Pet Melliza

It's amusing how we greet one another "happy", "merry", "prosperous" and what-not, Christmas, New Year, Yuletide, Holiday Season, etc. without realizing that we are just doing mechanically in blissful innocence of the looming spike in the economi strangulation of the Filipino people. Nevertheless, I still risk to greet one and all "prosperous" 2015 though the Grinch is not about to exit in 2014 and leave us alone in the coming year.  We have not yet finished the year when the DOTC announced exponential hikes in the LRT/MRT fares for the sake of nobody else but to repay the debts of  the Ayala, Henry Sy, Pangilinan and other corporate groups so to insure these beneficiaries of our sovereign guaranty super-profits. Pesteng yawaa! Yudikakak! Bilatnibaya! Utang ni Pidro sukton si Juan? 2015 will not be a prosperous year for us but only for the handful Taipans and their foreign partners who Abnoy and cabal coddle. At any rate, the proper

Why does PLDT retrogress in its services?, a neighbor asked me. His line was cut off last night (Dec. 12, 2014) in Guzman, Mandurriao, Iloilo City after a crane hit a bundle of wires (power and telcos). He called up PLDT this morning to report his problem. His phone and DSL-WI-FI is dead whole day despite assurances of a very polite person who got his call, very articulate in English to boot. Well, I already had my PLDT line cut off last October. Like a vampire it is only good in collecting but never reciprocates in terms of efficient services. Reaching its customer service alone is a calvary: 1st you are made to listen to a computer telling you to press this or that, next it asks you to wait, wait and wait for a real human voice which is actually a call service center assuring you it would refer you to the maintenance department which will check and repair your connection. The repair crew takes days to show up: it is just a sub-contractor that won't risk setting out

WTF!: A road instead of bridge to link the two shores (banks) of Iloilo River? Iloilo river is a maritime channel snaking around Iloilo City old downtown area.  It is not a river actually.

Iloilo River: Constricted yet still being reclaimed. It is said that what is essential is invisible to the eye of adults. Are the Iloilo City Government, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) asleep? (The DPWH has jurisdiction here because Iloilo River is still considered "navigable".) The Esplanade I costs taxpayers P87 M. It was alreadty a functioning road before Senate President Franklin Drilon in 2010 conceived of the idea of scraping its asphalt pavement and replaced it with bricks, in effect, rendering what used to be a diversion road that was constructed to de-clog main arteries into a leisure strip where vehicles and bikes are banned but only humans who may run, walk or perform exercises on it. The Iloilo River is a beauty notwithstanding the systematic despoliation of its mangrove patches on both banks that government did in the name of the animal called "bea

ILOILO CITY -- “Revitalization” is a nice word nobody can argue with. But in Iloilo City, it is being fiercely opposed by vendors and lessees of public markets. And public opposition to the revitalization scheme grows because its very proponents are themselves the agitators-in-chief for their lack of transparency, to be more precise, for double speak. Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog and his ilk in the city government to include honorable members of the sangguniang panglungsod, have another meaning for it: privatization. They coined the term “revitalization” to cover one that has already been discredited and much hated. Revitalization, as Mabilog and his ilk would like to tell us, applies to the Iloilo Central Market or the Tienda Mayor, as older denizens call it. Revitalization is being sold as a magic wand that unleashes spectacular benefits on the Tienda Mayor which is an almost decrepit structure that has become became so, not by the fault of its tenants but by sheer negl

On our way back from a hearing the RTC in Barotac Viejo, Iloilo Province 12:15 noon, a segment of the road along Brgy. Acuit, Barotac Nuevo, Iloilo, had heavy traffic. Vehicles clogged for two reasons - one, that segment was one way and two, there was an accident. (Our case was the damage complaint filed by our clients, victims of the oil spill off Estancia, Iloilo in the aftermath of supertyphoon Yolanda against some government offices and a private entity linked to the Prince of the Pork Barrel which bagged the P87M clean up contract despite utter and brazen lack of competence to perform.) As one-way road, we have to wait for the last counter-flowing vehicle before proceeding down south to Iloilo City.  Since there were people, especially, a number of uniformed police officers and their two prowl cars parked on the road side, motorists had to slow down, especially upon seeing a white SUV down on the empty canefield bearing fresh signs of accident -- broken front fenders, flatte