We beg to differ.
When former President Gloria Arroyo (GMA) was in power, people were quick to blame her government for what happened during the flooding brought about by typhoon Ondoy in September 2009. Yes, her government could have done more to prevent the flooding but the deluge brought forth by the rains induced by the storm that caused…
Read More “Is PNoy to blame for the recent flooding in Luzon?” »
The virtue of ‘resilience’ has become a dirty word now in the Philippines as third-time unlucky Manila is again hit by another one of those “one-in-one-hundred” calamities that were once the key statistical notion underpinning urban planners’ archaic flood “control” master plans. Although response to the disaster has “improved”, the feel-good rhetoric around Filipinos’ cockroach-like…
Read More “Metro Manila a candidate for urban ‘catastrophic failure’ according to policy expert” »
With word out that “unprecedented” heavy rains may continue well into Thursday the 9th of August, persistent floods are expected to spawn a new risk to health. Diarrhea outbreaks now pose a threat to thousands of Filipinos impacted by flood waters. Health Secretary Enrique Ona has issued warnings about the dangers of contaminated drinking water…
Read More “Access to safe drinking water critical in the coming days to prevent diarrhea outbreak” »
I finally checked out Iya-J’s recent article Carlos Celdran is a bad influence to the Filipino people after seeing it appear on my newsfeed more than a few times over the last couple of days. Obviously it took that long for it to finally arouse my curiosity. I wouldn’t really have known who this Carlos…
Read More “After living here all my life I can say Metro Manila is not an acquired taste” »
Apart from being the first big-time Hollywood production to shoot in the Philippines in a long time, Bourne Legacy which stars Jeremy Renner in the lead role along with Rachel Weisz and Edward Norton will be the first mega-budget Hollywood blockbuster film to actually feature the Philippines as part of its storyline. Despite the Philippines…
Read More “Bourne Legacy shoot in Manila highlights Filipino condition” »
A certain Geoffrey James wrote a scathing review of the Philippines or rather, as he quickly pointed out, a scathing review of it’s capital, Manila on Travelblog.org. I’m glad he decided to be specific because the country as a whole is not ugly. Nonetheless, I am pretty sure Manila was once as beautiful as the…
Any motorist who’s spent enough time negotiating Manila’s potholed streets will attest to how the Philippines’ surreal complex of culturally-ingrained bad manners, ill-thought-out road layouts, inconsistent law enforcement, and the overall unsightliness that blankets the Philippines’ capital cities contributes to an experience like no other. At the root of the banal dysfunction of Philippine-style motoring…
Read More “Road rage and the Filipino ego – like navigating a bubble through a forest of pins” »
Poor Christopher “Chris†Lao. He is not your average guy. He seems like the type of person who would not hesitate to just do things. Whether it is driving through a flooded street or speaking his mind in front of millions of people in front of a TV camera, he apparently would not think twice….
Read More “The Chris Lao flood incident: what the MMDA could have done” »