We beg to differ.
It seemed like an eternity ago that Joseph “Erap” Estrada was a whipping boy of the Philippines’ chattering classses. The late Teddy Benigno summed up the pickle — what he called “Our Crisis” — Filipino voters had gotten themselves into when they voted Erap to the presidency in 1998… As many of us in the…
Read More “Has Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada changed for the better?” »
Newly-minted Manila mayor Joseph “Erap” Estrada comes up with a quick win to solve Manila’s traffic mess. Reportedly part of “a grand plan to ease traffic congestion in the capital”, a new council resolution implemented by Erap’s city government bans “the entry of provincial and metro buses without private terminals in the city”. The City…
Sad milestone for a once glorious city and a former citadel of American industrial power. Detroit, Michigan — the city itself and its surrounding metropolitan area home to the United States’ “Big Three” car manufacturers, General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler — yesterday filed for bankruptcy following a decades-long decline the sharpest of which was felt…
It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to predict the response the Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) will get if it extends the proposed expansion of the ‘number coding scheme’ to the city’s privately-operated public utility vehicles (PUVs). Under Metro Manila’s current Unified Vehicular Volume Reduction Program (UVVRP), vehicles ending in any one of two license…
From a macro collective perspective, the Manila traffic situation is really a simple issue. What we call the “mess” that is Manila traffic is no more than an emergent property; a collective outcome of the idiotic behaviour of the system’s individual elements — Idiotic Filipino Drivers. Tell-tale signs of a truly idiotic driver is a…
Read More “Overcoming idiotic Filipino drivers: Three tips for navigating Manila traffic” »
So I finally saw the “Amalayer†video posted on YouTube and I just had to ask myself, what the heck was the big deal? Why did this video go viral? It’s not even funny and there’s no way to tell why the girl, Paula Jamie Salvosa went ballistic towards the security guard at the LRT…
Read More “Filipinos who cyber-bullied #Amalayer girl showed worse behaviour than her” »
Why am I not surprised that the move of the Philippines’ Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) to implement an order to change remuneration of the country’s public utility bus drivers from a commission-based payment scheme to a fixed-salary scheme fell flat on its face? DOLE Order Number 118-12 which mandates this transition supposedly had…
Read More “The moronism in ‘ordering’ bus drivers and conductors to be paid fixed salaries” »
It seems Filipino public servants are incapable of thinking outside the square when it comes to addressing the problems that plague the nation. Most of them rely on prayer to solve issues rather than apply science and technology — an approach that could actually yield permanent solutions. Take the case of the Chairman for Metro…
Read More “MMDA is living on a prayer instead of thinking about solving EDSA’s traffic problems” »