I don't know how true is the policy among fast food places, that when a prepared meal has been on the shelf for more than a specific number of minutes, that meal does not get served to a client anymore but gets thrown away along with the other food garbage.

Whether the above mentioned policy is true or not, this is what happens to the food that gets thrown away, surplus or otherwise.

If this is the case, then why can't fast food joints set up something with the nearby churches and organizations for the poor so that surplus food does not have to end up in the garbage dumps, but directly onto the people's tables? The main reason why this food is discarded is because they are no longer at the temperature at which they should be served. They are still edible, unlike the actual left-overs that also get thrown away and which also end up in the garbage dumps.

As a form of encouragement, the local government where these fast food franchises get their licenses can grant them a discount on whatever fees, if they do this. They can give fancy plaques to the owners of the franchises or to the company itself for furthering the government's drive to feed its hungry low/no-income population.

I don't know what capitalist law is behind the discarding of surplus supplies (the way American dairy farmers once poured surplus milk into the rivers so as not to cheapen the price of milk, rather than give it to the poor).

I do believe that in a country like ours, where there are malls on every other city block yet where a food shortage looms like a raincloud on a mallgoer's day, we should put surplus food to good use instead of throwing them away.

So if you tell me that teaching a man how to fish is better than giving him fish, I'm going to ask you where the fishing schools are.

A lot has been said and written about Janina San Miguel and her unfortunate interview during the Bb. Pilipinas pageant.

I just want to say, You go girl! Keep your chin up and stay focused. Not many of us can muster half the guts that you needed to just get up on that stage.

Huwag mo nang pag aksayahan ng panahon yung mga ibang nakukuha pang pagtawanan ka dahil dapat daw ang Pilipina magaling mang ingles, para sa mga call center agents lang yun. Kahit ba sabihin nilang ang Pilipinas daw eh the only English speaking country in Asia. Eh ano ngayon? Sa Japan ba kailangan marunong mag ingles ang mga tao? Sa maunlad na mga bansa ng Singapore ba lahat ba ng tao magaling mag ingles? Hindi ang pag iingles lang ang natatanging basehan ng kaalaman at karunungan.

Pagbutihin mo ang mga gagawin mo patungo sa mga hangarin mo para sa iyo at sa iyong pamilya.

Mabuhay ka Janina!

A very small group of people (there may actually be only 1 or 2 people in this group, but they usually refer to themselves as "kami" and "namin" so let's just call them a group for the meantime) has zeroed in on my main blog, saying that since I am not for their 2010 bet, I must be for all the other so-called lesser (or even evil) alternatives.

For example: Because I have openly declared that I will not vote for Bayani Fernando for President in 2010, this means I will be voting for either Escudero, Roxas, Estrada or Villar or any other tom dick or harry who had thrown/is throwing/will throw his hat into the presidential race.

This betrays such a narrow vision of government and politics that has become the trademark of a certain group who have branded themselves BF4P -- the Bayani Fernando for President movement.

This movement is headed by Toti Dulay, a professor, UP graduate and alumni of the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), Master in Development Management (MDM). He is backed up by another commenter who calls himself "robin good", who currently surfs the Internet from El SEIF Engineering Contracting Est. I have also received comments from the same email and IP address signed as "lerma" and email promoting BF for president from "Andrew Olmedo", sometimes written as "Almeda".

Due to my having published a photo of one of several enormous Bayani Fernando tarpaulin banners along the tallest MRT posts on EDSA, the BF4P is now busy running damage control for their presidential bet, as evidenced by their comments on my blog and even on this one, where I have posted (from another blog) an ominous juxtaposition of Bayani Fernando's photos with those of North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il.

Let me digress for a while and go into the technical aspects of blogging and the enabling of the comments feature on a blog.

Every blogger knows that when he/she opens a blog for comments, the blogger can choose to get an email each time a comment is posted, more so if comment moderation by the author has been enabled. This is especially true with WordPress. Blogger.com will require you to login to see new comments on your blog if you have comment moderation enabled, as well as send you email containing the comment. Comment moderation is when you as blog author will need to manually approve each comment that is posted on your blog.

There are two comments that I have chosen not to display as soon as they were posted, one on this blog and the other on my main blog. But I still have copies of these comments in my email and moderation queue (see explanation above) which contain IP addresses, and the email address with which they have signed their comment.

I decided not to publish the first comment, made on this blog, because of the evil tone it had (in my opinion) at the time that I read it. Like the Emperor beckoning Luke Skywalker, it had that "Come to the dark side" timbre that I found both menacing and funny. At the time that I read it though, menacing won over funny, and I couldn't believe there was actually a real person behind that email. So I rejected the comment on this blog. I didn't know that rejecting a comment on blogger.com means the comment goes away forever, but I realized I still had a copy of it in the email address I used to register this blog.

The other comment is by Toti Dulay himself, signed sealed and expressly delivered to my spam box on my WordPress blog. I didn't know why it had ended up in the spam box, but a quick IP check revealed to me that the professor had posted the comment from a PLDT DSL connection, and PLDT IP's are notorious for being marked as spam by spam gateways. The comment started out in a friendly tone, but I should have known better.

Professor Sofronio Dulay first requested me to publish his comment and then proceeded to air his opinion as to my political leanings and preferences. He also stated that my blog came up in the top 20 list when one enters "Bayani Fernando for President" in Google. Actually, that's nothing to be nervous about. My blog doesn't turn up in the first two pages of Yahoo results for the keywords "Bayani Fernando for President," so Professor Dulay need not consider me a wrench in the cogs of the BF4P.

Just don't let anyone type in "Bayani BF Fernando" in Google, and the BF4P should be secure enough in their way-too-advanced campaign for Bayani Fernando.

Professor Dulay, I do not have to publish your panawagan to all BF supporters on my blog. You have your own websites and can do it very well from there. I just realized that I can put a stop to the way you have set foot in my blog to further your delusional cause at my expense. Go ahead and call me more names, Professor Dulay and company, but do it from your own turf from now on.

Take off your blinkers Professor Dulay, and look around you. You cannot keep pushing a man into a position without looking to the left or to the right. You might not notice where the tomatoes are coming from. After so many comments and rebuttals you still have not commented on the fact that Bayani Fernando is breaking MMDA Regulation No. 04-004 and REPUBLIC ACT NO. 6713 with those banners. All you can do is ask why don't I write about other political transgressions, and that my not having done so proves that I am pro-trapo?!

Define non-sequitur, Professor Dulay.

Read, Professor Dulay, and ask your assistants/minions to learn to read as well. Ask them to read, listen, understand OTHER PEOPLE and their opinions. Ask them to find out what other people consider important, and to not just bind themselves to your own goals. You may be a professor, Mr. Dulay, but who knows, maybe there is still an opportunity for you to learn something new.

Levi Strauss closing Manila Plant

Levi Strauss & Co. said it would close down its cut-and-sew apparel plant in Manila, with 257 employees to be terminated.

The company, which has been in the Philippines for the past 36 years, said its last day of plant operations would be on July 31.

It said it “believes the plant closure will allow it to focus on its core competency of marketing its branded products in Asia, in line with the company’s global strategy.” . . .

Martelino also said the company, through Levi Strauss Foundation, would make a grant of $50,000 to a nongovernmental organization in the Philippines to assist residents of communities near the Manila plant with social and economic development programs.

---

Another one bites the dust. Another job provider pulls out of the Philippines. Two hundred and fifty seven people are going to lose their jobs. And 257 families will be losing breadwinners.

Sam explained the economics of production to me once, using Levi's workers as an example. The numbers following are for purposes of example only and do not reflect actual numbers except perhaps in ratio and proportion.

A Levi's assembly line worker earns minimum wage, which is between P325 to P400 a day.

This assembly worker has the ability to finish three (3) pairs of denim pants in one (1) day.

These denim pants, after being folded, packed, shipped, marketed, advertised on print and tv, and hung in malls and shops nationwide, are each sold at a standard retail price (SRP) of P3,000 (on average).

So, the assembly worker manages to produce P9,000 worth of goods in a day, while being paid less than 4% of that amount.

It will be worse, with Levis closing down its plant at the end of July. 257 employees will have to find new jobs, and in time Philippine-made Levis will be history.

The Philippines will stop producing Levis clothing, but they will still be sold in the Philippines -- which means we will be buying products that have been made in other countries -- which means we will now be importing Levis denims instead of manufacturing them ourselves.

"But I don't buy Levis anyway, it's too expensive," one might say. "Only the well-to-do can afford Levis" "I can only buy Levis when they're on sale anyway."

Which is exactly the point. While the Levis plant in the Philippines is still running, your purchase of a Levis piece of clothing contributes to the salaries of 257 Filipino employees. When the plant closes, a few months after that the Levis you buy will now contribute to the salaries of other people in other countries. I don't think that's right.

Not even $50,000 in development funds can make that right.

Related reading:

• Rate of Exploitation
• Levis to shut down apparel plant due to rising costs - Businessworld Online
• Levis to cut 257 jobs, close down Manila Plant - ABS-CBN Interactive
  

What you see above is a screen capture from my computer while I was reading the newspapers online. It is from today's GMAnews.tv website, taken around 10 a.m.

Who is KADAMAY? KADAMAY or Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap is a national alliance of urban poor associations, workers, neighborhood associations, workers and semi-workers groups, women's groups, and youth groups based in the communities. (http://cosca-dlsu-cwts.wikispaces.com/KADAMAY+National)

The group KADAMAY has been around since 1998 and is a coalition of groups that have been around for an even longer time. Not like these made-to-order groups that pop up like daisies and rally around GMA whenever a controversy hits the Palace.

What is a "berdugo"? The word comes from the Spanish word "verdugo" meaning "executioner" or figuratively, "beast".

This is Bayani BF Fernando, as seen by some of the urban poor. Other members of the urban poor community may have other names for Bayani Fernando, but the ones in evidence above will suffice for the meantime.

At least, one of those banners has been put to good use.

20-odd years of living in Cebu did not dull my tongue's craving for patis, especially Rufina Patis (which is by the way, what you need to tell store keepers in Cebu and the Visayas if you want patis. "Rufina," you say, because if you say "patis" they will give you soy sauce).

It's a shame though, that despite the fact that the biggest patis factory in Navotas is still in full swing, manufacturing that liquid I so love to dip food (almost any food) in, Rufina patis does not seem to be available in the supermarkets anymore. At least I can't find any in the ones that I visit (SM Sucat, Rustans at the Powerplant Mall, Puregold Sucat, Uniwide Tambo).

But what adds insult to injury is this latest discovery I had made--imported patis is available on our supermarket shelves here in Manila. They are not displayed in the imported goods shelves, but right alongside Tentay, Datu Puti, Lorins and SM Bonus!

To me this is not a matter of taste, it is a matter of patrimony. This is a direct result of this country's ill-timed and ill-advised entry into the WTO, which allowed products to be dumped onto our supermarket shelves and at a much cheaper price than our own produce.

It's happening in all the marketplaces, despite claims by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of a strong economy, which still needs to be felt by the ordinary man on street, as well as the vendor who is trying to make a living.

Take our meat vendors for example. It is actually cheaper to buy and resell imported pork, beef and chicken than it is to sell locally grown meat. While I do not begrudge the vendor his means of generating income, this does not bode well for our local food producers, if in fact there are many left.

I have always believed that the Philippines is primarily an agricultural country, and can be fully capable of becoming economically stable through the production and export of food products. Back when I was in elementary school, I remember our social studies classes that taught us the provinces that were the Rice Granary of the Philippines. Which provinces exported sugar and tobacco and corn. Anyone over the age of 35 should remember that the Philippines was once one of the largest food exporters in Asia.

Now we import our food, as well as the raw materials with which we make our food. This is why the ordinary man on the street cannot feel the "strong economy" because the dollars that our OFW's bring in all go back out again in the form of payments for importations, debt servicing, and government official's pockets servicing.

Why has it come to this, why have we turned our backs on what we really are--keepers of the granary, dispensers of food and nourishment--and have instead become citizens of the concrete jungle?

It is because we have been made to believe that relying on agriculture is a backward notion, that farming is poor and dirty work (especially after Joc Joc Bolante has rerouted P700 million which was intended to supply fertilizers for our fields). Some time in our past we have been made to believe that life in the province will get us nowhere, that we need to be in the city to study or earn real money while engaged in a real job.

I started this post rueing the disappearance of Rufina patis on supermarket shelves that I know of, and somehow ended up doing a treatise on the ill-effects of importation. But the Philippines has not run out of export products, far from it.

This government has turned away from agrarian reform towards a return to the export market because it has realized that this country's biggest export product is not food or anything that is grown in our fields or manufactured in our non-existent factories.

Our country's biggest export product is its people.

---

Related links:

• Philippines: Who's really benefitting from hybrid rice subsidies?
• GLOBALIZATION: gobbling up the developing world - a speech by Sen. Aquilino Pimentel
  
• Farmers: Scrap hybrid rice subsidy
• Implications of the recent economic crisis on livestock production, marketing and consumption in the Philippines
• The National Food Authority
• The Department of Agriculture
• WTO | Philippines - Member Information
  

A visitor whose comment has been expunged from this blog (yes you know who you are and this IS MY blog so I don't have to show your almost obscene comment) asked me why I don't write about ZTE and GMA's media people's latest shenanigans, instead of zeroing in on his beloved MMDA Chairman Bayani Fernando.

The answer is simple. Everyone else is writing about ZTE and GMA (as a matter of fact I have a post about GMA too which further proves that some people just actually choose what they want to read to suit their own delusions). I prefer to write about something that I can personally prove (with the help of people who actually do real research based on real facts instead of just bending opinion to suit their candidate). I write about things that I think people ought to be warned about. And people should be warned about Bayani Fernando.

While I was writing this post I was also surfing for other bloggers who feel the same way as I do about Bayani Fernando, and I came across this blog who has picked up the Bayani Jong Il collage that was first featured here. I started to read the comments on Gwapito.com which I was visiting for the first time, when much to my surprise I saw a comment that was purportedly from Bambit of Iligan! And it contains the same joke (hey the copy-paste brigade) that was posted on this blog! Buti sana kung nakakatawa yung joke eh, baka natuwa pa ko. The joke was lame, as was his attempt to hijack my identity.

I can safely say this because a check on Google for the name Bambit will give you less than 10 results regarding the Bambit identity on the first page:

1. Master Samuel "Bambit" Dulay, martial artist extraordinaire
2. Bassokuouro Bambit, a bass choir in Finland
3. Dr. Jayne Bambit, a Cosmetic Surgeon in Australia
4. Bambit.multiply.com, the multiply site of another young lady nicknamed Bambit, who by the way does not mention the word Iligan on any of her posts.
   
5. Bambit Kapauan-Gaerlan, myself, real name Victoria Kapauan-Gaerlan
   

There are other Bambit results on the succeeding search results pages on google, but none of them are in the Philippines and definitely NOT from Iligan.

This crass method of marketing their flawed candidate by using someone else's identity, especially mine when I have presented myself as anti-Bayani Fernando, is not urbanidad--but I am not surprised.

I have said before that Bayani Fernando does not preach nor practice Urbandidad. Bayani Fernando and his cohorts and minions are giving Urbanidad a bad name.

I did not have the honor of making the collage that you see above. The research, layout and remarkable juxtaposition of these photographs is courtesy of Juon Hayate. In his blog post Bayani Jong Il, Juon silently remarks on the ominousness of MMDA Chairman Bayani "BF" Fernando's penchant for vainglorious self-promotion, choosing to emulate with uncanny resemblance the photographs of Kim Jong Il, the Dictator of North Korea.

There are numerous posts on my main blog about Bayani Fernando, none of them laudatory. He's got enough minions on the internet who write his praises. Then again, there were a lot of people praising Hitler before he became chancellor of Germany.

The above photo and the post which Juon commented on may actually prove that the MMDA Chairman himself has nothing but disdain for MMDA laws:

MMDA Regulation No. 04-004

Section 4. MMDA Regulation No. 96-009 (Anti-Littering Regulation) must be strictly observed specifically, Sec. h, which states that:

"It is unlawful for any person/s private and public corporations, advertising and promotion companies, movie producers, professionals and service contractors to post, install display any kind or form of billboards, signs, posters and other visual clutters in any part of the roads, sidewalk, center island, posts, trees and open spaces".

Section 5. Installation, operation and maintenance of lighted advertising panels endorsing individuals, private organizations or public corporations shall not be allowed within sidewalks, pedestrian overpasses, flyovers, interchanges, traffic signages, communications posts, LRT, and MRT structures (such as terminal stations, carriageways, columns and beams), roads rights-of-way, posts, waiting sheds or any part thereof

The website of the Department of Public Works and Highways (http://www.dpwh.gov.ph) has published in PDF format REPUBLIC ACT NO. 6713, where on page 22 it states:

(b) Professionalism. — Public officials and employees shall perform and discharge their duties with the highest degree of excellence, professionalism, intelligence and skill. They shall enter public service with utmost devotion and dedication to duty. They shall endeavor to discourage wrong perceptions of their roles as dispensers or peddlers of undue patronage. (emphasis by this blogger)

Bayani Fernando's initials "BF" appear on almost every pink sign that has been posted by the MMDA along the streets of Metro Manila, creating the perception that the MMDA is his own personal fiefdom and organization. As I had said in my blog post, Bayani Fernando's supporters may contend that "... other politicians do the same thing. So what makes Bayani Fernando any different from the next Congressman Pulpol or Senator Trapo?"

Bayani Fernando is priming up for 2010. And he is willfully and brazenly doing it at the expense of the taxpayers.

... take you to yet another GMA resign post. There can never be too many of these.

... take you to another eff-up of the person I love to hate: Bayani "BF" Fernando.

... take you to an attempt to explain to myself the paradox of the OFW.

Pindot ng pindot ...

Here's to the blogger who started it all. Kudos, Jenijenjen! Magkasama tayong lahat.