Homecoming 2: Pacita goes ‘Gesselschaft’ January 28, 2009
Posted by pinoyronin in Uncategorized.Tags: Adelina Complex, Chrysanthemum Village, gesselschaft, Juana Complex, Pacita Complex, Rosario Complex, San Pedro Laguna, subdivision, suburbia
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As Lizl and I wandered around her hometown’s “poblacion” last month, she kept repeating, like a mantra: “This street used to be so long. Why does it look shorter now? That house used to be so enormous, but not anymore.”
I teased her about streets getting shorter as you get older, which earned me a good-natured pinch. But I have to admit, it’s a sensation you get whenever you revisit places you spent your childhood in. I remember the house in Makati where I grew up. It was in a compound with four apartment units with a common parking lot. When I was seven years old or so, my cousins and playmates would run around the parking lot as if it was the car park of Makro.
It was big enough for us to play “patintero” too. But as an adult, I would always be surprised whenever I make a visit to the old place and realize how small the car lot really is.
I had a somewhat similar sensation while I was walking around Pacita Complex when Lizl and the kids and I went home for a visit last month. It’s not spatial though. The streets were of the same length as I remember them (Ouch! There goes another pinch!). But the sensation was more about the atmosphere of the place.
My family moved to San Pedro, Laguna in 1984. Compared to my old playground in Makati, San Pedro was a backwater. A hicktown. But that’s San Pedro, the town.
We settled in a government-built subdivision called Rosario Complex, adjacent to its more popular cousin, Pacita Complex. It had pre-fabricated houses; no doors, windows or ceilings, though; you have to improve them yourself. And yes, there were no fences. No trees either. There was good water supply and electricity was not a problem. Nevertheless, Rosario Complex was suburbia. One lingering image I have of Rosario Complex is of a summer day, the sky so blue, unmarred by tall trees or buildings, with some of houses bereft of greenery but for dottings of green to mark plants and saplings struggling to become trees. The streets are straight and clean of both trash and stand-bys. The entire place smelled of fresh paint. I would forever be indebted to my parents for bringing us there during our adolescence. Somehow, Rosario Complex sheltered us in its suburban cocoon.
Fast-forward to 2006, shortly before my family left for Thailand. At the time, we had been living in a nearby subdivision called Juana Complex (let me digress, the original developer, so the story goes, had several daughters after whom he named the subdivisions, so there’s Pacita, Rosario, Adelina and Juana). Pacita Complex is now a far cry from its modest beginnings. Aside from the two bus terminals that service both Manila- and provincial-bound passengers, several fastfood chains are now well-established and the main road looks like the main thoroughfare of BF Homes Sucat, that is, lined up with small business establishments.
December 2008. I spent a lot of time going around the place, visiting places I used to hang out in. Somehow, I felt a tinge of melancholy; the place has changed, I thought to myself, not without a trace of regret. I don’t know if its residents see these new things as progress but somehow, despite the stores and other businesses, Pacita looked…shabbier. There are more stores now, yes, but it seems they were built in a haphazard way, their materials makeshift. Houses with neatly-trimmed lawns have given way to multi-door apartment units crowded with tenants. Tricycles with their oily fumes have taken over. …their drivers complete strangers. Twenty five years ago, we were on first-name basis with the tricycle drivers. It seemed everyone knew everyone else. Sure, Pacita is not as sleepy as Chrysanthemum Village, another government housing nearby which had been built in the early 70s. Chrysanthemum has apparently turned into a retirement community, as if the youth of that place has fled to other places, leaving only their aging parents to sit under the trees and dream of their past glories.
Pacita is vibrant, but in a different kind of way. It’s in a cusp…It is serene suburbia giving way to inner city chaos. It’s simply not the same Pacita Complex I grew up in. It’s not my place anymore…
Homecoming: The Long Road from Sorsogon to Manila January 26, 2009
Posted by pinoyronin in Uncategorized.Tags: Aranyaprathet, Bulan, Bulusan Lake, Gubat, Manila, Philippine highways, philippines, Philtranco, San Pedro Laguna, Sorsogon, Thailand infrastruture
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The whole family went home for a visit. Arrived in Manila December 20, left January 3. Too short yet definitely better than our visit in 2007.
After spending the night in my parents’ place in San Pedro, we went to Lizl’s home province of Sorsogon. It was a long bus trip, 14 hours, but made bearable by the Philtranco bus’ small toilet cubicle, the day trip which afforded us views of the countryside, and most important, the company of Lizl’s older sister, Ate Nette, her husband and their teenage kids.
Lizl hasn’t been back in her hometown since we got married; her father is also sick, so I understand how significant the trip was for her. Gubat, Sorsogon used to be a robust town in the 50s and 60s, Ate Nette’s husband, Kuya Daniel told me, because it was Samar’s main link with Luzon. It was a crossroads town. One reason why Lizl’s parents had to leave Batangas and join their cousins in doing business in Sorsogon. The construction of a better port in the nearby town of Bulan spelled the decline of Gubat, however. In our walks around the poblacion, one thing that struck me were the grand houses most probably built during the town’s heyday. I see no such grand houses of recent vintage, except for those of families who have members working abroad.
The same thing with the hot spring resort we went to. It must have been the province’s main tourist attractions during the time of Lizl’s parents, but now, the owner has not bothered to invest in some renovation work. The water’s fine, it was really hot, and the springs were gushing everywhere, but the place could have used an improvement or two.
On our way back, we detoured to see Lake Bulusan, halfway up the dormant volcano of the same name. It’s an old caldera that later got filled with water, the sheer sides now overgrown with trees, with only a cleft on one side the sole means of access. The lake looked placid. There are no inhabitants, considering it’s high up in the mountains and the trail going there have dangerous turns. A couple of fishermen later sold us a half a dozen small tilapia for a hundred pesos. The topic for the rest of the ride home was how regretful the government hasn’t been doing anything to improve this national park and turn it into a tourist attraction, hence generate income for the province.
On our way back to Manila, we decided to take the Philtranco again. Ate Nette and her family would be staying a bit longer, Lizl, the three kids and I will travel all by our lonesome this time. Took a jeepney ride from Gubat to Sorsogon town where the Philtranco terminal was. Glad to learn there were only a dozen passengers (it was December 26, hardly a good time to go back to Manila), with some more Manila-bound passengers to join us in the stopover in Legazpi.
I was glad to note that we made it to Legazpi in two hours. Yes! By early evening, we’ll be home in Laguna. I said to myself. I was wrong. We ended up riding that bus (except for a couple more of stopovers) for a good 17 hours. You read it right. Seventeen hours. December 26. No heavy traffic. Well, we had to stop for some repairs for an hour in Camarines Sur, but that’s it. I remember telling Mick from IFEX Toronto that our trip to Bicol will be something like 12 hours. When he learned that the distance is more or less 500 kilometers, he was aghast. Same thing with my colleague here in SEAPA, Nu. Such a distance could have been covered in a shorter time here in Thailand. But while I sat there in the bus seething at the slowness of it all, I had an idea or two why it was taking too long. Foremost of which is that the provincial highways linking the Philippines only have a lane for each side. Which would mean a frequent need to overtake slower vehicles in front of you, unless of course, there’s another bus barrelling from the other direction. So much for Philippine infrastructure. I have been on several trips to Aranyaphrathet, a Thai town bordering Cambodia, some 300 kilometers east of Bangkok. The bus covers the distance in three hours or so.
‘Nuff said.
The state of the press in Southeast Asia 2008 January 20, 2009
Posted by pinoyronin in Uncategorized.Tags: burmese media, cambodia, cambodian media, defamation, Indonesia, indonesian media, ISA, journalist killings, journalists, lao media, laos, libel, malaysia, malaysian media, philippine media, philippines, SEAPA, singaporean media, souteast asian press alliance, southeast asian media, southeast asian press, Thai media, thailand, timor leste, timor leste media, vietnam, vietnamese media
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Looking back, looking ahead: The state of the press in Southeast Asia
18 January 2009
Source: Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA)
The months ahead will hold much peril and uncertainty for members of the press in Southeast Asia. The years 2009 and 2010 will be highly charged, for starters, anticipating national election seasons for most countries in the region.
Even without the chaos and violence attendant to electoral exercises in countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Thailand, and Burma, the unpredictability of the contests and the inevitability of uncertainty will give the region’s journalists not only compelling stories and issues to follow, but also dangerous times and situations to navigate.
The coming months will also be a crucial period for ASEAN itself—in particular with respect to how the regional body proves and demonstrates the value of a new charter that came into force in December 2008.
Beyond rules of membership and ASEAN’s vision for single free trade area by 2015, the ASEAN Charter affirms that among others, one of ASEAN’s purposes is “to strengthen democracy, enhance good governance and the rule of law, and to promote and protect human rights and fundamental freedoms…”
The Charter’s outline of Principles emphasizes the need for “adherence to the rule of law, good governance, the principles of democracy and constitutional government” as well as for the community’s “respect for fundamental freedoms, the promotion and protection of human rights, and the promotion of social justice.”
Article 14 of the ASEAN Charter goes as far as to commit that “ASEAN shall establish an ASEAN human rights body.” The mechanisms of such a body, however, have yet to be spelt out and finalized. Indeed, analysts and critics of the Charter stress that the stated principles and purposes relating to human rights and democracy must be weighed against ASEAN’s historical emphasis on “non-interference” and on its tradition of moving by consensus.
The region’s press, meanwhile, must note for itself: “press freedom” is not even mentioned in the Charter, nor, for that matter, “free expression”. How it all plays out for press freedom, therefore, is uncertain.
To be sure, 2008 saw a lot of promise for change on this front. Or “promises”, at least. Singapore promised to relax its Films Act. Laos introduced a new media law that promised to allow more private sector participation in its state-dominated media landscape. East Timor promised to decriminalize defamation. The Philippine Supreme Court didn’t quite decriminalize libel, but it essentially encouraged lower courts to ignore options to imprison journalists over defamation. Meanwhile, sea changes in the political environments of Malaysia and Thailand have caused people to assume that changes in the environments for media and press freedom.
But assumptions are one thing. How it all actually falls into place—or falls apart—must yet be seen. For all the above promises, after all, little has actually changed in the laws that govern the media in Southeast Asia.
Indeed, if anything defines the media situation in Southeast Asia, it is the larger political considerations of the region’s governments and political powers. Upcoming elections are but one factor that pulls for the status quo. From East Timor to Thailand, the agenda of recapturing “stability” is overwhelming, and in 2008, it was often used to rationalize a low prioritization—and even a sacrifice of—the press freedom agenda.
Looking back on the year that was, therefore, is crucial to anticipating and understanding how much journalists will be allowed to do their job in 2009 and beyond. For a more detailed country-by-country report, please click on the following link:
