1 post tagged “up”

Henry and I are going home next year, and one of the things we planned to do was visit Guimaras. The tiny little island beside Iloilo has been our province's guardian angel against the numerous Signal No.# 3 typhoons that hit the country every year. Guimaras' strategic location has shielded Iloilo from the brunt of countless storms - CSCJ, my elem school, is located in the southernmost part of the city, we could see Guimaras from the library windows, and I still remember how it felt like the whole building was attacked by a really pissed off Neptune (complete with scepter, crown and wriggly fish tail, in my 3rd-grade imagination) during typhoon season. Ms. Turija, the ancient librarian, would be always heard murmuring to herself, "Maa-yo lang kay ara da ang Guimaras...swerte gid ang Iloilo..." (it's a good thing Guimaras is where it is....Iloilo is so lucky...)

We have been thinking about Guimaras lately, because my Dad has been talking about it quite often recently. There was talk back home about building a bridge from Leganes to Buenavista, and how the mangoes from Guimaras were one of the best in the world, and was very much in demand in Japan. We were thinking of buying land, preferably beachfront property, before property values went up. One of my uncles had just retired, and thanks to a golden parachute courtesy of BCE, had purchased a piece of prime Guimaras beach. My manong Pelig (his full name is Peligroso Ymalay - v. cool translation: Danger Awareness) lives in Guimaras. Manong Pelig used to be our truck driver, but my father taught him how to save his money, and save for his own punot (fish trap? lobster trap?), and quit driving for a living (yes, i know, this is for another story for next time). So we figured, what better way for my parents to spend their retirement than hang out on the beach with people they liked, chowing down on lobster and mangoes?

Now waddahell linteh. 8-11 happened. That's how Gov. Rahman Nava (who knew? last I knew of him was in 1980, when he was Naypun's uni? med-school? classmate at WVSU...) referred to the oil spill that occured August 11 which engulfed the town of Nueva Valencia and literally brought the tiny province back down on its knees, just a little after it had 'graduated from the list of the 20 poorest provinces' in the country. Solar I, the oil tanker contracted by Petron (jointly owned by the Philippine government and Saudi company Aramco) is currently sitting underwater 21 kilometers south of Guimaras, slowly leaking two million litres of oil. The magnitude of the spill threatens the ecosystem of the whole region, which includes Boracay (!), Iloilo, Negros, Aklan, Antique, and Capiz. As of yesterday, it has reached a tiny island in the town of Concepcion, in Iloilo.

Iloilo was my home, this was where I grew up. This is making me really, really mad.

Manila Times reports that 2005 was a banner year for Petron, the Philippines' largest oil company, earning 48% in net income, at PHP 5.7B pesos. Some of that profit was realized, I'm sure, by the hefty savings they had mistakenly projected by using decrepit and obsolete tankers to ferry oil from island to island. Knowing how big government and big companies work back home though, I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that the bidding process for these oil tanker contracts are seriously flawed and riddled with side deals and kickbacks.

So. Aside from punching a wall, I really want to do something. But how in the world does one reverse the effects of a major oil spill? UP in the Visayas Fisheries peeps (yay UP!) have been building booms made of sacks and bamboo to contain the spill, touted as an indigenous measure to control the oil from reaching the shores. Sacks and bamboo?! wata-ef!? The Americans and the Japanese have come to help. They had better, considering they  ravaged and pillaged the entire country in the last couple hundred years or so...I'm not trying to sound ungrateful, I'm just in this state of shell-shocked anger at the whole thing.

To make things even more exciting, a couple hundred kilometers north,  Mt. Mayon is stirring things up, just for fun. Oh, and btw, it's typhoon season. Brings to mind that famous Chinese curse "May you live in interesting times". Interesting, indeed.

wishing: to transform into the marine biologist version of Wonder Woman.
reading: The Seven-Day Weekend by Ricardo Semler
listening: Handel's Messiah on Wikipedia