Pet Melliza

 GUIMARAS, an island province off eastern Panay Island may not be rich but it’s not broke either. It’s baffling though how the province that rightly boasts of its mangoes, cashew and countless resorts readily groveled down to the cheap enticement of a business corporation, one that produces alcoholic beverages, to erect on one of its promontories a structure ala Hollywood bearing the letters that spells the island’s name. First off: it’s good but not necessary, even if the “G-U-I-M-A-R-A-S” is facing the Iloilo Straight where inter-island and ocean faring vessels navigate or berth.  On board those ships are travelers to begin with: this means they already know or, if they didn’t, they are surrounded be opportunities like fellow crew or passengers, to identify the island. Wonder if Gov, Rahman Nava really celebrated at the installation of a giant visual which de facto turned his  island into a cheap victim of Lucio Tan’s advertisement gimmick. That harkens us back several ...

Is Globe Telecom retrogressing? In this age of the AI, bots already rival humans in the field of journalism and engineering. But Globe’s reliance on bots is a retrogression, judging from the “intelligence” of its brand of “AI” which rivals that emanating from the dense cranium of Mocha Uson. Globe is only driven by greed for profits where public service is the least of its concerns. It has been downsizing since the Covid-19 pandemic. Before, seeking for immediate response to problems like faltering landline and internet connections merited fast response. Globe then had its offices in Gaisano City, SM Delgado, Robinson’s and SM City. Your Wi-Fi is slow or dead at that time? Go to any of the above offices and warm Human bodies would meet you and in one day, its crew would call to query or arrive at the scene to do the works. Today, Globe Telecom which must have enjoy the luck of being cooled by the rotating tail of Belzeebub if not Lucifer, requires you to pass through the eye of the nee...

YRONG-YRONG - Datu Saripada Agwak is head over heels again waxing pathetically at the giant strides the Iloilo International Airport would make if that prime jewel goes to private hands.  There are two conglomerates, one of which is Villar’s, eyeing to privatize it. At present, the airport, dubbed the prettiest outside Metro Manila, is publicly owned. Datu Agwak need not look far at the effects of that animal called privatization.  Government privatized the water utility in Manila: the net effect is water no longer fit for consumption and at heftier price at that. Government privatized the National Power Corporation (NAPOCOR) and Petron: what we got is electricity and fuel prices shooting beyond outer space. In Yrong-Yrong, the Metro Iloilo Water District (MIWD) decided to privatize itself, the better word is de-fanged by letting the pilfered wealth of bloody dictator Soeharto in, some P2 billion of it, and let the distribution and billing power on the lap of the new animal ca...

    Mayor Jerry Treñas and his caboodle in the mass disinformation industry are yelping accolades and jumping in glee at nothing but how good, bright and promising the fates of the Iloilo Terminal Market and Iloilo Central Market would be under his watch. Better still, miswatch.      "Public-Private Partnership" kuno; "renovation" kuno, "progress" pa gid, lapdogs in the  mainstream mass disinformation industry oogle.      What they're deliberately hiding is the obvious, that the deal is nothing but a "lease contract", a heavily lopsided one, that hands over for a song two prime real estate properties of Iloilo City taxpayers to SM Holdings, owner of the most number and biggest of malls in the Philippines.      It's neither PPP nor renovation but a broad daylight robbery where Treñas surrenders to SM the ownership of the "Central" and "Super" to SM for 50 years, renewable thereafter at SM's caprice.      By merely...

 ILOILO CITY — Saturday night, preparatory to the Resurrection, Pinoys perform rituals consisting of removal of signs of sorrow  inside churches — of purple cloths draping statues  including the Crucified One. There is no mass yet as this celebration is reserved for the following day after the official time of the Resurrection comes. For the time being, the minister blesses essentials used at home like water, salt and oil and seeds  that worshippers bring —rice, corn, beans, fruit trees and what-not.  All vehicles lined up on the street are blessed, streets to be more precise as the volume of vehicles rose every hour — either public or private carriers. (In this regard, to cut short the time spent on blessing the vehicles with engines on, the officiating priests asks his lay ministers to assist in spreading the blessings,  Easter, our tradition tells us, ushers-in not only the Resurrected One but the whole new life itself — the seeds for abundant harvests a...

YRONG-YRONG CITY -- Iloilo farmers rallied here today decrying depressed farm produce especially palay. They rile against government trade liberalization policy that renders them helpless at the mercy of importers in complicity with smugglers.  Rice farmers today are at the receiving end of the onslaught of giant rice importers led by a certain Cynthia Villar, a senator who authored the controversial Rice Tariffication Act, and smugglers who enjoy government connection. Farm inputs like urea have shot up beyond outer space, above P3,000 per bag. Though its price leveled down at P2,800 today, that is still way higher than its price last year at P800/bag. Costs of production --transport, fuel for machineries--have shot up but rice farm gate price is still pegged below P14/kilo. A certain tenant of Malacañang promised during the campaign for the May 2022 election to lower milled rice down to P20/kilo. Today, the cheapest rice sells at 40/kilo. “Binlod” or broken rice bits, sold to fee...

Construction activities slowdown traffic flow but that is not an excuse for traffic gridlocks that this blighted land called Yrong-Yrong must bear. This kingdomn is just cursed with that. On weekends travel is smooth, the road is clear though the volume of vehicles and commuters is more or less the same, or a less a bit.  The gridlocks recursr on the work week, starting Monday until Friday. The bottleneck starts an hour or so to the opening bell of the work day which is 8 a.m. Contractors operate like banks. Works starts at 8 a.m. and closes at 5 p.m.If you noticed, construction companies observe rest on weekends and holidays. The rest of the week, their crew and heavy equipment hum like bank clerks. Go anywhere in Yrong-Yrong and you can see that trend. That’s why projects done overnight in other countries takes months to finish here. Other countries can erect flyovers on road junctions in one or two months. Here in Yrong-Yrong both city and province, it stretches to years. Constr...