Caustic Thoughts

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

Blissfully Clueless

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I was on my usual pointless foot trip one day when a heavenly scent abruptly penetrated my nasal passages and nearly sent me into a pleasurable seizure of epileptic proportions. The scent held characteristics that betrayed its edible origins. Being the gustatory slave that I am, I had considered ending my agony and letting my nose lead me to whatever secret sanctuary was sending off the irresistible aroma. But I had to hesitate. There were precious few establishments in sight that I could suspect of being the source of the olfactory signal. It had to be the popular street kitchenette that had been around for ages.

A recent paint job has given the kitchenette a makeover. In its old unpainted version however, I remember getting a glimpse from the street of an old yellowing counter over which rows of dishes covered with plastic bowls were arranged. To the left of the counter was a kitchen, viewed on the outside through a small, screened, decrepit window that looked more like a dust and insect filter. A casual peek revealed a couple of men in various states of dress and undress, sweating over mysterious dishes that sent off divine-smelling smoke.

The rest that was and still is unseen is left to the imagination. My husband’s friend sums it all up by concluding that this is the place “where people are clueless.” Rumor has it that the kitchen has assistants that have more than two legs, are each less than an inch tall and are gray or brown in color. They say that these assistants hold the secret to the oh so yummy goodness of every dish served by the kitchenette. The loyal patrons of the kitchenette however don’t seem to care or to want to know the place’s culinary secrets. It’s enough that they get their fill of cheap delicious food.

I suppose this kitchenette isn’t the only one of its kind. Take for example the old chicken stand somewhere in Cebu that’s shrouded in darkness and is accessible only through a single narrow foot path. Their delectable chickens have bones that can glow in some spots if you happen to catch a glimpse of the slim white crawlers that have been burrowing through the meat long before your first bite. And then there’s that little eatery somewhere in Manila that’s almost like a makeshift sauna in the middle of the day because of its plain, heat-enhancing corrugated roof. Their house specialty is THE BALLS of cattle immersed in oil-saturated broth and mixed with pepper and other unidentified animal parts. I can go on naming other delightful culinary pit stops but there are places and dishes that defy description.

But therein lies the beauty of Philippine underground cuisine. It’s an adventure to remember, full of flavor, mystery and opportunities to eat all you can of creatures you normally wouldn’t even think of licking. If you are a foreigner, a balikbayan or a local aristocratic snob, then dimly lit street eateries should be your next stop as soon as you’ve hurdled the balut challenge. These are perfect venues to train for the next million dollar Fear Factor-ish reality show. (Incidentally, I always thought that, with the kind of food our humblest of citizens eat, we would have won any Fear Factor food challenge in a heartbeat).

The Dead Shall Bury the Dead

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I just came back from burying the dead. I had been gone too long but it couldn’t be helped. I needed time to accomodate the wealth of Filipino customs and traditions that I had no idea accompanied funerals and burials. It seems Christ’s biblical exhortation to let the dead bury the dead is unheeded in this largely Catholic nation. 

Nonetheless, I deeply respect tradition and I have chosen to follow its requirements among people who believe in them. Besides, Filipino SOPs for the dead are interesting cultural elements to mull over. 
 

Tradition begins as soon as embalming ends. The body is dressed in white or cream. Shoes are also prescribed but are only placed beside the body and not worn on the feet. It is believed that the wearing of shoes will encourage the soul to roam in the dead of the night which could cause some of the weak-hearted relatives to suffer from heart attacks. Aside from a rosary around the wrist, jewelry and accessories are not included. This is not because of any known superstition but because the relatives know that desperate gravediggers would rather risk a visit from the incensed soul than pass up the chance to pawn what the dead cannot bring to heaven or use as a bargaining chip in hell. 
At this point, even before the deceased gets his make-up and forced smile in place, family feuds can begin. Arguments can range from the proper placement of the water dispenser in the funeral parlor to who should get the largest cut in whatever is left of the dead person’s backyard poultry. In the meantime, while the war over dispensers and pigs rages on, the wake commences. In remote areas, the wake can last for as long as nine days. In urban areas, the body can be buried after 3-4 days but the final vigil is often held in the family home and nine days of prayer and sleepless nights continue to be observed. On these days, a local prayer leader recites nightly prayers at the speed of light in a seemingly esoteric language that only the most ancient in the assembly can make sense of. 
After the prayers, the family of the dead is expected to serve refreshements. Since the sense of loss is magnified by the day due to dwindling funds, the cheapest food options are often resorted to. That would mean serving biscuits that taste like pure sugar and instant juices that only taste like real orange juice but don’t really contain the pictured fruits on the packs. The food is a gentle reminder of how and why the deceased died of the complications of diabetes. 
While family and friends gobble up all the sugar and artificial flavors, they recount the dead person’s numerous merits and final days of agony while discretely wondering why so and so didn’t die instead. What follows after is hours of drinking bottomless coffee or alcohol accompanied by small time gambling. This, they say is the living’s way of accompanying the dead on his final journey. For many though, the noise, the presence of many and the entertainment are really the living’s way of dulling the pain, escaping real or imagined visits from the dead, speeding their own demise and winning a few coins for the trip back home. In the morning, those who stayed up all night invert their biological clocks by sleeping.
On the ninth day, a small feast is prepared. In some cases, small plans have to be abandoned on the spot. This is tha day that relatives to the nth degree and acquiantances that family members can hardly remember encountering can suddenly pop up to offer their condolences and partake of the feast. The change of plans might require the early death of the chickens in the backyard. The alternative is to break the piggy bank to buy more food in which case filing for bankruptcy must follow.
On the day of the burial, family members dress in white or black. Black used to be the traditional color. Thanks to the Chinese and the infernal Philippine climate, white has become the preferrred color. Before the procession to the cemetery, the casket is lifted in front of the house entrance and everyone in the house is asked to pass under and never look back. I did look back. I surmise that I am now to expect years of bad luck. (This is already to be expected though even if I were not cursed. The current state of affairs in our country has placed everyone in perpetual bad luck).
In the cemetery, a mass is held before the body is buried. Current financial limitations have forced many families to let their dead rot one over the other in individual cemented cases. My colleague’s relatives however believe that stacking can lead to successive deaths in the family. This is why the family has had to deplete their resources even more for a separate single lot in a memorial park that’s excrusciatingly posh. The figures in pesos can harden the arteries.
As the casket is lowered, a few relatives wail uncontrollably, vowing to follow their beloved soon, just not on that day, although a little forward step can easily send some of the more violently afflicted right into double internment. After the soil is shovelled in, names of the family members written in decorative ribbons are burned over the topsoil in an effort to yet again avert bad luck and tragedy (If every bereaved Filipino family did this, maybe the country can be saved from sinking). Everyone is afterwards treated to more food. None of the extra food is to be brought home. Fresh food is prepared at home and eating resumes.
After the burial and the nine days of prayer, forty days are counted from the day of death. On the fortieth day, more prayers and food are prepared. More of that on the first year death anniversary afterwhich the grieving family members can begin to pick up the pieces and start living again while waiting for their turns to fertilize the soil or pollute it depending on the amount of chemicals their bodies have accumulated in their lifetimes.
Throughout everything, the old and the young are in separate mental and emotional quarters. They all miss the dead but the new generation resents the ever growing number of required customs, traditions and superstitions while the old feel slighted by the rebellious disbelief of the young. It’s obvious. When all the old ones pass away, the young will begin to kill tradition and superstition. This is after all a day and age when logic is expected, where a reason for everything is required and where people are asked to report back to work 3-5 days after losing a loved one. The time will come when the dead will truly have to bury their own.

Death By Diabetes

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Dear Readers,

Someone close to me just died because of the complications of diabetes. My take on the preferred Filipino disease however, and my discovery of the real reason why poor folks in the Philippines apparently have less costly diseases and preludes to death than rich folks are for another post entirely. Right now, I simply wish to inform you that I shall be taking a brief break from serving the freshest wit and sarcasm known to man.

I am now currently knee deep in making my services available to the bereaved family. I do this even if I still do not fully understand why we must stay up all night playing mahjong and drinking killer spirits when most of us in the room are also diabetic; wear white when we are not Chinese and pray on the 9th and 40th nights when half of what the manalabtan (prayer leader of sorts?) is saying is in a tongue seemingly foreign to all known life including her own. I shall be back next week when I am done with propagating tradition, staying awake for the rest of the week, raising my blood sugar level, musing over the meaning of life and bidding my fellow being a great afterlife.

Godspeed.

Gracia El Caustica

Exclusive

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It has been a week since the Ces Drilon kidnapping incident. As her mother station has suggested, it would be best for everyone not to make conjectures or even educated guesses on the matter.

But people have been making comments if not particularly about the incident then generally about the state of the nation. The internet is bursting at the seams with socio-political commentaries running along the lines of lamenting the gross lack of national stability on all fronts that has rendered our country inhospitable and nearly uninhabitable. This flies smack against the basic tenets of freedom and democracy for which our government still calls itself a champion of. How can we be free if we cannot go where we want to without fearing for life and limb and without having to pay ransom which is now officially known as non-ransom-mandatory-board-and-lodging-or-you’re-dead fees? Which is a better form of government, one that openly espouses tyrannical order or one that only puts up appearances of espousing democracy and the greater good?

There is no need to even think of an answer. All the sources of collective national grief (conspiracies not excluded) have already been excessively dissected. I shall leave other greater minds to look for new angles to old issues to rant and lament over. My only issue now is the media giants’ bid for exclusivity. Are the current real life dangers faced by our media avoidable circumstances that are willingly sought because of the mad scramble for something exclusive to feed the judges of the evening ratings?

Justice League of the Philippines

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Princesses who lived happily ever after are never welcome in my home. It’s not because I have anything against two dimensional singing characters in pink and baby blue. My daughter just never liked them herself. Despite my genuine attempts to appeal to her toddler logic that Disney’s perpetually optimistic heroines and now trying hard feminists can be viewed in moderation without any risk of brain damage, she has chosen to set her own preferences. She has ditched the ladies in long gowns and pitch perfect voices for radioactive turtles, the arachnid with four limbs, the knight with bat ears and the man of steel in red underwear.

Call me a bad mother if you must but I am having a hard time weaning her from men, women and aliens in spandex. The worst part is that I’ve gotten hooked too. While I do put up a front and exert my full authority to manage her viewing time and habits, I do sneak to my own room with her discs to watch her heroes wreak havoc to prevent havoc. My current favorite is the Justice League, well, the one that includes the rest of the world and not just America in its agenda.

While I do still wonder how metropolis can withstand the endless cycle of being destroyed and rebuilt, why superheroes think there’s nothing funny about living with other people in colored tights, why DC superheroes have such unimaginative names, why Superman and Batman can’t wear their underwear underneath their tights and what happens to Wonder Woman’s clothes when she spins into her star spangled undies, I appreciate the controlled depth of the Justice League stories. Who would have thought that these characters, who badly need a fashion consultant, could have such a deep grasp of life’s realities and still be entertaining?

In this week’s episode, Batman unintentionally sums up a Filipino reality. After he and his colleagues return to their regular adult forms after having been magically transformed to their kid selves, Wonder Woman comments that it felt nice to have become a kid again. Batman retorts, “I haven’t been a kid since I was eight.”

At least the eight year old Bruce Wayne probably had all the bonbons he could eat while he was mulling over his business empire’s financial documents and while learning to jump gracefully, mysteriously and safely from 70 storey buildings. The eight year old kid I buy corn from every afternoon is no Bruce Wayne. My friend would probably have to endure more days of trudging underneath the heat of a tropical sun with a basket of corn, not to mention more experiences of hardship that will test his will and motivation to surpass poverty and the lack of education. Right now, he can barely even endure not being a child as he cranes his neck from outside to get a glimpse of the Justice League on our television set.

My friend is not the only one. Watch Wish Ko Lang every Saturday and you will realize how many other Filipino children have stopped being kids at the age of eight. They are everywhere selling goods, polishing shoes, massaging tourists, clinging on jeeps and picking pockets. How much more emotional and physical trauma do they have to endure before they can transform into masked heroes to save themselves and their families from the poverty of Filipino life?

If only these kids could all surpass the tragedies of life to become Bruce Waynes, Clark Kents and Dianas. We sorely need a Justice League of the Philippines.

Sensational News

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I don’t remember a lot of news stories from the past. What I do remember though were the men and women of the media— the dead ones to be exact. Even before I found out the shocking truth that fairy tales, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy are really adult inventions designed to trick kids into believing that life is beautiful and that there are no inane politicians that plague our country, I was already made aware of stories of journalists who disappeared into the night and appeared the following morning in ditches with bullet holes in their heads. Unfortunately, some journalists continue to suffer the same gruesome fate today. It seems the current invertebrates in power still have dirty secrets to keep so the guardians of truth must be silenced.

This is probably why despite my obvious inability to tell the difference between algebra and gibberish, I would have chosen Engineering over Mass Communications if they were the only two courses left in college. Obviously, I am not a brave soul and I do not want to suffer the same slow, painful prelude to death that I suppose many journalists have had to endure.

My own cowardice however only serves to heighten my admiration for the people of print and broadcast media. It is not just their courage that I find amazing. It is also the fact that many of those employed by provincial newspapers and radio stations continue to risk their necks and limbs for a pittance. Why on earth would they want to court danger when they can’t even afford to buy a bulletproof vest or insurance? Their outright disregard for their safety could only mean that they have such deep passion for the truth that, rather than bury the truth, they would have themselves buried instead.

Apparently though, the dawn of the ratings war in radio and television has changed the face of journalism forever. It is no longer just about accuracy and integrity. It is also about who has the whitest smile, the best pose and the most impressive overemphatic articulation. I thought I would never see the day when journalists would pose in front of cameras displaying false gravity and atrocious fashion.

I suppose though that sensationalizing the exterior of journalists and their news shows would have been bearable considering that different stations and channels do report the same events so the only real way to draw viewers and advertisers would be to parade like peacocks. What is thoroughly unacceptable though is when the news too gets painted. With due respect to the men and women of the media, they do continue to report the facts. The many different angles in which they do so however have shaped exaggerated public opinions.

Case in point: I once admired a radio broadcaster for his fiery attacks on a corrupt government official who had been reaping the benefits of construction job contracts. The broadcaster was so good at spewing fire, brimstone and spittle that within a few years, he had turned a great number of people to his side. People believed in him so much that he got himself elected to a government position from where he continued to throw stones at his political target.

After a few more months of aggressive monologues on air, the broadcaster began receiving death threats. His car got shot at a couple of times and the service vehicle of his station got torched. He hasn’t been heard on air ever since. For a moment I thought he had finally gone belly up and his loyal supporters would finally have to don black shirts bearing his face, take to the streets and irritate stalled motorists in the name of justice. Rumor has it though that the broadcaster turned politician had to resign from his job as a broadcaster because it was found out that he had been the one sending himself death threats. Apparently, he was also the one who stuck bullets on his own car and burned his station’s vehicle.

I don’t know if all the rumors are true but if they are, that would make me feel like shit. He reminds me of Spiderman’s Jonah Jameson, nearly turning an entire city against the Crocodileman in city hall, but the similarity ends there. Jonah never went hunting for spiderwebs to lie on and claim victim status. Isn’t it a pity that a former guardian of truth is now as diseased as his political adversary?

Hurricane Fiesta

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There were a lot of things to write about last week. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss blogging about the government plot to convince people that they are stupider than they really are, the captive chickens in my in-law’s backyard, the tragedy that is American Idol and the reasons why Wyngard and Jolina shouldn’t be spewing pieces of advice and diluted expletives in Pinoy Idol. Yeah, I should have written about all that but I’ve been busy reserving all of my physical and mental energies for an expected social calamity— the town fiesta.

I grew up in a family whose idea of fun is waking up and falling asleep surrounded by books written by people who became worm fodder centuries ago. You must therefore excuse me if I still find fiestas a bit jarring. This particular fiesta isn’t anything like the city fiesta I wrote about a year ago. This one is right smack in the middle of the little village I live in and I have no choice but to be in the line of fire. 
Oh, I love the saint in whose honor all this uncontrolled eating is encouraged. I learned to love him because I found out that I have been given the license to keep on eating non-stop too. I do think though that eating loads of free food is really just a method of fattening the cow before the kill. Oh, yes, the hours after all the eating is done has a way of gradually killing you. The dishes can pile up faster than you can burp. There is also of course the floor to ceiling devastation to clean up after the tail of the hurricane has left. I suppose, it will take another week before everything is set right.
The most irritating aspect of fiestas however is the countless alcohol-saturated undead populating every street, corner, nook and cranny. It feels like being right in the middle of the set of I Am Legend with a couple of extras that really did get infected with a virus. If you aren’t careful, they’ll get you and force six liters of beer down your throat until you become an infected one too. Nightfall during fiestas is never the time to venture out of your steel reinforced fortress.
I’ve written too much. My batteries are running low cleaning starts in a couple of hours … must save… gasp… energy…

The War of the Words

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The war of the words has begun. I’m not referring to the pitiful display of escapist eloquence in the farcical senate hearings we are often painfully subjected to. I am referring to verbal hostilities much closer to my turf. It’s the Filipino online writers vs. foreign clients (Ting. Round one. Fight.).

I suppose that Americans have known for quite some time that a lot of the expert technical assistance or the annoying telemarketing pitches they so often get on the other end of their phone lines don’t come from fellow Americans. They come from Filipinos or Indians who have had their dictions mutilated just so they could sound less like Asians and more like some of their clients who can neither tolerate nor understand English spoken in another accent. I wonder though if the westerners know the truth about website contents. Many pieces of information in countless websites are provided too by floating Filipino brains chained to makeshift offices in their provincial homes. 
Before the trend of hiring non-American ghost writers became popular, the rates offered by American clients were part of the stuff Filipino dreams were made of. Articles with 500 words in the good old days fetched a whooping $10 each. There have been however some shocking new developments in recent weeks. A brief look at Craigslist.org, where writers and clients converge to buy and sell services (or to rip each other off), have revealed that many American clients now only offer $1-$2 per article. What happened? 
I’m not sure but I have a theory which I will not share. It is enough to say that perhaps the Americans have finally realized that they have been fools to offer so much for articles that others pay so little for. Indeed, why should they pay a premium for Filipino skills when these skills sell for less than a kilo of fish in our own native land?
Seasoned Filipino online writers have taken offense. Some of them have banded together and have vowed never to give stingy clients in Craigslist any peace. Their preferred mode of attack is the dreaded flagging! Beware oh clients. Offer to pay very little and your job advertisements are guaranteed to reap generous harvests of red flags from offended freelance writers so other writers can quickly give you the middle finger and look for greener pay. 
Naturally, American clients have in turn taken offense. They have retaliated by pointing out the gross grammatical boo-boos of Filipino non-native English writers and the Filipino’s lack of understanding for American culture and internet writing. This is why these clients think Filipinos don’t really deserve to be paid $10 for all the keyword rich trash they are asked to produce for unsuspecting readers on the internet. 
I don’t want to take sides but I have been writing in English since I lost my milk teeth. I do know that hard, manual, hernia-inducing labor is easier than writing. If you want to be in constant mental and physical agony you should try writing. 

Cruel Intentions

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I remember not eating chicken for a decade or so. I did not become a vegan. In fact, I now eat chicken and other kinds of animal meat with so much gusto that I am fairly convinced that either cholesterol will kill me or I will have haunting dreams of all my juicy victims. I stopped eating chicken for some time because as a child, I personally witnessed the execution of a chicken by lethal bleeding just so we could celebrate my brother’s decline into an older age. The sight of that blinking bleeding chicken distressed me so much that I couldn’t eat another drumstick for years. I never realized until now though that my brother’s birthday dish was by far a lot more fortunate than others of its kind or other animals for that matter.

My frequent trips to the virtual world have led me to the gruesome truth about animal cruelty. Up until today, I had secretly believed despite my apparent acidity that humans are inherently good. I am starting to think though that we are really natural black hearted bullies strutting around bragging about accidentally taking a different evolutionary fork. Now that we’re all erect and experts at pondering on or tripping over the meaning of life, what have we to show? Here are my top picks of the worst forms of animal cruelty. 
  • Dolphins- We see them all the time in television shows helping swimmers in distress. Well, someone should tell these dolphins that humans won’t be as kind. Many dolphins in sea shows are kept against their wishes. They go blind because of chlorine in the water and die only after a year or two in captivity in spite of the fact that they normally live up to 45 years.
  • Orangutans- Ninety-seven percent of orangutan DNA is similar to human DNA. Unfortunately, humans still have the remaining 3% upper hand. The clearing of forests in Indonesia and Malaysia have led to the displacement of these creatures. Orangutans often raid plantations for food. To solve the problem, humans capture, bind and deprive raiders of their hands. In most cases though, orangutans are simply slashed or shot on the spot.
  • Whales- The oil of these sea creatures is still used for cosmetics. Whale hunters shoot harpoons through whales. Modern harpoons have bombs at the tip which explode inside whales. The explosion is often not enough to kill them so a ship has to drag a whale down to drown it. It can take up to 30 minutes more of suffering before a whale dies.
  • Sharks- The truth is that the fins of sharks do not have any taste. Even so, humans continually hunt sharks for their fins for shark fin soup that is really broth flavored. Since not a lot of people eat shark meat, fishermen simply cut the fins of sharks while they are still alive. They throw the bodies of the sharks back into the water where the sharks wait for death to claim them.
  • Cats- Felines in China provide fur. The cats aren’t killed immediately prior to skinning. They are actually skinned alive. While under the knife, they are gradually strangled or drowned using water-filled tubes through the mouth. These techniques are said to improve fur quality.
  • Bears- The bile of bears is an ingredient in some Chinese medicinal preparations. The bears that provide the bile are kept in cages lying down or in a crouched position. Some bears are clamped down to their cages. While in these positions, bile is extracted using a tube stuck through open abdominal wounds. Any bear in this situation would wish for death. Unfortunately, the bears in these farms live up to 5-15 years. They stay in the same cage, position and condition for the rest of their lives.
  • Hens- Egg laying hens do not have it easy. In Mexico, some egg producers keep them in small cages where they cannot stand or move. These cages are kept in large, stuffy, closed storage rooms where they are piled over one another. Often, hens are deprived of food and water for some time so that they can lay more eggs once they are fed again. Sometimes, their beaks are mutilated to avoid injuring themselves out of distress.
  • Chickens- Those that can’t lay eggs are candidates for digestion. Before they are slaughtered, human handlers may intentionally break their wings, tear off their beaks or break their legs for fun. Those that don’t get handled in this way get injured anyway when they are stuffed in large, windowless sheds too full to allow movement or even breathing. In slaughterhouses, their throats are slit by automatic machines. Those that survive the slitting are dunked into vats of boiling water alive!
  • Others- Umm, apparently some humans like to have sex with animals of all kinds. To hell with mutual consent. This kind of sexual practice is apparently too controversial though to universally label as a form of animal cruelty. Some people (click here for an example) believe there is nothing wrong with having sex with animals.
I don’t know about you but the situations above remind me of human slavery and the holocaust. Only this time, the victims are helpless creatures that can’t fight back with A-bombs or imported product boycotts. It would be interesting though if one of Pol Medina’s stories came true with a twist. What if we woke up one day chained and caged while our animal masters who happened to have evolutionarily outstripped us make their choice for the main course. 
How would you prefer your human sir, braised, poached, skinned or roasted alive?

Hanjin: Sail Away, Sail Away…

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First of all, I would like to make it clear that I am not entirely sold out to industrialization. I still believe that the Philippines’ major key to global competitiveness is our major strength— agriculture. The only reason why our country has been working overtime sending love signals to foreign investors is because a former president once believed that we needed a facelift so we could look like other industrial nations and compete with them in the global arena where the losers go home with the ultimate consolation prize— the chance to become first class toxic waste dumping sites.

Aside from that president who MAY have had noble intentions, some other government officials offer their legs wide open to investors because of the scent or stench of green paper bearing the faces of noble people who are now dead and cannot protest that their images are being used for global pimping.

It would be wrong though to completely shun industrialization. No country can survive without some measure of industrialization. I know I can’t survive without it. I don’t have a green thumb because the color is concentrated in some other area in my body and animals freak out at the mere sight of me. That means I cannot survive planting camote and raising hogs. The only work I can do is the kind performed in an industrial office.

This year, thousands of workers like me were given the chance to get decent industrial jobs when Korean company Hanjin Heavy Industries began construction on the $2 billion shipyard in Tagoloan and Villanueva. The complex would have covered 441.8 hectares of land and would have been the 4th biggest shipyard in the world. It would have offered 40,000-45,000 jobs and would have contributed P4.6 billion every year in salaries and wages alone.

Why am I using “would have”? Make a guess. I dare you.

This piece of news should’ve sent skilled workers and office bound souls singing Hallelujah and jumping like jumping beans. Just last week though, there have been reports that the construction machines have grown silent. There is even some speculation that Korean travel bags and suitcases are well on their way to Korea with their owners. This is where the story gets nasty and murky. This is where the plot thickens and becomes the stuff telenovelas are made of.

It seems that the project has been indefinitely shelved. Depending on which horse’s mouth you are listening to, the nominees for the reasons behind the project cancellation are: Hanjin’s lack of environmental and building permits, NPC billing problems, lack of PEZA permit, landownership issues, the mauling of a Hanjin employee and resident relocation problems. Hanjin director Myung Goo Kwan summarizes everything by simply citing “negative publicity” and “numerous adversities”. Those phrases are alternatively spelled “politics” and “bureaucracy”.

Those of us who have been living in this corner of the world know better. We know that public statements are often sugar coated, glazed or caramelized! Statements that are made public are just the tip of a ship-sinking iceberg and that deeper, darker, smellier secrets lie below clean-looking water.

Being the promising scoundrel that I am, my underworld minions who populate dark dens at night have brought me bits and pieces of the hidden bottom of the iceberg. Since I cannot afford to be sued for libel, I cannot reveal the speculative stories surrounding the Hanjin fiasco. Let’s just say that the media and the politicians are not mentioning everything they know about missing cash, substandard relocation sites, red-faced locals barking up the wrong tree, conversations under government tables and an an enraged madam who took to spanking her dogs for letting go of a bone in pursuit of a bigger phantom bone (see Aesop’s fables).

As of this article’s writing, some PETS (acronym for petty sycophants) are under investigation. Officials from high above are also said to be in a mad scramble looking for ways to kiss Korean feet, or some other body parts, without appearing to do so and without appearing to insult Korean principles. If the officials fail at fawning, the people of Misamis Oriental will be left with nothing but a gaping hole in time and space where 45,000 workers should’ve been working for food on their tables.

I’m on the edge of my seat. I wonder if the next episode will be “Return of the Investors” or “Penitent Pets”.

*Photo credit: GearX