The House of Cards of Philippine Sovereignity

Decent sex education in Philippine public schools. Long overdue. But then how can this become a reality with the Philippine Taliban making sure that “offensive” material is being kept off public school textbooks…

Education officials insist that the bishops [of the Philippine Roman Catholic Church] have nothing to worry about because the [Department of Education] is open to deleting portions of the teaching modules that the Church finds offensive.

Excuse me, but since when does a state institution such as the Department of Education answer to the Roman Catholic Church? This almost seems to me to be an issue of sovereignity, considering that these “Catholic Bishops” are modern-day vassals of Rome.

Perhaps we should now start considering the Pope and his Cardinals as the new overlords of the Filipino people.

Stepping back a bit and thinking about it in broader terms, it seems to me that we Filipinos do indeed have a fundamental flaw in the intellectual underpinnings of our regard for sovereignity. For one thing, sovereignity in the modern sense can only be a reality in the context of the current world order that recognises such a state. The alternative would be the older, rawer, more primitive world order where the sovereignity of any state is sustained by the sword. In such a world, there is no concept of, say, a “United Nations” in whose premises a sovereign state’s flag flies alongside those of other similarly recognised states to endorse its “official” existence.

Indeed, the Philippines’ sovereignity owes its endurance to the more recent world order. Seen against the bigger scheme of the history of human civilisation, it is a world order in which even states with no real means to defend their claim to the territory their people occupy are allowed to exist by those who have the means to overrun them in bloody battle. The irony here is that the “Independence” Day we celebrate on the 12th of June marks a day in 1898 in which we fancied ourselves as having “won” something by the sword — a win not recognised by the powerful keepers of the prevailing world order of the time and most likely recognised with calm bemusement by those of today.

The underlying logic that is at best dysfunctionally inconsistent and at worst downright flawed in our claim to being a legitimate nation, accounts for much of the moronic way we Filipinos have been known to respond to the question of our sovereign nature. Perhaps it is this fundamental glitch that was at work underneath the DepEd’s Freudian slip when confronted with the issue of the content of our textbooks — an incident where a state agency deferred to dogma that originates from a foreign state rather than to the secular government it is supposed to be answerable to.

The fact of the rickety house of cards that is Philippine “sovereignity” is what also keeps things like this year’s “Independence” Day commemorative rights from being immune to politicisation. In the same way that the Aquinos engaged in an emo feud on top of the tradition of the State Funeral back in mid-2009 when former President Cory Aquino died, today the Aquinoists and their leader take an emo response to “Independence” Day rites which out-going President Gloria Arroyo presides over…

Was Noynoy Aquino wrong to snub the Independence Day celebrations last Saturday?

Not at all.

At the very least, why attend a celebration whose purpose is not to celebrate the country’s freedom (or spirit thereof) for the last 112 years but its enslavement over the last nine?

Arroyo’s officials had been announcing it beforehand last week—the Independence Day celebrations would be a testament to her rule, a showcase of her accomplishments during her interminable term. It was obviously going to be a culmination of her (expensive) “legacy campaign,” a campaign dedicated to showing how much this country owes her. Ferdinand Marcos of course had beaten her to quite literally building a monument to himself with a bust in Agoo; she would settle for the next best thing, which was mount an extravaganza for herself.

Again (at the risk of wasting effort puting forth ideas that might simply sail over the heads of the average Inquirer.net reader), I offer an alternative perspective that serves as a reality check on the shallow emotions ellicited by moronisms like the one above, so here is what is real:

All this simply highlights the weakness of character of in-coming President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III and his Yellow Mob. It seems to me that Noynoy would be so small as to opt out of attending an event presided over by outgoing President Gloria Arroyo lest the Yellow Mob see their leader in a position of awkward subordination to the out-going President. It takes a lot of effort for a man of small stature to look stately in the company of a nine-year presidential veteran, you see. So avoiding every opportunity to look awkward is always a prudent course to take.

Indeed:

If Noynoy were truly a man of naturally impressive stature and statesmanship, this is something he would not have needed to worry about.

What I would worry about as Presdient of our excellent Republic is where the producers of our kids’ schoolbooks are deriving editorial license from. Apparently a deep-seated personal insecurity trumps matters of public interest anytime. The trend remains frighteningly consistent.

Somebody needs to be taught
to sit still through a state function…

benign0 is the webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.

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Time to return to our core message

I’ve asserted many times in the past that the trouble with the Philippines does not lie in its politics but rather in a profound dysfunction in its society’s character. It is a dysfuinction that is interlaced at the very fibres that make up the very fabric of our society. In taking this view, my over-arching argument has always been that politics are but a mere manifestation — a symptom, one might call it — of this deep flaw in the collective character of the Filipino.

The emerging outcome of this year’s election remains breathtakingly consistent with every single idea put forth by GetRealPhilippines.com since its inception in the midst of the Erap Resign! movement at the dawn of the 21st Century and all through our it’s-the-culture-stupid thesis that AntiPinoy.com itself stands for.

As we turn the page and regard the new six-year chapter in Philippine history that is about to transpire, it is worth revisiting the core idea upon which our view of the world is built:

Who is the Anti-Pinoy?

The answer to the question is encapsulated in the following paragraph from this site’s About page:

In the day-to-day exchange that defines real life for most Pinoys, the daily news, radio and TV broadcasts, our cinema, and in casual conversation, the masa and those who celebrate mediocrity – those who are quick to boast about how ingenious Pinoys are and point to our colorful Jeepneys as examples, or who count the number of look-alike, sound-alike local celebrities or the once-in-a-generation gifted professional athlete as a measure of national greatness – set an UNPATRIOTIC example and lower the bar of public debate.

The more the Anti-Pinoy glorifies these mediocrities and focuses on the vacuous and the trivial, real issues that affect ordinary lives and futures are forgotten or pushed aside. Like the unambitious student who is praised by his parents despite consistently doing poorly in school, the bad habits and low expectations of Pinoy society are reinforced, making it that much harder with every passing day to find the right path.

Not surprisingly, this is a message that Filipinos quite simply find hard to swallow. Indeed, perhaps it hasn’t been swallowed at all, much less digested and internalised. So one is inclined to wonder…

What is the extent of our dysfunction as a people?

As stated earlier, the dysfunction is profound, extensive, and pervades every belief system and approach to thinking that characterises the Filipino. In short, it is cultural — a malaise that is culturally-ingrained, something that is summarised in the About page of GetRealPhilippines.com from which this excerpt is taken:

Any way one looks at things, the reality is this: we’re stuck with each other and that stigma of being Filipino that was aggravated by Erap’s presidency. The first step in the right direction is to swallow the bitter pill and take a good look at ourselves. That’s us! Non-partisan, nothing personal. It’s all in the culture which in GetReal-speak is defined thus:

Culture is the collective character of a people who have given themselves a collective identity.

In short:

The Filipino’s greatest enemy is himself – the Anti-Pinoy.

That Filipinos would go out to give their collective thumbs-up to Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, a man widely regarded by people who apply a bit of brain to the way they generally regard things, as having no character, no vision, and no plans over the next six years as Chief Executive is one thing. But to see Joseph Ejercito Estrada coming in second, a man convicted of plunder and supposedly given a thumbs down (to the tune of more than one million people) back in 2001 by a mob that represents everything that the Aquino clan stands for is quite an amusing revelation to the global community.

This year’s election pretty much describes what the Filipino is all about. To describe all of this as ironic is now too much of a compliment. I prefer to call it moronic.

Given my youthful personal ten-year perspective on this I’d like to defer to a more elderly and presumably wiser take on Da Pinoy Condition from the venerable F. Sionil José related by Financial Times writer David Pilling in his article “Philippine Democracy Under Fire“:

I was in Manila to see F. Sionil José, the Philippines’ most famous novelist and a trenchant social commentator. I found him several flights up a narrow wooden staircase above the Solidaridad bookshop he founded in 1965 in the city’s old Ermita district. A large, forceful man, with a shiny, bald head, José, now 85, bears a striking resemblance to Marlon Brando’s Kurtz in Apocalypse Now. He was less than enthused about the election. “Nothing is going to change,” he chuckled grimly. “I am 85. I have seen three generations of Filipino leaders fail. They have never been able to transcend themselves, neither their class nor their ethnicity.

“Did you read The Economist obituary on her?” he asked, referring to Aquino. “It said her greatness ended when she became president. Many people were angry. But for those of us who had eyes wide open, her rule was a disaster,” he said, hissing the final “s”. “She promised land reform. She didn’t do it. She restored the oligarchy. I never forgave her for that.”

José is a polemicist, who has been branded both a Communist and a CIA spy. But his views on the Aquino presidency are not that unusual. In spite of the outpouring of emotion that I had witnessed at her funeral, many Filipinos had been disappointed by what her presidency actually achieved. She was, after all, say her critics, a member of one of the biggest landowning families in the Philippines. In the end, she did little to antagonise those from the privileged class into which she had been born.

All that said, here’s the thing: There is really nothing new about the Philippines being stuck with a moronic politician and, as such,

The challenge faced by the Filipino remains the same.

Same challenge, different politician. That’s all it is.

We need to become less anti-intellectual and conduct ourselves in a smarter way. It is a simple approach to participating in governance that democracy demands.

It’s simple, really™ — though not for the small-minded.

benign0 is the webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.

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Get Real Philippines

"I would rather have a Philippines run like hell by Filipinos than a Philippines run like heaven by the Americans" -- Manuel L. Quezon

Is that so? Were we consulted? On the fourth of July, 1946, we sentenced generations of Filipinos to live their entire lives in a country run like hell by their compatriots. How does pride in self-rule stack up to the reality that in the more than 50 years of independence, the majority of Filipinos lived in absolute poverty and countless others suffered, died, or disappeared as a result of the greed and lust for power of our leaders.



Our country is sick in every sense of the word and we are a morally, intellectually, and spiritually bankrupt people. Our virtues, once comforting when invoked, now, at best, point out disturbing ironies about us: packed Sunday masses and images of presidents, mayors and congressmen knelt in prayer, 'third largest English-speaking country in the world', 'where Asia wears a smile', 'Asia's most vibrant democracy', etcetera, etcetera.

Let's give it a break! (1) our brand of Christianity is medieval, (2) we not only cannot speak straight English, we are trying to banish the language from our education system, (3) we laugh at just about anything, even our own stupidity and on every conceivable medium ' mobile phones, the Internet, etc., and (4) showbiz personalities are dancing and singing their way into office. Growing pains, yes, but we could have had as our mentor, a country that already had more than 200 years worth of lessons in democratic governance. But no! In 1946, we chose to learn to walk before we could even barely crawl.

Any way one looks at things, the reality is this: we're stuck with each other and that stigma of being Filipino that was aggravated by Erap's presidency. The first step in the right direction is to swallow the bitter pill and take a good look at ourselves. That's us! Non-partisan, nothing personal. It's all in the culture which in GetReal-speak is defined thus:

Culture is the collective character of a people who have given themselves a collective identity.

The REAL threat to progress is being piped right into our homes!

Si Manong Abe Margallo nga naman talaga. By his own admission, he’s been so busy with his own rambling in that verbose pomposity that so characterises the sort of style that appeals to the Old Fart generation to whom much can be credited for running our sad society aground, that the laughable irony of what he says below in a comment to a contemporary of his as usual escapes his limited sensibilities:

I do like the idea of a “unified voice, when those of differing opinions come together to advance social justice.” Do you think that on a rather smaller scale it is something doable here in FV?

I’m obviously rambling at the moment as I’m past my sleeping time again but what comes to mind because of your provocation is this: Instead of demanding platforms from aspiring leaders who are courting our votes, won’t it be a better idea if we start creating the platform ourselves and by coming together with a “unified voice” for our common design, we tell the candidates: sirs, you have our votes if you promise to do what we say in here.

How is that for a start?

To spare you, dear reader, the effort of slogging through the ramblings of an old geezer who is up past his bed time, I might highlight a couple of things that together propels the above comment into the Hall of Fame of Ironic Reflections.

Firstly;

Instead of “demanding platforms”, create a platform “ourselves” that is a “common design” reflecting a unified voice. says the old man.

Dude, the trouble with folk such as yourself who are so sadly limited to one-dimensional thinking is that there is little room for the sort of routine multi-conceptual parallel-processing approach to problem-solving that describes the minds of truly great thought leaders. Indeed, why does demanding a platform and prescribing its content need to be an either/or proposition?

If you recall waaay back in September 2009 gramps, our resident Vulcan Ben Kritz came up with The BK Platform which attempts to put into practice a simple four-step development framework for such platforms at the sort of world-class quality that one hardly sees in primitivist societies such as ours. We used it as a brilliant sample (refer to the top row shaded in green) to guide the lesser minds that constitute the Philippine National “debate” that we so astutely predicted would struggle with such concepts.

Not only that, we were also demanding platforms from politicians since July of that year. In fact Margallo’s cyber-home, FilipinoVoices.com, is so honoured to have cradled the Platform, plez movement at its conception on the 20th of July 2009 which went on to become the paradigm-shifting campaign that forever changed the face of Pinoy-style political “debate” and the way the bona-fide intelligentsia regard Filipino politicians!

So get over yourself, gramps. While it is quite heartening that you now exhibit an iota of enlightenment and see the immense value that a focus on substance (rather than the quaint focus on form that you advocate) yields for the bankrupt “debate” that has imprisoned Pinoy politics for the last half-century, your form today all but highlights the chronic inability of the Old Guard to keep up with everything that stands for progress in the 21st Century. Having said all of that, I’ll be fair and give you some credit po: better seven months late than never!

Second;

Is creating a “unified voice” of “differing opinions” doable?, wonders the Great Elder while striking a reflective pose.

Well now, it depends on what you define to be the unifying catalyst of a collective blog. If your idea of unifying disparate voices is some kind of ill-defined vision of a “just” and “honest” society then prepare to be disappointed. Why? Well ask yourself this: How is such a vision different from the “substance” of the campaign platitudes of the average Pinoy politician? Does this question leave you scratching your head? Fair enough. It is therefore no wonder that talk of “unity” never seems to transcend low-brow partisanism in this sad society of ours.

In contrast, collective blogs that set the Gold Standard for collaboratively delivering The Truth to its readership do it with such elegant lack of effort — with no shared dogma to speak of and no specific partisan affiliation “prescribed” to its pool of writers. An emergent collective message can be discerned but no contriving of said message is evident. That is because it is not hollow-headed partisanism nor romanticed notions of “country” that bring members of such brilliant online communities together. Rather it is a shared approach to thinking that underpins the cohesiveness of their message even as each individual applies his/her personal style and perspective.

* * *

LESSONS TO BE LEARNED

One of the things the Great Elder of the Pinoy blogosphere Mr Abe Margallo contributes to the collective wisdom is the lessons others harvest from his minus-one-factored insights.

In this case, it is that there is an urgent need to free our minds from the grip of the re-cycled thinking of ageing demagogues. Tired old memes still pretty much define the rhetoric of political movement and sense of “country” in our severely-challenged society. They continue to incite such romantically “patriotic” fervor, but like the verbal narcotic that they are, they are resulting in the increasingly severe crashes that follow once their effects wear out after the last fiesta election or ocho-ocho rally — and the pain of these crashes and the emptiness of purpose that follow are beginning to find a stable footing in the collective memory. That is evidence of some progress to pin one’s hopes on indeed!

But for this hope to be realised and the enlightenment we aspire for to be achieved, we must expedite the purging of the national consciousness of these obsolete memes and assert our sovereignity over the oligarch-controlled channels that so efficiently — and profitably — channel this horsemanure into our homes.

The first step is to vote with our remote.

Change the channel.
Tune in to The Discovery Channel.
Click on “exit” with your mouse;
And logon to blogs that truly value The Truth.

The above are a few of the many ways we can, so to speak, vote with our remotes. If we are looking for a new “revolution” to define the second decade of the 21st Century and hence, you can find its home in cyberspace here:

GetRealPhilippines.com/PhilippineMedia

The true hadlang sa kaunlaran (roadblocks to progress) are no longer the politicians that we have decided to set ourselves apart from. The real disease that threatens our march to progress is being piped right into our homes over the airwaves and over fibre-optic networks and copper wires. And guess what: for your trouble, you even pay good money to receive these insults on our already meager intellectual faculties.

Do the right thing and take control.

Vote with your remote.

benign0 is the webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.

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Pinoy Behavior in the Office: Needs Improvement – Lots of it

I came across a Business Week article on dilemmas in the workplace. In the article, Greg Cootsoona presents 21 scenarios and provides advice on how to manage it. I was intrigued at the scenarios and I remembered how it was in the Pinoy office. I zeroed in on the areas that where screaming – improve me, improve me. Here are some common situations where Filipinos can do better. You might have come across these familiar situations.

Taking Ownership of Ideas

Scenario: While in a meeting, you bring up a variation on an idea that an officemate had casually mentioned to you in an earlier conversation. Your bosses think it’s brilliant. Do you let your officemate who gave you the idea know?

Answer: Yes.

Why: This builds trust and therefore an efficient and effective team. You’ll be known as the type of person who doesn’t care who gets the credit. You can call this the law of karma, “you sow what you reap,” or “what goes around comes around.” Take your pick.

***

Typical Pinoy response:

No. Claim the idea is mine and pick the other person’s mind later over San Miguel Beer and pulutan -that’s so wicked. Then I’ll have myself appointed as chief, he’ll be my deputy, and he’ll do the work me.

***

Deferring to the Boss

Scenario: Your supervisor is plotting a course that, to you, sounds disastrous, and he doesn’t see it. Do you bring up your doubts at your next departmental meeting?

Answer: No, but present your concerns one-on-one.

Why: As Wharton School professor Michael Useem points out in Leading Up: How to Lead Your Boss So You Both Win, your supervisor will probably not take well to being confronted in front of other staff, but it’s important to give him all the information so that he can succeed.

Typical Pinoy response:

Yes, Bring doubts up in next departmental meeting. Make the boss appear incompetent.
No, Let the boss take a fall. Buntot niya, hila niya. Kamot your own galis.

***

Admitting to a Mistake

Scenario: You’re the Area Manager and you realize you’ve made a mistake that cost your company sales last quarter. Do you let your key leadership team know?

Answer: Yes.

Why: As management guru Patrick Lencioni has pointed out in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, the basis of a good team is trust, and trust depends on vulnerability. Your vulnerability will foster greater trust in your key leadership team, and trust will make the team function better. One caveat: Be wise. You don’t have to broadcast your mistake to the whole organization.

Typical Pinoy response(s):
No. Blame it on someone or something else – anyone but me. Mahirap ng masisante.
No. Not unless they find out. And if they find out, I will laugh it away. Uncle ko yata ang CEO or malakas ako ke (drop name of big shot).

***

Ethical Obligations

Scenario: You have heard from another employee that your boss has made an ethical violation. Do you confront your boss directly?

Answer: No. Try an indirect angle of approach: First, ask your boss to clarify this type of breach in your company’s policies and ask the best way to process such a concern.

Why: This way, you maintain your integrity while being wise. First of all, this type of complaint against your boss may lead to his job loss, which could make him feel desperate in this economy–and desperation brings out uncharacteristic behavior. Moreover, “innocent until proven guilty” is a good rubric for accusations. It’s the way you’d want to be treated.

Typical Pinoy Response:

Ba’t siya lang, paano naman ako?
Balato naman bossing.

***

Patting Backs

Scenario: You’re the head of your team, and your week is packed as you’re preparing for next week’s launch of a new software. During a week when you’re all working 10-plus hours a day, do you take time during this busy week to praise your staff?

Answer: Yes. Write some personal “atta-boy” e-mails or call a brief meeting to toast the team’s success.

Why: Gallup surveys of employees and organizations revealed that the key driver for employee productivity is whether they feel cared for by their supervisor and whether they have received recognition or praise during the past seven days.

Typical Pinoy Response(s):
We’ve been toasting since day one, we can wing it. Merienda muna. Here you go.
Oh oh, I forgot about that.
I have to pat their back?

*****

Pinoys need to step up and improve their behavior in the global corporate culture if they want to be competitive and have careers in world-class companies.

A self-described "mutt" having ancestors of diverse origins - Maranao, Ilonggo, Butuanon, and Ilocano. Born and raised in Southern Mindanao's Davao City, now living in the East Coast's Sunshine State.

---

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BongV

Intervention – Slapping a Nation In Denial

As a nation, we all agree that we want to soar. The question is do we have the wings to soar? How do we grow our wings so that we may soar? Otherwise, we will be in the too-familiar “failure-to-launch” syndrome. From time to time, we need to reexamine what we are doing and determine if we should still continue to be doing it. This examination allows us to have a clearer understanding of what our core aspirations are and what actions we are or must be taking to make our aspirations come true. As Stephen Covey’s observes (rightfully or wrongly) and to which I agree -- “Public behavior is merely private character writ large”. We need to remember that a sense of achievement -- or what we often refer to as pride springs from the day-to-day actions we take and the choices we make.

What achievements do we have to show for as a nation? Asia’s Laggard, The Sick Man of Asia, A Nation of Servants, One of the Most Corrupt ASEAN Countries, The Deadliest Country For Journalists -- Do you really want to kumbaya or do you want to get out of this slippery slope we are on? We were not hit by the recession -- with good reason -- because there was nothing to hit in the first place! The Philippine economy is at rock bottom. Yes, the economy is be growing, from the bottom of the barrel to just slightly above the bottom of the barrel. Yes, the economy is growing but the population is growing at rate higher than we can provide jobs, schools, and infrastructure. We want investors to come and yet we have a protectionist constitution. We want to present ourselves as a modern nation yet we manage and develop our public infrastructure incompetently. We want peak performance and we elect slackers.

What gives? What’s going on? Someone has to step on the brakes and say… HOLD IT.. STOP IT.. THIS IS NOT RIGHT! WE ARE HEADED IN THE WRONG DIRECTION -- WE ARE DOING THE SAME THINGS AND EXPECTING THE SAME RESULTS. How many times have I seen a friend or family member in a disastrous relationship -- emotional, business, personal which led them to losing their house, losing their savings, being stuck in debt. I as a friend, believe have the obligation to tell my friend the truth nasty as it may sound -- for one purpose, to snap out of the destructive behavior and move on, otherwise I wouldn’t be a friend. But, as you and I know -- that’s easier said than done. I have to be there, I have to catch my friend when he/she falls, I have to cheer them on in their moments of triumph, and when they need it -- a reality check. And when they are in denial, intervention, even. I know my friend will do the same for me -- otherwise, he/she is not being a true friend to me.

What is Denial?

Changingminds.org provides a concise summary of denial

Denial is simply refusing to acknowledge that an event has occurred. The person affected simply acts as if nothing has happened, behaving in ways that others may see as bizarre.

In its full form, it is totally subconscious, and sufferers may be as mystified by the behavior of people around them as those people are by the behavior of the sufferers. It may also have a significant conscious element, where the sufferer is simply ‘turning a blind eye’ to an uncomfortable situation.

Example

• A man hears that his wife has been killed, and yet refuses to believe it, still setting the table for her and keeping her clothes and other accoutrements in the bedroom.
• A person having an affair does not think about pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases.
• People take credit for their successes and find ‘good reason’ for their failures, blaming the situation, other people, etc.
• Alcoholics vigorously deny that they have a problem.
• Optimists deny that things may go wrong. Pessimists deny they may succeed.

Discussion

Denial is a form of repression, where stressful thoughts are banned from memory. If I do not think about it, then I do not suffer the associated stress have to deal with it. However, people engaging in Denial can pay a high cost in terms of the psychic energy needed to maintain the denial state. Repression and Denial are two primary defense mechanisms which everybody uses.

Children find denial easier, as with age, the ego matures and understands more about the “objective reality” it must operate within. Denial is one of Freud’s original defense mechanisms.

So what?

When you appear to deny a situation, then the other person may join you in the denial or may have to handle it in a way that is not as direct as they otherwise might.

How is Denial Handled?

I am not a certified psychologist, so I would rather have a licensed professional provide a professional opinion. The author -- James J Messina, PhD, is a licensed psychologist with more than 35 years of experience counseling individuals and families. Messina, who specializes in adult and children psychotherapy, serves as Director of Psychological Services at St. Joseph’s Children’s Hospital in Tampa, Fla. He has a private practice in Tampa and is also a member of the American Psychological Association. Here’s what he wrote:

What is denial?

* Being unwilling to face problems on either a conscious or subconscious level.
* Acting as if there are no problems to face.
* A defensive response; protection from pain, hurt or suffering.
* A mask to hide feelings or emotions behind.
* A way to avoid conflict, disagreements or disapproval from others.
* A way to avoid facing the negative consequences of reality.
* A way of retaining our sanity when experiencing unbearable pain.
* A way to repress the truth of our loss, a way to continue to function in “normally.”
* A pattern of life for individuals who are compulsively driven to “look good.”
* A way to avoid the risk of change as a result of problems or loss.

How does denial look to others?

Persons in denial:
* Appear to be irrational to those who know the problems and losses they have suffered.
* Appear to be calm and relaxed to those who do not know the problems and losses they have suffered.
* Are a cause of frustration to those who want them to confront the truth of the problem or loss honestly.
* Appear to be unemotional, apathetic or indifferent in the face of loss.
* Are considered pathetic and pitiable by those who have tried to confront them with the denial and have failed.
* Appear to be caught up in magical thinking about the loss involved.
* Appear to be excessively involved in fantasy thinking about the loss or problem.
* Appear to be childlike, very dependent on others to nurture them and reassure them that everything will be all right.
* Appear to be running away from the truth concerning their problems or loss.
* Appear to be avoiding or rejecting those who are intent on confronting them with their problems.
What are the negative consequences of unresolved denial?

Unresolved denial can result in:
* Delusional thinking, leading to a feeling that everything is OK, even when it is not.
* Greater conflict between the deniers and the non-deniers.
* Fantasy or magical thinking, allowing distorted thinking to become a habit.
* Poor problem-solving and decision-making abilities for the denier.
* The denier totally avoiding or withdrawing from everyone who knows of the loss or problem.
* The denier becoming a social recluse.
* Others avoiding the denier to avoid upsetting him with their concern, questions or reassurance.
* Frustration for those who want to help the denier.
* A maladaptive pattern of coping with the loss or problem for the denier.
* Everyone involved in the life of the denier joining the denial; the problem is not confronted honestly by those who can do something about it.
* Resentment by the denier of those who are confronting him about the problems or loss.
* Prolonging the time before the denier must confront the pain, hurt and suffering involved in the loss or problem.
* The denier projecting the problem or the results of the loss onto others.
* The denier’s use of rationalization to explain away the problem or loss.
* Exacerbation of the very problems being denied.

How can we confront denial in ourselves?

We can confront denial by:
* Asking ourselves honestly why we are in denial.
* Asking ourselves what are the benefits to be gained by our denial.
* Asking ourselves what is too painful to face.
* Recognizing when we are caught up in magical or fantasy thinking about our problem or loss.
* Recognizing the negative consequences that result from our denial behavior.
* Not allowing ourselves to fall back into a safe emotional zone, but to keep our emotional response open and honest.
* Recognizing when we are hiding behind a “nice” mask when discussing our loss or problems.
* Allowing ourselves to express negative or embarrassing emotions as we confront our problems (e.g., crying, feeling lost, feeling confused or feeling scared).
* Allowing ourselves to admit to being out of control.
* Trusting others to help us with our problem.
* Admitting our vulnerability and our need for assistance.
* Risking the loss of acceptance or approval by those who may be unable to handle our open, honest admission of our problem.
* Recognizing the negative behavior scripts that impede our ability to deal openly with problems.
* Recognizing that it is human to have problems and to experience loss; it is not a sign of our lack of value or worth.
* Refuting the irrational beliefs that block our acceptance of the loss or problems.
* Asking others to not allow us to deny or avoid the truth about our loss or problems.
* Recognizing that denial is a natural stage in the loss/grief response.
* Maintaining our sense of perspective, allowing ourselves to go through the problems as a growth experience.
* Believing that out of failure comes success; accepting the failure as a chance for personal growth.
* Accepting the help of others in the aftermath of our loss.

How can we cope with denial in others?

In coping with denial in others, we need to:
* Have a great deal of patience in order to allow them the time it takes to finally confront their loss or problems.
* Be accepting of the denial as a psychological defense that is a vehicle for them to retain their sanity.
* Be careful in confronting them so that they don’t run away or withdraw from reality even more.
* Be ready for their resistance in dealing with the truth about their loss and problems.
* Freely offer them our support and understanding.
* Accept them as they are, waiting to deal with the loss or problem until they are ready.
* Be ready with a rational perspective to help them refute their current irrational beliefs.
* Resist solving their problems for them; resist the desire to continue sheltering or protecting them from their loss or problems.
* Continue to let them know that there is support for them in dealing with the loss or problems. Let them face the existence of the loss or problem gently but continuously.
* Provide them with subtle means to face the problem by giving them magazine or newspaper articles, pamphlets or books on the subject; suggesting TV and radio programs on the subject, or proposing professional help.
* Recognize that if they are locked into a chronic state of denial, which is debilitating to their mental health, that a denial intervention may be necessary.

A denial intervention model

If a person close to you is using a chronic behavior pattern of denial injurious to his mental health, then the following intervention model may be useful in helping him break through this debilitating denial.

Step 1. Prepare a written script of incidents characteristic of the target person’s denial pattern of behavior. For each incident, list the following:
* The incidents where denial was used.
* When it occurred.
* What loss or problem was involved.
* What the negative consequences of the denial were.
* What could have happened if denial had not been used to resolve the problem or loss.
* Why and how this incident of denial has affected you personally.

Step 2. Seek out other people who are closely related to the target person. Ask these people to prepare a written script, as in Step 1, for incidents of denial with which they know the target person has been involved.

Step 3. Seek out the assistance of a counselor or mental health professional, if you believe the aftermath of a denial intervention with the target person may result in that person needing to get ongoing help

This is ANTIPINOY.COM. You are undergoing intervention -- do not change the channel. LOL!

Nah, you are a free person, if you don’t like what you read here, you are free to leave. I believe in censorship, with the qualification that I believe that each of us are the ultimate censors of what we want or do not want to see.

As Morpheus quipt to Neo, all I am promising you is the truth -- nothing else. After all, the truth, will set Filipinos free -- free from destructive behavior, free from destructive memes, free from the mental cages that surrounded themselves since the time they were born. Without that truth, Filipinos will always be economic slaves of the oligarchs -- they will be colonized by their very own elite. Freeing people from the mindset which has kept them reliant on the opinions of others solely, instead of listening to a variety of opinions and deciding for themselves is not an easy task. You are considered an enemy by the very people whose minds you are trying to awaken, to get unwired from the mob.

I admit the rawness of my words, I mean Rabindaranath Tagore’s version of what I said is definitely more profound -

My Country Awake

Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

Snapping out of Denial is a crucial step in Self-Mastery

When each Filipino is truly empowered, rational, realistic having snapped out of denial, I will be singing hossanahs weaved from the words of the ancient sages.

He who rules his spirit has won a greater victory than the taking of a city, Proverbs, 16:32

He who controls others may be powerful, but he who has mastered himself is mightier still, Lao-tzu

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power, Lao-tzu

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself., Leonardo da Vinci

It doesn’t matter how one was brought up. What determines the way one does anything is personal power. Carlos Castaneda quotes from Journey to Ixtlan

One who conquers himself is greater than another who conquers a thousand times a thousand on the battlefield. Buddha quotes from The Dhammapada

The intelligent want self-control; children want candy. Mevlana Rumi quotes from Rumi Daylight: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance

The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself. ~ Mevlana Rumi quotes from Rumi Daylight: A Daybook of Spiritual Guidance

So much so that when our self-mastery is embedded in our psyche and our private behavior is writ large, it will be that of a nation that has mastered itself. Do not put the cart before the horse, we are not there, yet. Till then, ANTIPINOY.COM will remain a voice in the wilderness, a wild man whose head is wanted on a silver platter. A wild man that keeps on howling GET REAL PHILIPPINES!!! Tandaan -- nation-building is a marathon, not a 100 meter dash.

Tame your inner anti-pinoy in ANTIPINOY.COM -- the antidote to Da Pinoy Dysfunction.

Maganding gabi/tanghali/hapon/gabi po sa inyong lahat, maayong buntag/udto/hapon/gabii-i sa inyong tanan -- suking tigbasa.

Bong V.

A self-described "mutt" having ancestors of diverse origins - Maranao, Ilonggo, Butuanon, and Ilocano. Born and raised in Southern Mindanao's Davao City, now living in the East Coast's Sunshine State.

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Help spread the knowledge!

BongV

Da Pinoy Nation Needs To See A Shrink

Da Pinoy is taking another beating – for good reason – because of stupid behavior and irrational beliefs. We, Pinoys need to learn more about handling the truth – because obviously, as a nation – we, Filipinos can’t handle the truth. We will rather believe that everything is A-okey and all is fine in the world – until another disaster strikes and exposes how our bad practices destroy the lives of many. We reacted angrily to the Desperate Housewives comment, yet the faux diploma retailers in Recto are thriving – if there is a demand, the supply will be found. We reacted angrily to Chip Tsao, seemingly indifferent to the fact that “there are on average around 140,000 Filipinos in Hong Kong, of whom most work as foreign domestic helpers. Filipino maids are known by the locals as feiyungs and the slang bun muis or bun buns. In some cases Filipino women with university degrees are willing to work as maids and nannies for the higher salary and better lifestyle they will receive in Hong Kong than they could make at home”. We elect irresponsible bozos and stupids into positions of responsibility, and we get miffed when told to get our sh*t together.

Come to think of it – before there was a comment on the behavior, there was the act – the illogical behavior itself. Though of course, we can debate which behaviors are believed to be illogical. Bottomline is, if we truly want to stop all the bad press – don’t shoot the messenger, stop acting stupidly. In feel-good-speak, change the behavior being singled out – is that hard to do? Obviously, to da Pinoy of the Palusot Society, it is hard.

BenK’s comment couldn’t have come at a better time when he quipt:

All the people who are quick to jump on Adam Carolla (who has never been anywhere near the list of people I think are entertaining or funny, btw) in righteous indignation are missing a pretty clear pattern of poor impressions the rest of the world has of this country. One Desperate Housewife or one Chip Tsao or one Adam Carolla could be passed off as a misinformed individual, but these “insults” come from all directions. Those who make them may – hypothetically, anyway – factually be wrong (although I personally don’t think so), but that’s really beside the point; the Philippines has a big image problem. Getting mad and screaming “We’re not really like that and you’re an asshole for saying it!” actually just makes it worse.

Adam Carolla may be a crass d*ckhead, but he was spot-on with just about everything he said (including the sex thing). And maybe the reason it stings so much (as did the DH thing, and the Chip Tsao thing) is that people actually realize he was right, and just don’t want to admit it to themselves — which, if you think about it, is the root cause of most of this country’s problems that give it the poor global image in the first place.

There is a clear disconnect between reality and – the Filipinos beliefs and views of this reality – insane to the membrane.

My inner Dr. Phil was wondering what can be done about this dysfunction. I started by reading up on self-esteem and ended in a page called Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy – REBT. Gadzooks another buzzword. What we don’t know will not hurt us? Yeah, tell that to a terminal cancer patient who regrets not taking the initial screening tests that could have prevented him from going terminal. Better to know, the early bird gets the worm ‘ika nga.

I know nothing about REBT. I just know something’s amiss – and REBT might be a viable framework for approaching this balat-sibuyas thingie. However, since I am not a licensed REBT practioner (obviously), it is best to cite the licensed professionals who are into this therapeUtic modality. Here’s a quick introduction on the topic from an REBT site.

What is REBT?

Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) is a form of psychotherapy created by Albert Ellis in the 1950′s.

REBT (pronounced R.E.B.T. — it is not pronounced rebbit) is based on the premise that whenever we become upset, it is not the events taking place in our lives that upset us; it is the beliefs that we hold that cause us to become depressed, anxious, enraged, etc. The idea that our beliefs upset us was first articulated by Epictetus around 2,000 years ago: “Men are disturbed not by events, but by the views which they take of them.”

The Goal of Happiness

According to Albert Ellis and to REBT, the vast majority of us want to be happy. We want to be happy whether we are alone or with others; we want to get along with others—especially with one or two close friends; we want to be well informed and educated; we want a good job with good pay; and we want to enjoy our leisure time.

Of course life doesn’t always allow us to have what we want; our goal of being happy is often thwarted by the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” When our goals are blocked, we can respond in ways that are healthy and helpful, or we can react in ways that are unhealthy and unhelpful.

The ABC Model

Albert Ellis and REBT posit that our reaction to having our goals blocked (or even the possibility of having them blocked) is determined by our beliefs. To illustrate this, Dr. Ellis developed a simple ABC format to teach people how their beliefs cause their emotional and behavioral responses:

A. Something happens.
B. You have a belief about the situation.
C. You have an emotional reaction to the belief.

For example:

A. Your employer falsely accuses you of taking money from her purse and threatens to fire you.
B. You believe, “She has no right to accuse me. She’s a bitch!”
C. You feel angry.

If you had held a different belief, your emotional response would have been different:

A. Your employer falsely accuses you of taking money from her purse and threatens to fire you.
B. You believe, “I must not lose my job. That would be unbearable.”
C. You feel anxious.

The ABC model shows that A does not cause C. It is B that causes C. In the first example, it is not your employer’s false accusation and threat that make you angry; it is your belief that she has no right to accuse you, and that she is a bitch. In the second example, it is not her accusation and threat that make you anxious; it is the belief that you must not lose your job, and that losing your job would be unbearable.

The Three Basic Musts

Although we all express ourselves differently, according to Albert Ellis and REBT, the beliefs that upset us are all variations of three common irrational beliefs. Each of the three common irrational beliefs contains a demand, either about ourselves, other people, or the world in general. These beliefs are known as “The Three Basic Musts.”

1. I must do well and win the approval of others for my performances or else I am no good.

2. Other people must treat me considerately, fairly and kindly, and in exactly the way I want them to treat me. If they don’t, they are no good and they deserve to be condemned and punished.

3. I must get what I want, when I want it; and I must not get what I don’t want. It’s terrible if I don’t get what I want, and I can’t stand it.

The first belief often leads to anxiety, depression, shame, and guilt. The second belief often leads to rage, passive-aggression and acts of violence. The third belief often leads to self-pity and procrastination. It is the demanding nature of the beliefs that causes the problem. Less demanding, more flexible beliefs lead to healthy emotions and helpful behaviors.

Disputing

The goal of REBT is to help people change their irrational beliefs into rational beliefs. Changing beliefs is the real work of therapy and is achieved by the therapist disputing the client’s irrational beliefs. For example, the therapist might ask, “Why must you win everyone’s approval?” “Where is it written that other people must treat you fairly?” “Just because you want something, why must you have it?” Disputing is the D of the ABC model. When the client tries to answer the therapist’s questions, s/he sees that there is no reason why s/he absolutely must have approval, fair treatment, or anything else that s/he wants.

Insight

Albert Ellis and REBT contend that although we all think irrationally from time to time, we can work at eliminating the tendency. It’s unlikely that we can ever entirely eliminate the tendency to think irrationally, but we can reduce the frequency, the duration, and the intensity of our irrational beliefs by developing three insights:

1. We don’t merely get upset but mainly upset ourselves by holding inflexible beliefs.

2. No matter when and how we start upsetting ourselves, we continue to feel upset because we cling to our irrational beliefs.

3. The only way to get better is to work hard at changing our beliefs. It takes practice, practice, practice.

Acceptance

Emotionally healthy human beings develop an acceptance of reality, even when reality is highly unfortunate and unpleasant. REBT therapists strive to help their clients develop three types of acceptance: (1) unconditional self-acceptance; (2) unconditional other-acceptance; and (3) unconditional life-acceptance. Each of these types of acceptance is based on three core beliefs:

Unconditional self-acceptance:

1. I am a fallible human being; I have my good points and my bad points.
2. There is no reason why I must not have flaws.
3. Despite my good points and my bad points, I am no more worthy and no less worthy than any other human being.

Unconditional other-acceptance:

1. Other people will treat me unfairly from time to time.
2. There is no reason why they must treat me fairly.
3. The people who treat me unfairly are no more worthy and no less worthy than any other human being.

Unconditional life-acceptance:

1. Life doesn’t always work out the way that I’d like it to.
2. There is no reason why life must go the way I want it to
3. Life is not necessarily pleasant but it is never awful and it is nearly always bearable.

As far as I am concerned, REBT makes sense. Maybe it can help us address our collective nonsense?

What do you think?

This enough I know, until we, Pinoys, don’t address this dysfunction – expect more jokes to come. And lots of us will not be laughing when the jokes are on us because we run our state of affairs like one big joke.

Get your shit together Philippines – that’s not a joke!

A self-described "mutt" having ancestors of diverse origins - Maranao, Ilonggo, Butuanon, and Ilocano. Born and raised in Southern Mindanao's Davao City, now living in the East Coast's Sunshine State.

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BE A PART OF ANTIPINOY! Follow us on Twitter to stay on top of the news www.twitter.com/antipinoy. Add us on Facebook so you can comment on the headlines.
Help spread the knowledge!

BongV

Noynoy Aquino: “Water Czar”? More like Chump of the Moment

Water supply has always been a problem in the Philippines. Since time immemorial, many Metro Manila residents have even had to rely on electric booster pumps to suck out the essential juice from city’s decrepit mains and store as much of it in privately-owned storage tanks. In many suburbs, there is an arms race of booster pumps among residents. Households possessing the most sucking power and the most upstream location with respect to the piping layout find themselves at pinnacle of advantage as far as the onerous effort (only in the Philippines!) of availing of this life-giving resource.

In a testament to the perverse enterprising spirit of Filipinos, water delivery businesses operate all over the metropolis. With their own farm of industrial-grade booster pumps, these businesses compete with the rest of Filipino humanity’s water sucking effort to fill their also industrial scale storage facilities at industrial scale volumes. And like a truly industrialised effort, these businesses operate vast fleets of delivery trucks to haul tanks of water to the doorstep of their clientele of thirsty households, many of which are too poor to keep up with their neighbours’ rapidly escalating private water-sucking equipment.

The irony and utter stupidity of this set-up escapes most of the dulled intellectual faculties of the Filipino. Instead they would rather call for the rise of a “Water Czar” to step up and “solve” the “crisis”. Not surprisingly, sights get trained upon the biggest chump in the land — the President of our excellent “Republic”.

“President Aquino should act as the ‘water czar’ so forceful, urgent and adequately-funded measures can be done to ease the crippling water shortage now faced by the country,” Eastern Samar Representative Ben Evardone said.

“Only with P-Noy (President Aquino’s monicker) acting as water czar can the government ensure the seamless, intrigue-free coordination among the various agencies that are concerned with water distribution and water resource management work,” he added.

Spoken like true adherents of the all-Pinoy philosophy of Moronism.

Indeed, “only” with the efforts of powerful chumps does anything get done in the bunghole of the Far East. Never mind that the water “crisis” that grips the regional crapper that is our land is a product of a failure of systemic thinking that stretches back to the time when we Filipinos in our renowned wisdom first decided we’d rather “have a Philippines run like hell by Filipinos“. It seems to escape the vacuous sensibilities of even the most educated of the lot of Pinoys that many of the factors that contribute to this “crisis” have been staring us in our face for the most part of the tragedy that is our half-century history as an “independent” nation — runaway population, rampant deforestation, and degradation and depletion of valuable watersheds.

For that matter, the Philippine Water Crisis of 2010 is a close cousin of the Ondoy Disaster of 2009. As evident in the diagram below, the two disasters share many key contributing factors.

Compare the laughable scrambling for “solutions” that Filipinos are caught up with today with the quiet cool of tiny Singapore. It is an island state with no natural ground water and few catchment areas. It’s had to deal with a humbling reliance on Malaysia for much of the 1.36 billion litres per day it needs to satisfy the needs of its 4.4 million residents.

Unlike some countries, Singaporeans don’t manage by crisis.

As a first step, a string of massive reservoirs are being constructed to “harvest as much rain as possible”, so that eventually, some two-thirds of the island’s land surface will be under water, up from about half today, [Public Utilities Board Chief Executive Khoo Teng Chye] explains.

In addition, desalination plants that turn salt water into drinking water provide 10% of Singapore’s current needs.

But the real breakthrough has come from what Mr Khoo describes as NEWater, produced in water reclamation plants from so-called “used” water.

Contrast this foresight to the primitivism of Filipino “thinking”. According to an Earth Times News report on the water crisis faced by the Philippine capital today, 3.5 million residents suffer from an acute supply shortage. That’s almost 80 percent of the population of Singapore!

I recall, during the Ondoy Disaster of 2009, how many of the same dimwits who are pompously weighing in on the water issue today were quick to blame the chump who happened to be sitting in Malacanang at the time.

Tough luck Mr. Benigno “P.Noy” Aquino III.

No amount of being the “prayerful” Aquino that you are will shield you from being the Chump of the Moment as Filipinos foolishly look for Messiahs to save them from another one of the all-too-routine “crises” that all-too-often get politicised true to the primitivist thinking that infests our hopelessly backward society. It’s nothing personal. It’s just Pinoy-style politics at work here. You stepped up to the “toughest job in the land”, remember?

benign0 is the webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.

BE A PART OF ANTIPINOY! Follow us on Twitter to stay on top of the news www.twitter.com/antipinoy. Add us on Facebook so you can comment on the headlines. Help spread the knowledge!

benign0

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Tagged as: noynoy aquino, ondoy, thinking, water

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Grab This Widget

1. 

   silvercrest

   July 21, 2010 • 11:06 pm

   

   Don’t worry. It will be over soon. Pinoys have very short memories. Funny thing is, Pinoys are very proud to claim that they have the best engineers and architects in the world and yet cannot solve this…I wonder what kind of engineers and architects? and oh..what world?

   Sometimes I’m just wondering if somebody could just nuke Manila.

   [Reply]

   

   Sharafa Reply:
   July 21st, 2010 at 11:55 pm

   

   North Korea has a hefty supply. Maybe we can just incite them to nuke us, by invoking our moronism, and make some kind of insult on their ” dear leader”. Abnoy is sure to come up with some political gaffe to achieve this.

   [Reply]

   

   silvercrest Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 12:21 am

   

   Yes…wonder if PeeNoyL should’ve insulted Kim Jong-il instead of Japan. Our country is really depressing.

   [Reply]

   

   RvR Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 4:00 am

   

   Sooner or later his being tactless will catch up on him. And yeah, if you notice it has always been Manila who’s causing the problems in our country. Ya know, the biased brainwashing mainstream media, the trapos, oligarchs, etc. they are all based there! Hmmmm….I wonder what would it be like without Manila? hehe

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   ChinoF Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 4:11 am

   

   Switch the capital to Subic, were someone did it right. Hehehe

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   mel Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 7:21 am

   

   Change the capital of the Philippines? I thought of that also. Subic, Cebu,Davao,CDO? A lot of well-planned and clean cities, why stick in Smoggy and dirty Manila?

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   UP nn grad Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 8:07 am

   

   Billions of pesos will accrue to the oligarchy that owns the thousand-plus hectares that is converted from agricultural to commercial when Hacienda-this or Ciudad-that becomes the new capital of Pilipinas. One or more of the Cojuangco clan members know this.

   [Reply]

   

   UP nn grad Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 8:16 am

   

   Money will be CREATED (not just earned but CREATED ) over the next 8 years along that 85 kilometers distance between Makati and Diosdado Macapagal International Airport. Money of all denominations — Japanese yen, Pilipinas peso, US dollars, Euro, Baht, Singapore- or Hongkong dollar, ringgit.

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2. 

   mulatto

   July 21, 2010 • 11:48 pm

   

   The “best engineers and architects in the world” you are referring to are working overseas…thanks to the current economic situation and the anti-intellectual atmosphere in the good ol’ Pinas.

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3. 

   crab

   July 22, 2010 • 1:10 am

   

   Tingnan mo ang lintik na nagsabi na “lets be constructive” he cannot even draw any solution or suggestion to the problem!

   Intriga lang ang alam

   [Reply]

   

   mel Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 2:06 am

   

   @crab

   Intriga man..PNoy has still the toughest job in the Philippines

   Draw any solution and suggestion to the problem? We need a lot of best architects and engineers to attend to the problem.

   Singapore and Malaysia are working with the best European architects and engineers and PNoy is still on his on-the-job training, remember?

   [Reply]

   

   crab Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 2:39 am

   

   mel

   oh gash mel wat aym toking abawt is kung nakakakita ka ng problima hindi masama na umiyak at magreklamo pero kaakibat ng pagiyak at pagreklamo ay dapat samahan mo naman ng konsern at suhesyon para matugunan ang problima. hindi iyak ka lang ng iyak sigaw ka lang ng sigaw hindi alam nagpapapansin ka lang pala.

   im no fan of aktibistang raliyista pero parang maganda pa pakinggan ang mga nabaggit kesa sikmurain ang mga walang kwentang laman ng utang ng mga awthor ng blog na ito. na walang ibang ginawa kundi mangsisi ng mangsisi wala namang ginagawa

   [Reply]

   

   mel Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 2:50 am

   

   nyek Sa aking karanasan, tatlong taon akong nanirahan sa apartment na limang araw sa isang linggo walang tubig lagi dahil walang suplay ang water distrikt pero singil ng singil ng minimum at buwan buwan nagbayad ako ng serbisyo na walang serbisyong kapalit.

   Buwan buwan nagreklamo ako at nagbigay ng suhestiyon para matugunan ang problema sa tubig at bawat reklamo ko, sabi sa akin “i-tsek namin” ang linya…grrrr

   Ako pa din ang nagbigay solusyon, nag-igib sa poso, bumili ng filtered water at nag-ipon ng tubig-ulan.

   Sa palagay mo, tatanggapin ng malalaking kompanya ang mga suhestiyon mula sa taong bayan? Nasa Pilipinas tayo, gising, crab!

   Ikaw, ano ang suhestiyon mo kundi mamuna o mangsisi ng mga nakasulat dito?

   Your turn! Solusyon, plis!

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   mel Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 2:56 am

   

   @crab

   adisyunal

   Para saiyong kaalaman, madali sanang matugunan ang problema sa tubig kung hindi lamang naglalaban laban sa husgado ang mga kumpanyang gustong mamuhunan sa tubig at koryente.

   Ang mga monopol na kumpanya ang sisihin mo dahil ayaw nilang mamahagi ng kanilang kita mula sa taong bayan.

   At habang naglalaban – laban sila sa hukuman, walang tubig ang mga mamamayan!! Pero bayad pa din si Juan!

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   crab Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 3:09 am

   

   mel

   “buwan buwan nagbayad ako ng serbisyo na walang serbisyong kapalit.”

   - ang tawag TANGA

   “Ang mga monopolya na kumpanya ang sisihin mo”

   -mel anu kaya kung magtayo tayo ng MELENCRAP WATER SUPPLY COMPANY para naman at lest di mo masabing monopolyong kompanya

   seryusli:

   mel ang saakin lang naman na kung bumanat dahan dahan man lang. bigyan ng kunting puwang na ” ” hindi pa nga natatapos ang dalawang buwan kung bumanat ng “Chump” parang napaka talino ng awthor. hindi mo pa mababasa ang kabuuan ng blog nanduduon na ang konklusyon sa titulo. kawawang pinas kung dadami ang lahi ng benignO na to

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   mel Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 3:18 am

   

   @crab

   nyek again!

   Ano ba iyan, pag bumanat dahan dahan pa? Huwag ka na lang bumanat para di ka mapuna, di ba?

   Kawawa ang Pilipinas kung dadami ang crab(s)!

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   waranabatokwa Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 3:11 am

   

   @mel

   hi there! i feel your sentiment… i am a graduate of civil engineering and i would rather work for another country than our own.. filipinos just doesn’t show enough appreciation to engineers..

   [Reply]

   

   mel Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 3:21 am

   

   @waranabatokwa

   Thanks. That is why we have professionals. Give the work to those who can do it best. Let the writers write, let the engineers build, let the doctors heal, etc.

   Nobody is “Superman”

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   ChinoF Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 3:33 am

   

   Mel,
   Ba’t mo papansinin ang obyus na hindi seryoso?

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   mel Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 4:36 am

   

   @Chino F

   Give feedback daw, sabi sa video Baka lumiwanag din kaisipan

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   ChinoF Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 5:54 am

   

   Onga no, feedback. Pakainin ang likod.

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   ulong pare Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 10:30 am

   

   … daang

   … crab, ang author eh may inesab kahit intriga…

   … ikaw eh pasalpok-salpok sa gilid ng kawali… dapat dagdagan mo ng konting baguio oyel para di ka masyadong masunog….

   … ay sarap dito ah… sa pula, sa puti.. labo-labo na…

   … teka… teka… teka… sinong llamado? dehado?

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4. 

   Dee

   July 22, 2010 • 1:42 am

   

   I find it incredible that with all the typhoons that Philippines get, the country can still suffer from water shortage. It’s all mismanagement and idiocy.

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5. 

   PEDOBEAR

   July 22, 2010 • 1:56 am

   

   IS DAT SUM CP

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6. 

   silvercrest

   July 22, 2010 • 2:23 am

   

   Friend, as in the illustration above, since there are not much trees left, thanks to those jerks still in the gov’t who are the biggest illegal loggers. Rain water cannot be trapped effectively, wasting it and becoming flood waters.

   There are a lot of things that even an ordinary person can do like proper usage of water and smart design of houses and buildings that allows rain water collection, power generation and urban gardening. Unfortunately, our public self-servants are more interested in their own monkey businesses and mistresses.

   What I’m unclear about is where these water delivery trucks get their water. If they’re getting it closer from the source, then of course, less water will be left to flow down the line.

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   benign0 Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 2:33 am

   

   @ silvercrest, that’s exactly the point I wanted to highlight. These water delivery “services” themselves deprive the very clientele they serve. The insult they add to the injury these businesses cause is that they actually charge you for water that it contributed to depriving you of to begin with.

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7. 

   juan benito

   July 22, 2010 • 3:05 am

   

   nice picture!

   it’s something you do before you kiss someones ass.

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8. 

   famous wolf

   July 22, 2010 • 3:32 am

   

   Wait, philanthropy and community oriented thinking is frowned upon in the Philippines now? Ok that’s it, I’m not sending any more money on an ungrateful nation that contradicts itself with the teachings in Christianity. Turn the other cheek indeed!

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9. 

   Cool Cat

   July 22, 2010 • 4:28 am

   

   Hindi maituro ni Ngoyngoy ang mga Lopez at Ayala sa problema ng tubig, ahahay. Kaya wala dawwater crisis, sabi niya. So help me God!

   [Reply]

   

   Hyden Toro Reply:
   July 22nd, 2010 at 8:13 am

   

   You can become like an Ostrich. The dumb Bird buries its head in the ground hole; when it sees danger. You can call there is no water crissis. However, this will not produce any water for Metro Manila. Maybe, if Noynoy Aquino who believes, he is destined by God to be President. Will, like the Christian Biblical Moses. Can ask his minions to bring a rock in Malacanang Palace. He can strike the rock, and split it. Water may gush from it, then. We will surely believe, he is the God anointed to lead us to the Promised Land. However, at present, I am skeptical, because, I see a Phony..

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10. 

    Cool Cat

    July 22, 2010 • 4:31 am

    

    Hindi mapagalitan ni Ngoyngoy ang mga may-ari ng tubigan, ang mga Lopez at mga Ayala! Mga campaign supporters kasi eh! Kaya resort siya sa pronouncement na walang water crisis! Ahahay! So help me God!

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11. 

    Sharafa

    July 22, 2010 • 4:43 am

    

    The problem doesn’t lie directly in Manila. Manila is just a symptom of disease, much like corruption. The true problem lies in our centralized system of government, with development being all shifted into the capital and is therefore a cause of much of our oligopolistic businesses and one of the causes of corruption. Besides, a centralized governments are never practical, as proven by communism. Once the head is taken out, then the rest of the body dies with it. However, it’s a favorite for power hungry politicians or in this case, the oligarchs. Speaking of North Korea, I feel that the media’s efforts to turn Aquino into a messianic figure is very much in parallel with what they did for Kim Il Sung. Within a few years (or months if the Oligarch-run media are that good), we might become the capitalist incarnation of NK.

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12. 

    Sharafa

    July 22, 2010 • 5:07 am

    

    @Crab

    Ever heard of the words “constructive criticism”? Quoting Key of the Twilight: “Auguries of destruction be a lullaby for rebirth”. To promote new ideas and concepts (being constructive), you must logically destroy the old, stagnant ideas. Or would you rather we ignore the root of the prevalent water crisis here and just take a low brow at the writers here by calling them hypocritical when they’re clearly consistent? Besides, unless you haven’t read the article in detail, benign0 has already insinuated a solution for the problem, which is to follow the Singaporean model of water management and sewage treatment.

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    crab Reply:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 5:47 am

    

    ikumpara ba naman ang singapore sa luzon moron talaga itong si benignO

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    BongV Reply:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 6:08 am

    

    e kung buong Pilipinas kinumpara sa Singapore lalong naging mukhang moron si crab – moron talaga itong si crab

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    waranabatokwa Reply:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 6:14 am

    

    i don’t think we should be really adapting the water management system of singapore.. those solutions presented there are already being taught to engineers in the philippines..

    we already know what to do.. the government just wouldn’t listen..

    and as mel and everybody pointed out, the best engineers are out of the country.. tough luck for all of us..

    let me share a post of mine on my take on the water crisis..

    http://waranabatokwa.wordpress.com/2010/07/21/water-crisis/

    i am not really a good blogger but i still try my best to point out the idea..

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    NFA rice Reply:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 8:42 am

    

    @waranabatokwa
    Well I think Metro Manila, urbanized as it is, can be compared with Singapore. Of course urban planners of the metropolis (if they really exist or function) need not copy the Singaporean system. Singapore doesn’t receive torrential amounts of water in the form of typhoons as Manila does so there’s the difference. However, there’s a lesson to be learned. But as you said, it is ignored.

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    ChinoF Reply:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 9:05 am

    

    For me, it’s not just centralization in Manila that’s the problem. It’s more like centralization in the oligarchs. Who owns the water companies… oligarchs. It’s not Manila vs. outside Manila, but oligarchs vs. the Philippines again.

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    Hyden Toro Reply:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 8:03 am

    

    We are doing Constructive Criticism: that is, making them aware of themselves: they are not fitted for the Jobs. They have no capabilities to solve the country’s problems. Because, they themselves, are the problems and stumbling blocks: by claiming they are competent. In truth, they are not.

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13. 

    waranabatokwa

    July 22, 2010 • 6:15 am

    

    why did my post end up there? that was a reply to the article..

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    ChinoF Reply:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 6:32 am

    

    Latest first-in-the-branch posts end up above, but branch replies appear below the first-in-the-branch post.

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    waranabatokwa Reply:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 6:34 am

    

    oh.. i figured out what happened.. i was initially going to reply to crab pero tinamad ako.. i forgot to click the cancel reply button..

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14. 

    17 Pieces

    July 22, 2010 • 6:47 am

    

    Water czar? Why not energy czar, considering that he used to work in a nuclear power plant in Springfield? Hur hur hur!

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15. 

    ako ang simula ng pagkabobo

    July 22, 2010 • 7:39 am

    

    may tubig pa raw sa Times St. kaya di pwedeng magdeklara ng state of calamity.

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    waranabatokwa Reply:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 7:56 am

    

    comment of the week material..

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16. 

    Hyden Toro

    July 22, 2010 • 7:54 am

    

    These are the problems I was talking about in my earlier Blog comments. They are now surfacing, one at a time. Can you solve these problems by EDSAs, or by sloganeering? Even,if you claim your parents were famous and heroes: it will not be of help in facing and solving these problems. No amount of political gimmicks will drive them away. If you fight them. They are sure to fight back in vengence.

    This is where the Gray Matter(Excellent Brain) is badly needed for a President. Advisers and political minions will not be of help. Because, most of them are just there for the Ride. Most of them are just plain political opportunists. They will surely jump ship; if they feel your ship is floundering, and is about to sink….

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17. 

    NFA rice

    July 22, 2010 • 8:07 am

    

    @mel,
    maybe Manila remains as the seat of administration, while Iligan city or Davao as seats of learning.. Cebu maybe a cultural and commercial center, central luzon, negros, and bukidnon become agricultural centers., Others can become industrial centers.

    Anything that transfers some power concentrated in Metro Manila, develop other provinces, and eventually decongest Manila.

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    mel Reply:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 8:20 am

    

    @NFA Rice

    Yeah, right. That is a good idea!

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    NFA rice Reply:
    July 22nd, 2010 at 9:11 am

    

    @mel,
    thanks, it would be nice if every regional unit has some for of independence without losing interdependence with one another. As i see it now, everyone depends on Metro Manila. So all attention, as well as checks and balances, are focused there. Ironically this results to events in the provinces ignored at the national level because everyone is looking at the national leaders only. Only few people concern themselves with the local political climate. There is also the corrupting effect of huge bureaucracy when power is centralized.

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18. 

    ulong pare

    July 22, 2010 • 11:23 am

    

    … daaang

    … flipland is inundated with torrential rain; with plentiful waterfalls, rivers, bays and esturaries… fresh water abound, the envy of the civilized world who are tapping the oceans for consumption

    … 2 to 3 months of any given year, flipland suffers from cathastrophic flooding…

    … the rest of the year, flips suffer from drought… ano ba ‘yan???

    … kasi, flips, puro gung gongs!

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19. 

    olivia

    July 22, 2010 • 11:34 am

    

    Nakakapagtaka talaga kung bakit sa Maynila ay problema ang tubig samantalang sagana tayo sa tubig ulan at napapaligiran pa ng mga reservoir. Magandang aksyon na sana ang pagsasapribado ng supply ng tubig dahil mas matutugunan ng pribadong sektor ang ganitong serbisyo. Ngunit sa kabila nito ay andyan pa rin ang problema.

    Sa Saudi kahit disyerto ay sagana sa tubig. Sa isang taon halos 100 USD lang ang binabayad. Ang tubig pampaligo, gamit sa toliet at iba pa ay binabalik sa treatment plant para magamit ulit. Meron din silang malalaking desalination plants na kung saan ang tubig dagat ay nililinis para magamit sa pang araw araw na supply. Ang bottled water naman ay mas mura ang halaga kesa sa Pinas.

    Sa indonesia, wala ring problema sa tubig. Wala pa ngang 10 USD ang bayad namin kada buwan meron pa kaming swimming pool nun.

    Sa Haiti, yung mga malalaking bahay tulad ng natirhan namin ay may imbakan ng tubig ulan. Tapos nilalagyan ko lang ng chlorine para luminis. Di lang tubig ulan ang source kungdi makakabili ka rin ng tubig na galing sa ilog dala ng truck kada bahay.

    Sa mayayamang bansa tulad ng US at Sweden, yung tubig galing sa toilet sink ay pede ng inumin. Meron pang hot and cold agad at flouride treated.

    Sa madaling salita, mahal na nga ang bayad natin sa Pinas ng tubig pero di pa rin maganda ang serbisyo. Madami rin naman pedeng pagkunan ng tubig kaya dapat walang problema na. Malinaw na ang nangingibabaw na sistema ang puno’t dulo ng problema sa tubig.

    Ang solusyon dito tingin ko ay pagliliberalize ng industriya tulad ng ginawa sa telecom. Kapag pinapasok ang maraming player, madalas na mangyari ay magiimprove ang service at bababa ang presyo. Papasukin ang lahat ng gustong mamuhunan hindi lang 2 – Maynilad at Manila Water. Samahan na rin ng pag gamit ng teknolohiya. Dagdagan ang source ng tubig di lang mula sa La Mesa at Angat. Isama na ang Wawa, ang Laguna lake at iba pa. Kung may BOT na desalination plant, okay din. Magandang potential talaga ang liberalization. Let the market dictate the prices and drive the performance. Lagyan na rin ng imbakan ng tubig ang bagong design ng bahay.

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