More Brownouts and Cash Gifts

More Brownouts and Bigger bills

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

We had a brown out last night. One of the service lines crackled like Año Nuevo for several minutes until the circuit breaker to the transformer that supplied power snapped and plunged the area into darkness. MERALCO used to be prompt at restoring services, day or night, rain or shine. Not this time. I guess servicemen do get tired of doing the same thing in the same place too often. And they’ll tell you that at thrice the actual load, those cables won’t melt.

Their data are false. That’s how serious illegal electric connections are in here!

As people get disconnected for inability to pay their bill, more and more of them subscribe to illegal operators or power thieves! And illegal connections usually get extended and extended like parasitic tapeworms, yaiks! And I think this problem is reaching epidemic proportion. Citizens have grown tired of reporting illegal connections.

I have observed MERALCO’s drive against illegal connections on several occasions. They do it by going around with police escorts so they don’t get mauled. They cut jumpers as they see them, confiscate wires and then move on. Pakitang tao lamang, citizens will say because fact is power loss adjustment is one item passed on to paying consumers.

A chat with repairmen this morning showed different. The guy said they’d tried bringing cases to court and it does not work. Either the law is faulty or the court is bullshit, he said. According to him the thief must be caught in the act of installing so the case will prosper.

If what he said were true, then I agree everything is indeed crazy. What if accused say he had climbed the MERALCO post in search of spiders, or he was up there to learn whether insulators are made of plastic or hard rubber? Are jumpers that lead into homes that run everything inside not proof enough?

I missed evening and late-night news yesterday. It was mid morning when power was restored and I turned the TV on to CH25, only station I know airing news around the time. I was in time to catch Onin Miranda “….Mendoza said the cash gifts from Malacañang did not have any condition attached to them….” or something like that.

Friday, February 08, 2008

I am no longer in chicken business. No, not quits but rather a recess of interest since the 90s. I remember those days.

We have heard of people talking to their garden. But about people talking to chickens? Sometimes I felt like doing that. The thought that some neighbors were probably spying, refrained me. But surely, neighbors must have heard me yelling “crook – crook – crook” as I did my regular rounds of tossing feeds. Maybe I already appeared funny or weird by that. Anyway, I did it so chickens didn’t wander away or else they’ll miss their fill. But its all about man and animal relationship.

Talking about people, Kabayan Miriam must have overshot by pointing to the Chinese as the ‘root of corruption’. Gift giving is something that was already practiced since pure Malay days. And my own observations make me agree that it became more infused into FILIPINO CULTURE since early Chinese immigrants in the country.

As a culture, sometimes gift is sent even before people met or talked about business. As a culture, it means no strings attach to them. As a culture it is impolite not to accept gift. Other implications are Peace, friendship, Appeasement. Na sa tumatanggap na yan…

[ I think modern historians had got it wrong about Malay Datus "buying" Panay from the Negritos with a gold Salakot. Buying territory was not in the language of old Communal up to early Feudal Malay Philippines.]

Talking about the Cash gifts, I think, there are many negative implications to them like: If money happened to be public fund, it belonged to certain specific appropriation that was diverted to something and something which is inappropriate or when some received while others did not. I’m not talking about the 700M fertilizer scam if they sounded like it.

That cash gift was intended in exchange of undue favor is another negative interpretation. Bribery is another, distinctly, different thing.

Accepting gift with no string attached? Masama ang magtanggi sa grasya? That would be Governor Ed Panlilio. Gift as an insult? Again that would be Governor Ed Panlilio.

Culture or Culture of Corruption, what do you think folks?