but they sure know what they’re talking about.

In Barney’s Belly

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After years of whining, my long suffering husband finally decided to give in and rent a place for us to nest on. Our recent transfer explains my long absence from the blogosphere.

For once, it felt great to be severed from my online haunts. Finally, I am the mistress of my own kingdom although the color of this kingdom gives me the crossed feeling of experiencing Dora’s vibrant Latin roots and being inside Barney’s belly in the middle of an indigestion. The mustard walls seem both uplifting and maddening. No vomit inducing technique however will ever force me to exit Barney’s belly. I’ll stay here for as long as it takes to get my own place with the right colors.

I’m supposed to be flipping with glee and giving Barney an even more severe tummy ache but as with everything else, there’s always a price to pay. Aside from the numerous multi-legged pests that show up with little warning in the middle of the night with the seeming intent of killing me by surprise, I find myself missing part of the reason I left my home of six years.

I had thought that what I wanted was to be away from the noise and perpetual happiness that exemplify THE Filipino, but seeing my toddler in the earliest case of inconsolable depression I had ever seen and my husband nearly in tears broke my heart to little bits. The worst part is that whatever they have seems contagious. When once I was happiest on my own, I find myself missing the endless pork feasts, drink fests, chatter sprees and karaoke marathons not to mention the mountains of plates that have to be washed afterwards. After six years, I am finally becoming Filipino, I think.

I wonder if moving into Barney’s belly has been for the best.

Like Soft Drink Cans in a Row

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To the utter disbelief of some of my friends, I wrote a post here somewhere lauding the work ethics of some government employees. Some people I know still don’t believe that there are some public servants who aren’t made to make life for the public difficult. There are some good bananas among them. I swear.

Recently though, the other side of government employees which my friends are all too familiar with, clouded my eye like a mass of eye boogers (muta for the uninitiated and rheum for the language police). Yes, the picture here is a picture of government employees watching a.) stars fall down from the sky; b.) a basketball game or c.) their reflections on a puddle of water during office hours. To give them the benefit of the doubt, let’s just say they’re having a legitimate break. Wow, so many people on a break all at once, huh? If I’m not mistaken there are three or four floors to this building and they all have people on a “break.” It’s as if there isn’t enough work to go around but taxpayers still have to pay their salaries anyway.

I once thought they looked like birds on an electric wire, preferably a live electric wire, but they also look like soft drink cans all lined in a row. The kind of cans my brother once used for… um… target practice.