Green highways, black seas

A study by a Swiss banking company showed that Manila is among the cheapest countries in the world to live in. How much more comforting it would be, both to foreign visitors and local travelers if some survey also concluded that it is the one of the "safest". The Swiss survey showed that the most expensive were Oslo, London, Copenhagen, Zurich, Tokyo and New York.

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Well, yes, if you were, say, an American and you come to live in Manila, or anywhere in the Philippines, you you'd find that everything is dirt-cheap here. Your dollar would convert to some P52 and that's a lot of money around here already. You buy a chocolate bar in the U.S. for 20 cents and if your original money is in pesos, that means ten pesos or more, already. So an American who rents a house in a high-end subdivision may be paying P40,000 a month, but that would be only 800 dollars for him. Cheap, of course.

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The study focused on the cost of clothes. For the same quality, it said, one would pay more than ten times for an outfit, whether it is for men or for women. I was very happy with buying some T-shirts at a Van Heusen outlet in California recently at $21.99 each which I thought was quite a bargain. But when I computed my purchase later. I discovered that the price amounted to more than P1,100 in our money - something I would never have paid for a T-shirt here. The same went for cosmetics, even the brand ones. The worst is food, because even the fast-food prices were atrocious, compared to ours her.

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That was very surprising news yesterday. The Israeli police raided the residence of their president because he had been accused of sexual harassment by someone. The cops were able to seize some tapes and CDs they said were incriminating. Could such a thing ever happen were? Will any policeman swoop down on the Malacañang quarters, even the personal residence of the President? Of course, they may go against the Constitution and attempt to nab a senator while in session, but that is different. He's not a president of the nation. Also, he happens to belong to the opposition.

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Now former Bacolod Bishop Camilo Gregorio appears to have been caught in the middle with his change of mind over his appointment to the President's prestigious commission. The body is believed to be her response to the biting words of the Amnesty International slamming the country for the systematic killings of journalists and perceived leftists - as if there were no distinction between them. And so someone from the church who had not been tainted with the ideas of the likes of Monsignors Oscar Cruz, Tobias, Labayen and Bacani et al, was needed. Sometime between afternoon and night however, Bishop Gregorio must have seen the light and, forthwith, withdrew his alleged acceptance. Well, anyway, when the bishop of Batanes pulled out, Malacañang replaced him with the bishop from Butuan, which is, like Batanes, a more or less, pristine territory.

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Pristine is what the waters of the Western Visayas are no longer, with the sheen from the Guimaras oil spill moving closer and closer towards several coasts of the surrounding islands. Is help, real help, indeed, on the way? Has the P20 million announced been released already? As for the Japanese crew we had been counting on so much, reports last night said the team had not even left harbor, nor gotten instructions to drop anchor yet, because a lot paper work has not been complied with. Something about insurance, accreditation, etc, had not been accomplished yet. So - on with the manual scooping, the floating of straws and hair until they get here.

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While our seas are getting blacker and blacker, and marine life also getting suffocated faster and faster, today we will be seeing the implementation of the plan of the Environment Secretary (and future senatorial candidate?) to turn the country's highways into a green panel across the land. How ironic that our highways will be turning green while our coasts are turning black. It is equally ironic that the two most grievous problems our people are facing now have to do with leaks. We have the shameful leaks in the nurses examination, and the disastrous leak from the aging tanker that could not cope with its load of two million liters of bunker fuel.*

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