ayala blues

oct 18. the good news. forbes asia names jaime zobel de ayala & family the richest filipinos, net worth $2B.

oct 19. the bad news. death and destruction at the ayala land inc.’s makati mall.11 dead, Php100M lost, and still counting. worse, the official finding is leaning toward some sort of gas explosion brought about by dysfunction in the bowels of glorietta 2.

what a double whammy for the oye-oye ayalas – major disaster na nga, baka daw kasalanan pa nila.

coming on the heels of being named the richest family hereabouts, the message depends on whether it was an accidental explosion or the handiwork of saboteurs.

if an accident, through no fault of ayala land inc. – nagkataon lang that conditions in the basement turned explosive just then, a technological- chemical snafu that couldn’t have been anticipated – then the message could simply be that even the rich suffer reversals, misfortunes.

if it wasn’t an accident, which means the explosion was intentional, then whoever the perpetrators – islamic terrorists, rebel military factions, the npa, or gonzalez & esperon, as alleged by trillanes – the message could be that being famous for being very rich can be dangerous to one’s wealth.

question is, why the ayalas? some, who suspect it’s a gonzalez-esperon operation, say the ayalas kasi are not sipsip to the palace, unlike the sys and the tans (2nd & 3rd richest).

or who knows, puwedeng nag-eenie-meenie-minie-mall lang ang perpetrators and minalas lang talaga ang glorietta?

but i’m not convinced that the blast was an industrial accident. i’m not convinced that the residues of rdx (royal demolition explosive) found were just by-products of some inadvertent chemical mix, or that it is found in cosmetics and deodorants and other everyday things. not so, sey ng newsbreak.

for sure ayala land inc. will contest any findings that blame them, one way or another, for the glorietta blast. so will makati mayor jojo binay. expect more fireworks, bloodless let’s hope.

erap free

wow, that was fast. gloria must be desperate for new allies to replace fvr & jdv.

problem is, i can’t see pro-erap forces going along with the deal and supporting the new glo-erap alliance. can’t see ninez cacho olivares and her tribune troops changing their anti-gma tune.

so what’s in it for gloria? erap swears there’s no trade-off, but i doubt it. i wouldn’t be surprised to see him, eventually, doing a honasan, as in, you know, biglang critical of the opposition and of senate investigations into zte and hello-garci, a la joker arroyo.

i think maybe gloria is thinking long-term, as in charter change pa rin, which would also explain the hand-outs, cash advances, to mayors, governors, and congressmen for a final cha-cha war, huling hirit kumbaga.

with erap on her side, helping convince the masses, maybe even making movies pushing federalism, gloria may think may panalo siya (if she can hold out that long, that is). hope she’s wrong. hope i’m wrong.

gloria & glorietta

what a coincidence, really impossible to ignore. the arroyo administration can deny it to death, and she may even be telling the truth this time, but there’s no stopping people from thinking/seeing a connection between the bribery blues ni gloria and the bomba-like explosion sa glorietta.

it’s an intuitive thing, a right brain operation, this sense of a meaningful relationship between apparently unconnected events when they occur simultaneously or in close sequence over a certain period of time. the mystic scientist carl jung called it synchronicity, which “takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance” and which is the very principle underlying the use of the i ching and astrology (among other occult arts) in making sense of “the essential situation prevailing” for any one  person or group at any moment in time.

and so the essential situation prevailing for gloria is frankly explosive, as explosive as glorietta that afternoon of oct. 19.

take note that the makati business club, heretofore super-supportive of gloria’s free-market policies, has made an about-face. executive director alberto lim was the first to go on anc soon after the blast to wonder aloud if it were a malacanang tactic to distract us from the bribery scandal, and if not, to ask that gma clear her name, clear the air, by appointing an independent commission to investigate the crime. a demand that has since been echoed by the bishops and civil society, for both the palace payola and the glorietta explosion.

unfortunately gloria does not see fit to oblige her critics. which is no way to defuse a ticking bomb, or a deadly explosion, as the case may be.

of med schools & sluts

O.A. na talaga the howl over the desperate housewife’s dig at diplomas of philippine med schools. besides the class action suit to be filed by filipino doctors in the u.s. against producers abc/walt disney, a second lawsuit is being planned daw with philippine-based lawyers representing the medical schools. “there was blatant defamation, not only against filipino doctors but also against philippine medical schools,” sey ni california-based ted laguatan to inquirer yesterday.

naku, ha. sana pag-isip-isipan muna nila. baka in the end, mapahiya lang tayo lalo. sey ni former doh secretary dr. alberto “quasi” romualdez jr. in his malaya column:

“The unfortunate fact is that the line had some basis in the true situation of Philippine medical education today. Since the early 90s, when a misguided secretary of education deregulated medical schools in the belief that market forces would determine the quality and quantity of the physician education in this country, medical schools have proliferated in this country – from the original seven in the 80s to more than 40 today.

“The results are reflected in the dismal passing rates of most new schools in the medical board examinations. Appropriately trained teachers in both basic and clinical sciences are now in short supply. In addition, clinical training facilities in the form of academically oriented tertiary medical hospitals are sorely lacking.

“Moreover, as a consequence of poor quality pre-medical education in the country, the number of qualified applicants to medical schools has dropped down considerably. For this reason, most of the new schools have directed their marketing efforts to attracting overseas students who have problems getting into medical schools in their home countries.

“In the past, this need for placement in foreign medical schools was filled by institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean. Today much of that need is served by the excess medical colleges in the Philippines. This is why TV jokes now refer to ‘Philippine med schools’ instead of Caribbean or Latin American.”

as for the ‘slut’ swipe, i actually caught that jon stewart segment asking if america was ready for a woman president, cut to other countries’ women presidents, and i was expecting to see gloria dissed, not cory, so natawa ako, si cory pa, at slut daw, haha, she and her other daughters don’t even know the meaning of the word, sey ni inkredibol kris.

but check out dean jorge bocobo’s aren’t all filipinas sluts anyway? where he takes to task inquirer‘s “quintessential writer on philippine women’s issues” rina jimenez david for making light of a slur rooted in “the old stereotype brought home by American servicemen who had the best sex they ever had in places like Clark and Subic that all Filipinas are sluts, wonderful sluts!”

oo nga. ayaw ni nicole ng ganyan.