Red Tide: Toxic Seas Produce Toxic Food

Single celled organisms such as algae and dinoflagellates thrive in oceans. They reproduce quickly into “blooms” if their environment has high nutrient. When some of these algae grow rapidly, become dense, and appear as patches near the water’s surface, a “red tide” occurs, owing to their reddish appearance.

“Red tide” is a colloquial term for harmful algal bloom (HAB) which is a dense aggregation of phytoplankton, algae, or cyanobacteria in marine or aquatic environment. Some species of cyanobacteria produce neurotoxins, hepatotoxins, cytotoxins, and endotoxins, making them dangerous to animals and humans.

Scientists clarify, however, that not all algal blooms are harmful, not all cause discoloration of water, and that these blooms are not associated with tides. What HABs are associated with, though, are large-scale marine mortality events and various types of shellfish poisonings.

When organisms produce neurotoxins that are harmful to shellfish and fish, these contaminated seafood become toxic food for humans. People who have eaten toxic fish and shellfish get contaminated with Paralytic Shellfish Poisoning (PSP).

Paralytic shellfish poisoning is caused by dinoflagellates that have a red-brown color, and can grow to such numbers that they cause red streaks to appear in the ocean called “red tides.” Shellfish that have caused this disease include mussels, cockles, clams, scallops, oysters, crabs, and lobsters.

Symptoms begin anywhere from 15 minutes to 10 hours after eating the contaminated shellfish, although usually within 2 hours. Symptoms are generally mild, and begin with numbness or tingling of the face, arms, and legs. This is followed by headache, dizziness, nausea, and muscular incoordination. Patients sometimes describe a floating sensation. In cases of severe poisoning, muscle paralysis and respiratory failure follow, and in these cases death may occur in 2 to 25 hours.

With a lack of comprehensive and conclusive studies, red tides are believed to be natural phenomena, not caused by humans. Red tides and harmful algae blooms sometimes occur where there is no apparent link to human activity. Some red tides and harmful algae blooms along the Pacific coast have been associated with cyclical El Nino weather patterns. Scientists have correlated the increase of Pacific red tides and other harmful algae blooms with a rise in ocean temperature of approximately one degree Celsius.

Other scientists, however, have correlated red tides with increased nutrients in coastal waters from sewage and fertilizers. These scientists generally believe that coastal pollution from human sewage, agricultural runoff, and other sources contribute to red tides, along with rising ocean temperatures.

With widespread human activity affecting the environment for the last hundreds of years, it is difficult to believe that red tides which eventually cause deaths among humans are not caused by people themselves.

Battered Men: Victims of Domestic Violence?

Domestic Violence (DV) and Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) are not confined to any age, sex, race, culture, religion, education, employment, or marital status. Anybody can be a victim. Domestic Violence is not a gender issue. Both men and women can be abused.

Domestic violence is a human issue – just like all violence. In domestic relations, women are as inclined as men to engage in physically abusive acts. Yet societal consciousness has ascribed the issue with a masculine behavior of assault, thereby rendering a false and inaccurate view of the problem. This popular view has led to social policies that are frail in addressing the problem of domestic violence successfully. One look at efforts of giant policy think tanks such as the United Nations and you can see that social and developmental policies regarding domestic violence take the popular view. Yet, the social malaise is just observably getting worse.

California State University Professor Martin Fiebert summarizes almost 200 studies online about assaults by women on their intimate partners. Last updated in May 2008, the bibliography examines 219 scholarly investigations, of which 170 are empirical studies and 49 are reviews and/or analyses. The aggregate sample size in the reviewed studies exceeds 221,300. The findings disclose that women are as physically aggressive, or more aggressive, than men in their relationships with their spouses or male partners. This sociological data shows that women initiate domestic violence as often as men do, that women use weapons more than men, and that 38% of injured victims are men.

On a wider scale, so as to merit logical generalizations, little is currently known about the actual number of men who are in an abusive domestic relationship. The biggest reason behind this is that fewer incidents are reported. Male victims are often ashamed that others will perceive them as weak or less of a man. They think that the police will not take their allegation seriously since “only men are the abusers.” They feel that people will not believe them.

Men’s gender-bias psyché further hampers them from admitting that they are, indeed, victims of DV. Even if the abusive incident happens publicly, men can justify their inaction by saying that they will never retaliate. Thus, they interpret the abuse as a sign of strength or masculinity, credited to them. When psychological and emotional abuse becomes cyclical, as domestic violence is wont to be, men begin to believe that they deserve the abuse. Loss of self-esteem is one of the harshest effects of domestic violence – for both men and women.

Reasons, triggers, methods, and consequences vary for intimate partner abuse against men by women and against women by men. The common denominator, however, lies in motive. As in abuse of women, abuse of men is also about control. Domestic violence is about control of power – physical, emotional, psychological, and economic. Control that has gone crazy.

To gain that control, an abuser will manifest behavior that assuages his or her emotional torment that he or she is out of control. Some of these forms of behavior are screaming, verbal abuse, silence, withholding attention, affection, and sex, inflicting of physical pain, drinking, doing drugs, and other addictive behaviors. These bury the pain felt inside – for the moment.

Another common ground for abuse inflicted by both men and women is the phenomenon of the abuse cycle. Tension builds up – verbal attacks increase – violence explodes – the abused accuses the abuser – the abuser repents and asks for forgiveness – the abuser promises that the incident will never happen again – the abuser woos back the abused – the abused forgives the abuser – the two are back in each other’s arms – peace and quiet for a while – then tension builds up again – verbal attacks increase once more, and so on and so forth – in a cyclical mode. The cycle of abuse can be summarized into 5 phases: Tension – Explosion – Discussion – Honeymoon – Peace – then back to Tension.

The dynamics of domestic violence is the common denominator between abuses done on men by women and on women by men. The biggest difference, however, seems to lie in the preponderance of abuse. Maybe because there is more data on female victims and less on male victims that is why it is said that most victims of DV are women.

The United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) states that at least one out of every three women around the world is a victim of violence against women. She has been beaten, forced to have sex, emotionally and psychologically abused, and economically deprived in her lifetime. In all these forms of oppression, her abuser is most likely someone she knows – and oftentimes, she had trusted. Right now, what is known is that violence against women (VAW) is a problem of pandemic proportions.

What do you know? What do you believe?

Men in Training

Males are generally free. The apparent characteristics and attributes of being a man were more freely given to them to experience, early on. When they were younger, there was more appreciation and less censure in emulating these traits. In fact, there is general pride with a boy who is starting to be like a grown-up ‘man.’ Maleness is a source of dignity and honor.

I wanted to make this balanced, and feature ‘women in training’ as well. But in the process of thinking up images, and consequently looking for pictures to depict the thought, I get to conclude that the concept of ‘women in training’ is largely based on such notions as “don’t,” “can’t,” “shouldn’t,” and the like, thus putting them in the realm of ‘inappropriate,’ ‘obscure,’ even ‘taboo.’ Women simply take less, even if they, in no way, are less, do less, or give less.

When society decided to be more colorful and descriptive, the only two sexes of male and female became the concepts of masculine (strong and brave, aggressive, provider, etc.) and feminine (weak, demure, nurturer, etc.). Society went a few more steps ahead and gave birth to the prescriptive notions of “be a man” and “act like a woman.” There, too, are the psychologically reverse admonitions (and self-esteem crushers) of “not manly enough” and “so unladylike.”

Our parents gave the world only male and female, but society gave us the masculine man and the feminine woman (and all other cross-combinations thereof). And since our parents are children of society themselves, they didn’t know better than to make us live in a world where gender rules. So, baby blankets have been blue for boys and pink for girls.

Our parents were the ones who demarcated our future freedoms and made us “weak” (frail, fragile, feeble, etc.) or “strong” (forceful, hardy, unbending, etc.). They handed down to us their definitions of the stereotypes and the pertinent parameters of these stock categories), as much as their own parents made them turn out the way they did. The potential for freedom and equality starts from the home.

So long as there are parents of children and children who would be parents, there won’t be any cultural revolution regarding this gender trend. It is so buried deep down in humanity’s collective psyché that an overhaul will probably come only way after all our lifetimes put together.

Since gender is a product of society and culture, social conditioning breeds gender inequality.

A Rose Upon a Hard Rock

Her name is a vernacular derivative of the word rose. Rosing was beautiful, all right, and her life was not lacking in thorns. But the woman was a fighter long before women of her generation knew how to fight.

Our common knowledge about her starts only from around circa WWII. It’s as if her story came to be told from this time onward. She lost her only brother during that world war, and fiercely protected her mother and young daughter from the abuses of the Japanese imperial forces that had occupied the Philippines at that time. They would hide in caves in the mountainous regions of northern Philippines whenever the Japanese would conduct carpet bombing over the areas. On quieter days, she would haul an entire carabao that had lost its way, bring the animal to her family’s hiding place, butcher it, cut it up, and sun dry the meat for hungrier days to add to the staple root crops that she dug on mountainsides.

Much to her mother’s alarm, she would leave their “home” – wherever they would be holing up for the moment – and buy a pineapple or two, slice up the fruits and sell them at retail to other families in hiding. These business ventures would have her walking around. Stubborn and fearless that she was, she would refuse to curtsy and bow to the Japanese soldiers at military sentries, a mandated gesture known as “kumbawa,” another local etymological derivative of the Japanese custom of greeting called konbanwa. This predictably earned the ire of the incomprehensible soldiers who were widely known for their irrational bursts of anger.

Still, she fought back in her own little way and stood her ground. She knew too well that under the Japanese rule, the performance of the bow was a sign of complete subservience to the colonizers and total recognition of their ownership of the Philippines. Her charm must have eventually captivated the soldiers. It was said that missing or skipping this perfunctory bow would cost someone his head by the ever-polished bayonet.

In the swinging 1950s, when the Philippines was enjoying a post-Liberation business boom, she hauled her mother and daughter to the capital city of Manila and single-handedly opened what would be the biggest fruit distributorship outlet in one of the major public markets in the city. Her incomes grew exponentially as she fearlessly augmented her products to include black market American brand cigarettes. In a time when the police was considered an indubitable force to reckon with, she defied all threats that sprang from her not willing to be a victim of police extortion.

With her mother gone and her daughter married in the 1980s, she decided to retire from the harried life of tending to business everyday. She was getting old. Her strength and energy became directly proportional to what was left of her waning business.

She bought herself a small piece of land in the far outskirts of the city where the sharp-edged cogon grass was taller than humans. She saw what remained of her future in a place that was not even fit for humans. During the following months, she single-handedly hewed the tall grass till only the moist reddish earth was visible. Every morning, she walked around on the hillsides, lugging two large empty bags, and proceeded to pick up huge stones. In no time at all, she was able to fill up her small patch of land with a landfill of those stones. A small nipa hut soon stood on the land. Several fruit trees and flowering bushes started to grow, too. The nipa hut would later turn into a small concrete structure that she called her spanking new home.

There she would spend the last years of her life, fighting the chill from the nearby mountains, fighting the greedy government agencies that saw the potential of the erstwhile uninhabitable lands on the hills, and fighting the thought that, in the end, she is really left all by her lonesome. Her daughter’s father was in a faraway city, with his real family.

She simply played the cards that were dealt her – and played them marvelously.

Till her last dying breath, she fought back. All within a span of thirty minutes, she died twice before the third and fatal cardiac arrest, brain dead on the second. On the evening of June 3, she passed away at 93 – still a rose upon a hard rock.

Drowsy

At last, policy makers are awakened into the reality that currently bites the Philippines. Economic planners are trimming growth targets. It isn’t these targets, however, that ordinary Filipinos find mind-boggling. The planners and policy movers have always had a penchant for making targets anyway, elevating the effort to the level of a sport. It looks, though, that they had been making plans either in slumber or in a half-awakened state. Being in climate-controlled luxury cars and excellently airconditioned homes and offices can, indeed, induce a narcotic, numbing, and trance-like effect.

The ordinary Pinoy finds sick humor in television ads and cinema ads where the president of his country is seen smiling from ear to ear (to match a professionally done make-up and expertly coiffed crowning glory that projects a beaming leader) in cross-fade frames along with animated graphs and statistical figures that visualize a smiling, swimming, and swooning economic upturn (constant and consistent) in the past few months. Along with these images are a series of shots of government institutions that have supposedly been furiously addressing, albeit just recently, the country’s economic blight.

To the ordinary Pinoy, this is not only sickening; it makes his heart sink. But because Filipinos are wont to just laugh off their problems (probably, out of an attitude of being resigned to the fact that is, in turn, an after-effect of centuries-long subservience to colonial rule), the sickening images are merely taken as sick humor. Those images and statistics are lost on the ordinary Filipino because from the time he opens his eyes in the morning till the minute he rests his weary body at night, he knows a different set of facts.

He only knows lower-digit numbers in his economic realities, not ones that can be exponentially configured into statistics. Being destitute, he does not know that far.

Long before the price of rice went up, the ever-dependable instant noodles have also become staple food for poor Filipinos. A pack of instant noodles comes at about 5 pesos. A poor family of five people will have roughly about four packs a day. The taxicab driver will have to ask his passengers for a few extra bucks additional to the metered fare because it has become impossible for him to recoup his gasoline expenses. To the passenger, this means the equivalent of 30 to 40 pesos to show his generosity. Many primary and high school students, in both the countryside and urban poor areas, are forced to quit school because their families can hardly come up with financial requirements needed to sustain schooling. The school I.D. and other seemingly necessary requirements will come up to around 200 pesos more for low-income families.

While the country’s economic planners speak in terms of inflation, export, import, Dubai crude oil prices, and strong peso, the ordinary Pinoy can only utter the price of rice, price of canned sardines, price of instant noodles, cost of public jeepney fare, additional financial requirements in public schools that are supposed to give free education, and the ridiculously escalating price of gas partly due to an imposed 12% expanded value-added tax over and above the ridiculously escalating cost of foreign oil.

It would do a world of good if all Filipinos call a spade a spade. But I am not sure which is more expedient for the sake of having a unified country: for the poor to understand economic terminology or for the ones in power and authority to have their ear to the ground.

Darfur: When War Means Business

All Darfuris are Muslim and black. The “African” and “Arab” distinctions pertain more to lifestyle and livelihood categories. Comprising 35% of the population are the “Arabs” who are nomadic herders. The remaining 65% of the people in Darfur, the “Africans,” are farmers. These two groups used to have coexisted on the land, even under the conditions of environmental calamity, desertification, and high population growth. The approximately 6 million inhabitants of Darfur are among the poorest in Africa.

In 2003, the Sudanese government gave arms to some “Arab” clans and incited them to attack “African” villages. The government’s motivation was to control the diminishing land and water resources.

Five years later, the United Nations estimates that nearly 400,000 people have died from violence and disease, and over 2.5 million have been displaced. There have been countless aerial bombardments. Entire villages have been razed to the ground. Arbitrary arrests and extrajudicial summary executions have come wholesale. Torture, abductions, rape, and other forms of sexual violence have been commonplace. Livelihoods have been rendered nil.

Sudan persists in its scorched earth policy against the Darfur farmers. The trouble has crossed over into neighboring Chad and the Central African Republic. The United States has dubbed it the Darfur Genocide, while other parties contend that it is nothing but ethnic wars among tribes.

International diplomacy has failed, with promises of conflict-resolution and threats against President al-Bashir in his Khartoum regime remaining unfulfilled. With the US Fiscal Year 2008 budget, there is a projected $186 million shortfall for Darfur peacekeeping, and a $6 billion shortfall for America's core humanitarian assistance. The monetary gap is seen to have grave impact on international peacekeeping and aid efforts, negatively affecting millions of Darfuris.

For now, China continues to remain as the Sudanese government’s primary supplier of weapons and fighter jets, in its attempt to obtain oil and gas in the country. China also happens to be Sudan's largest trade and foreign investment partner.

Some have raised their faces to heaven, asking if nightmare in Darfur is going to end – and what will it take for it to end.

So long as war is a business, there will always be reasons to go to war.

In the meantime, one of the more public faces of the advocacy to end the conflict in Darfur US actor George Clooney says in an interview published Saturday in Spain, “Boycotting the Beijing Olympic Games to try to pressure China into taking action to stop the violence in Sudan's war-torn region of Darfur would be "excessive."

Darfur Genocide

War in Darfur

Save Darfur

George Clooney: Save Darfur Poster Boy

Drool, Anyone?

Forbes.com is a treasure trove of lists about material things we mere mortals can only salivate over. Going through the lists on uppermost wealth can be an entirely pleasurable time to while away a vacant hour or rest from a harried moment. Here are some of the things that only the moneyed gods and demigods can afford:

The world’s most expensive home rests on six and a half acres in Beverly Hills, California and costs $165 million. The estate has six buildings, three swimming pools, and a movie theater. There are 75,000 square feet of living space on three storeys, housing 29 bedrooms and 40 bathrooms. Is this making you hungry already? You can opt to dine at l'Arpege, obviously one of the world’s most expensive eateries where lunch costs $500 a pop.

Material acquisition can be fun if you can get your hands on the world’s most coveted things. The Chanel "Diamond Forever" Classic Bag, with 334 diamonds totaling 3.56 carats and set in 18-carat white gold hardware, goes for $261,000. You can hurry to get one if you’re able because there are only 13 such totes available worldwide. The Tulip E-go laptop with a gem-encrusted logo starts at $50,000 apiece. Prefer to have additional diamonds to spruce up a personalized design and your payout can go as much as $300,000.

Groceries may be cheap but a meal can be expensive if cooked on the Le Cornue stove that costs $40,000. This cooking equipment, dubbed as the "Rolls Royce of stoves,” belongs to a hand-assembled line that is available in 16 colors, crafted from porcelain enamel. The Sub-Zero refrigerator, called the "monument to food preservation," automatically adjusts defrost patterns and sends off an alarm when a drawer or door has been left open. You can have all these conveniences for $12,000 per refrigerator unit.

Make your posh home a showcase of luxurious style and expensive taste. The Zuber wallpaper that lines the walls of the White House can be had for $31,845 or $42,000 at its most pricey. Made of pure crystal, the 14-inch tall Lalique flower vase comes at only $7,200. Your guests can be assured of sound sleep on Léron linens made of 600-thread-count Egyptian cotton that cost $4,375. Baccarat champagne glasses are $267 each, while Gracious Style napkin rings of 14 karat gold or platinum and embellished with Swarovksi crystals, semiprecious stones, and enamel come at $125 for a set of four.

I nudge myself back to reality as these figures confront me:

The United Nations World Food Program reports that as much as 25,000 people die everyday because of hunger or hunger-related causes. Close to three billion people or half of humankind today live on less than two dollars a day. 640 million people live without adequate shelter. The world’s homeless population has reached the 1 billion mark. 400 million have no access to safe water. 270 million have no access to health services.

One billion children or half of all children in the world live in poverty, millions of them dying before they reach the age of five. According to UNICEF, 26,500-30,000 children die everyday due to poverty. That means one child dies every 3 seconds. And they “die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death.”

According to the 2007 Human Development Report (HDR) of the United Nations Development Program, the poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income, while the richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.

Would you care to daydream about those delicious goodies, too? Unless, of course, you have one or some of those already stashed away somewhere.

World's Most Expensive Household Items

Global Poverty

Homelessness

Have You Had Your (dark) Chocolate Today?

Dark chocolate is a potent antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent. As an antioxidant, it eats into free radicals or those destructive molecules that are associated with heart disease and other ailments. Dark chocolate has 8 times the number of antioxidants in strawberries. Bet you didn’t know that!

Flavanols are strong antioxidants that help maintain healthy blood flow and blood pressure. Cocoa beans contain 10,000 milligrams (10 grams) of flavanol antioxidants per 100 grams. This equates to a potent 10% antioxidant concentration level. Flavanols, found in pure dark chocolate, prevent fatty substances in the bloodstream from oxidizing and eventually clogging arteries. They are also known to help make blood platelets not clump and cause blood clots, heart attacks, and strokes.

The fats contained in cocoa butter are healthy fats. Cacao contains oleic acid, a heart-healthy monounsaturated fat that is also found in olive oil. This type of fat is known to raise the level of the "good cholesterol" known as HDL (High Density Lipid) cholesterol. Conversely, dark chocolate is also said to reduce LDL cholesterol (or the bad cholesterol) by up to 10 percent. Dark chocolate also contains stearic acid, a saturated fat but one that has a neutral effect on cholesterol.

Here are more paeans sung to dark chocolate:

· If you have high blood pressure, have a small bar of dark chocolate a day to help you reduce blood pressure.

· Aside from tasting good, dark chocolate also makes you feel good. It stimulates endorphin production and contains serotonin, both feel-good mood hormones that blow your blues away. It also contains theobromine and moderate caffeine which are stimulants.

• Studies have shown that small portions of dark chocolate can improve blood vessel flow, especially in older adults, and may improve blood sugar and insulin sensitivity to help reduce the risk of diabetes.
• Dark chocolate contains a number of minerals, including calcium, magnesium, and potassium.

With paeans come caveats:

• To get the full health benefits of dark chocolate, still limit your intake to 1 ounce-3.5 ounces a day. It is still a high-calorie food.

• Look for dark chocolate that has 70% cocoa content or more.

• Don’t wash it down with milk. The proteins in milk bind with the antioxidants in chocolate. The antioxidants are not being absorbed to the same extent as they would be.

Dark Chocolate

Dark Chocolate Nutrition

Contribution to Good Health

Dark Chocolate: A Health Food

Antioxidants in Dark Chocolate

Would You Go To The Other Side Of The World For Healthcare?

Traveling for healthcare, also known as the phenomenon of medical tourism, is a fairly recent thing. Well, at least, the tag is rather new. Citizens from developed countries now opt to travel abroad to avail of healthcare services or medical treatments. In the process of availing healthcare in a foreign land, the patient takes the opportunity for rest, recreation, and leisure. The medical patient thus becomes a medical tourist.

Medical tourism is for either a leisure tourist who happens to want or need a medical check-up or a medical tourist with a hospital or clinic as destination and wants sightseeing and shopping on the side. The medical tourist has set aside his health and leisure dollar or euro, but he is not relatively rich. He is someone who is likely not insured in his First World country, or someone who cannot afford private healthcare in the US because the medical treatment he needs is not covered by his insurance.

The primary concern of a medical tourist is the medical treatment or the health and wellness concern he needs to address at the soonest possible time. He chooses to travel halfway around the globe to an exotic Asian destination for warmer climate and a different atmosphere, plus of course the cheaper cost of medical treatment and healthcare outside his country. Most likely, he has also heard of the first-rate service, professionalism, and value-added personal concern of Asian health workers who are known around the world as excellent doctors, nurses, physical therapists, caregivers, etc.

The medical tourist will need a little downtime during post-treatment convalescence, and thus avail of activities that are restive, relaxed, and pleasurable. While in this strange land for a few days, he is curious to know and experience first-hand the culture and history, sights and sounds of this place that he has known only through Internet websites.

His budget primarily and largely goes to the medical treatment he came over for (operation cost, doctors’ fees, hospital room, etc). The extra money he has will be spent on getting to know the places nearby in the remaining days left on his visa. He may also splurge most of his remaining money on a farther destination such as the famed beaches in the Orient that he has aspired to see, since these are touted to be a paradise in the Internet websites. He will most definitely sample the food of this strange exotic land.

Several key factors have brought about the phenomenon of medical tourism. There are aging populations in Japan, US, and Europe. Healthcare is expensive in developed countries, such as those in North America and Europe. Patients have experienced a long waiting period in the national health system of some western European countries. Private and social benefit schemes are getting expensive, forcing patients to look for an alternative. At times, the individual ends up paying for his own healthcare. Often, some surgeries are not covered by insurance and will, therefore, be out-of-pocket expenses.

Outsourcing of healthcare becomes an attractive alternative because Third World prices are more affordable. The technology and quality gap between First World and Third World has been eradicated. Developing countries now boast of improved medical technology, as well as competitive healthcare prices. The Internet has compressed the world, offering a wide array of comprehensive information. International travel is easy and affordable. Add to all these is the prospect of fun and relaxation in a new land.

Categorized as an export product, medical tourism is basically marketed to people in the First World countries who are not insured or people who cannot afford private healthcare in the US. The phenomenon of medical tourism is said to now be a US$40 billion global industry and is projected to grow to US$188 billion by 2013.

Medical Tourism

Medical Tourism in the Philippines

Medical Tourism in India

Payatas: The Poetry of Poverty

An eyesore to those who are used to seeing asphalted roads, at least, the terrain here is of the mushy, squishy type. A crust of a curious kind that covers the unseen ground is made from layers of refuse at different stages of decomposition. All sorts of organic stuff fill the ground, from the raw to the maggoted to the egested. As to the garbage that doesn’t decompose, the place is also a grand showcase of an amazing array of synthetic items, from the ubiquitous plastic bags to polystyrene in many shapes and sizes.

The biodegradable trash emits the distinctive stench of death and dying. The non-biodegradable expels the frightening smell of kill. Plastic that has been left out in the open, under the elements, lets off a putrid sulfuric stench that comes with smoke. Some say that the killer methane must be coming from the chemical reaction between biodegradable and non-biodegradable, mixed with H20 from the rains and the CO2 that comes from somewhere. My little knowledge from high school chemistry cannot comprehend all that.

Human beings scale this place and spend hours on this mountain in the only livelihood they know how to eke out – picking trash that can be sold. Armed with long and thin metal rods that are bent on one end to make a hook, hands quickly search the area, hook items that are mostly plastic, and throw them into used rice sacks slung on emaciated backs. Like a metronome, rods held by grimy hands pierce into the refuse, expertly search and hook, and deftly shoot into the sack the coveted discards. A graphic oxymoron. Whole families can be seen plying this trade.

At the foot of this garbage mountain is a thriving colony of illegal settlers, known more colloquially as squatters. These people who have not known the more pleasant side of life, are buried under ignorance, social degradation, economic desperation, senseless infighting due to gross crab mentality, and vice. An entire family’s meal budget for the whole day may be thrown away on betting for the much publicized and legalized lotto. There is a not so half-hearted joke that poor Filipinos used to run to church to pray for hope and solution to their never-ending economic woes, but now run to the lotto betting stations for brighter hope.








Drugs proliferate the place in such ridiculous ease that one can turn on a corner, hand a ten-peso bill to one of the many people packed on every possible square foot space, and openly receive a packet of weed or a smaller sachet of what is locally known as ‘shabu.’ This drug of choice is synthetic amphetamine, regarded as poor man’s cocaine and even lower in cost than crack. It slowly fries the brain to a crisp. Peddlers are users. Users are couriers. And the whole shebang is of people drugged enough to forget that they haven’t eaten for at least two days.

On July 10, 2000, the mountain of garbage caved in on the slum colony below, killing hundreds of people and rendering some more hundreds of families homeless. That is, if makeshift contraptions made out of derelict wood, rusty galvanized iron sheet pieces, and cartons of milk assembled to stand up can be called shanties.

Days of heavy rains during one of the fiercest typhoons that ravaged the Philippines loosened the mountain of rubbish. Three days after the crash of the dumpsite, rescue teams were still pulling bloated decomposing bodies out of the heaps of garbage. Society’s debris buried under plain debris, seen over CNN.

The place has remained ugly. It is a picture postcard of squalor and pain. It is so ugly that it starts to look pretty on pictures that accompany some NGO’s country report.

Three months out of a year, every year, I live in this place on a self-funded and singular mission to do whatever I can to upgrade the literacy level of out-of-school youth who are drug dependents. Because the drug trade along the dark dingy alleys peak from 10 in the evening to 2 in the morning, I schedule my classes during those hours and call it the Midnight School. We hold it under a mango tree on the yard of a kind old lady that keeps me there, with the dim sputtering light from the lone incandescent bulb of the tiny house spilling out to provide us some form of illumination. It looks poetic to survey a sea of heads huddled over seatwork exercises.

When the police frisk these youth during the months that we don’t have school, the law enforcers find drug packets and fan knives inside pockets. During those three months, however, police are surprised to find little pocket dictionaries, ballpens, and crumpled folded makeshift notebooks instead.

I always look forward to those three months, every year.

Hope in the Midst of Squalor

Payatas Garbage Dump Collapse

After the Crash

The Heat on Hot

Having lived in a tropical country that knows warm almost all-year round, I’d surmise that the 34° Celsius indicated on the Yahoo temperature widget on my desktop makes this a typical almost-summer day. Scientists have pegged the temperature of a ‘normal’ room as anywhere between 23° and 25°, but 34° Celsius only makes me head to the malls more often for their excellent air-conditioning. I know for a fact that the temperature of a “normal” human body is 37° Celsius, but I still, however, think that 34° Celsius is just warm. It really does not cause me to panic. I know warm like the back of my hand.

Even if I have personally witnessed some very fierce typhoons, nasty flash floods, and the effects of the El Niño phenomenon, I just take them as hazards of the tropics. Besides, I have come to fully agree that flash floods in the urban areas of my country are caused by the clogging of waterways by garbage, and in the provinces by the denudation of forests by illegal loggers and weakening of the soil leading to erosion by indiscriminate and greedy mining companies.

NASA and the National Research Council report, “For the time period from 1979-1998, it is estimated that on average, over the globe, surface temperature has increased by 0.25 to 0.4 degrees C and lower to mid-tropospheric temperature has increased by 0.0 to 0.2 degrees C.”

Scientists claim that the layer of the atmosphere called “lower troposphere” or that which extends from the surface to about 5 miles up high would be warming at a slightly faster rate than the surface. NASA scientists warn that the earth’s temperature is dangerously high, and continues on an uphill climb.

The global temperature average in 2007 was 14.73° Celsius, the second warmest year on record. This is a mere 0.03° Celsius behind the 2005 maximum. January 2007 was the hottest January ever measured with a full 0.23° Celsius warmer than the previous record. August was also a record for that month, with September as the second warmest September recorded. The eight warmest years on record all occurred in the last decade.

Data maintained by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies reveal the rising pattern of global average temperature: 14.02° Celsius in the 1970s, 14.26° Celsius in the 1980s, and 14.40° Celsius in the 1990s. In the first eight years of the 21st century, the world averaged 14.64° Celsius.

Upwards of this current earth temperature, these things will occur according to the National Geographic Channel blog:

At plus 1° Celsius, hurricanes may hit the South Atlantic, rising tides could submerge the land around the Bay of Bengal, and new deserts could form in the western half of the United States.

At plus 2° Celsius, Canada’s melting tundra will give way to forests, insects may change their migration directions, the Pacific islands of Tuvalu may sink beneath the rising ocean tides, and majority of the world’s tropical coral reefs will die.

At plus 3° Celsius, repeated cycles of drought and fire may occur in the Amazon rain forest and release the carbon stored there, the snowcaps on the Alps will disappear, the Mediterranean and parts of Europe will experience terrible summer heat, superstorms and Category 6 hurricanes will occur, and thousands of species worldwide would face extinction.

At plus 4° Celsius, oceans will continue to rise and devastate countries like Bangladesh and Egypt, and cities like Venice could be totally submerged.

At plus 5° Celsius, the tens of millions of climate refugees will fight over extremely scarce resources resulting in worldwide strife.

At plus 6° Celsius, the world could resemble the Cretaceous Era, more deserts will dot the planet, natural disasters become common events, and the world’s great cities could be flooded or abandoned.

All these may sound like doomsday scenario, true. But, fact is, global temperature has risen by 0.33° Celsius since 1990. If we do not halt the rise in temperature, we can only calculate when the abovementioned scenarios will happen.

Let’s do some Math.

While it is true that not even thousands of cars can match the gases emitted by a single volcano, we have to agree that we expedited the condition behind the buzzphrase. Anyone who hasn’t added to greenhouse gases, raise your hand.

The good news is that there is still time to undo, in this lifetime, what we have done.

For starters, do the Math.

Global Warming

NASA News

Proofs and Indicators of Global Warming

What Happens to the Earth if Temperature is Plus 1 degree Celsius

What Happens to the Earth if Temperature is Plus 2 degrees Celsius

What Happens to the Earth if Temperature is Plus 3 degrees Celsius

What Happens to the Earth if Temperature is Plus 4 degrees Celsius

What Happens to the Earth if Temperature is Plus 5 degrees Celsius

What Happens to the Earth if Temperature is Plus 6 degrees Celsius

Life On A Banana Leaf

One in three Filipinos are now living in poverty despite the purported modest economic gains in recent years.

The number of Filipinos living on just one dollar a day rose from 23.8 million in 2003 to 27.6 million in 2006, according to a survey released by the country's economic planners.

Oil prices have been rising (22 percent over the last three years). So have the cost of transport and basic food items. Wages have barely moved in the past few years. Inflation has been rising steadily (5.4 percent in February, the highest since October 2006).

Poor personal income in the face of soaring cost of living equals a desperate country.

"Let's move to Australia," my husband says, lost in thought.

I shoot back nonchalantly, "The opportunity for this country to go up is available only when it's down."

"You're philosophizing Reuters. You wax everything poetic," he retorts teasingly with a silly grin.

"At least my life does not revolve around pairs of Nikes," I snap back only half-jokingly.

He grabbed to hug me, as if to say I win the argument hands down.

Yes, I am hopeful for this country. It's the only one I have. I had made a definitive choice a long time ago to not be part of the statistics of diaspora. I probably think this way because I happen to be in a childless double-income family. The thoughts might not be the same with those coming from families of large broods and a myriad of needs.

But making dreams in a place like this can only be put on hold. I pinch myself each time I say that things will be okay in this desperate land. In the meantime, we merely dream of moving out of our city-center dwelling and set up residence in the suburbs where we can have a garden (planted on land, and not in pots), keep a dog and cat (that can procreate their respective lines till they can), and inhale unadulterated air (as well as exhale unadulterated carbon dioxide). We can also almost see our little adopted Aeta boy from Pinatubo with a mop of hair in very tight curls.

Tele(communication)

When communication graduated into telecommunication, people have become less human. We have become a country that is so desperate, or so it seems, to communicate with one another. We rack up phone bills. We hog dark corners in computer shops to chat away the hours. We have unearthed otherwise unheard of terminologies such as VoiP. We sacrifice a month's pay just to acquire yet another cellphone model. We sacrifice our snack budget just to be able to purchase a pre-paid load card. We have suddenly become so obsessed to communicate that it has replaced our good old premiums and priorities.

The downside of it all is dark and sickening. In some police files, the blotter contents can be hilariously sad:

There are teens who actually prostitute their bodies so they can earn a fast buck to buy cellphone pre-paid load.

Women who realized their cherished dream to come face-to-face with their chatmates from another time zone actually end up dead because they unwittingly hooked up with serial murderers and thrill killers.

Some people have ended up robbed, held up, even dead, when they finally get to "eyeball" with their textmates.

Some women have been victims of blackmail by their chatmates because they went a little too far revealing themselves on webcams.

Social networks such as Friendster are actually used as recruitment mechanism of illegal gangs and nefarious fraternities.

Just when we thought we have advanced as a people do we come to stumble upon the fact that we have actually become less of humans. Or do we even realize that?

For some, no matter. They are too much in a hurry to finish their chores so they can resume chatting on the Net with that "special someone" from far away whose romantic, even sexual, overtures make a whole day's burden worth a beautiful life. Most, if not all, have their fingers steadily cocked on cellphone keypads, ready to text their lives away.