A curfew is a curfew. Maybe not in India. 30 November 2007
Posted by bornonacusp in Dateline: Delhi, Muni-Muni, Pinoy politics.add a comment
I was ranting to FrenchBeard about the curfew imposed by the Philippines President Arroyo following yesterday’s aborted coup attempt. He cuts in, obviously concerned, “A curfew, really? For how long?”
“12 midnight to 5am.” (Puzzled as to why he was asking for how long, defining ‘curfew’ in my head to be a period of time, usually in the evening, when people are required to be tucked inside their homes.)
“That’s it?”
“What do you mean, ‘that’s it?’”
“Here in India, if a curfew is imposed, it lasts for many weeks. That’s our curfew.”
The last time there were riots in Delhi in 1984, for instance, after the assassination of then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, there was a curfew, and it was the sort of weeks-long curfew. Not the Philippines kind. People were allowed out for a couple of hours to buy food. To this day, in places where communal riots take place, it is also the kind of curfew enforced by authorities.
Not that Filipinos should be thankful that the curfew in the capital and surrounding regions is “only” for five hours. A restriction is a restriction and, for freedom-loving people, something to sound the alarm about.
I was simply reminded once again of how little the Philippines is, if you sit it against India.
Coup, déjà vu, merci beaucoup! 30 November 2007
Posted by bornonacusp in Pinoy politics.add a comment
Yesterday, a group of renegade Philippines soldiers launched a coup bid against President Gloria Arroyo, whom they called “corrupt and bogus”. Walking out of a court hearing where they were standing trial over a similar attempt at mutiny in 2003, the soldiers marched on the streets of the country’s financial district and eventually holed up inside a luxury hotel. They issued statements agitating fellow soldiers to withdraw support from the president.
Several hours later, the coup attempt was quashed, as government troops flushed out the mutinous soldiers from the hotel using tear gas and firing warning shots.
I don’t trust them. I’m sorry, to all those who may feel empathy for these renegade soldiers. But to me, they’re all of the same skin. All they want is power.
While they were being whisked away by the government troops, the leader of the pack said, “We’re going out for the sake of everybody. We cannot live with our conscience if some of you would get killed or hurt in the crossfire.”
‘We cannot live with our conscience,’ whatever, really. Those people would not have been in any peril if not for you.
I’m delighted to note from eyewitness accounts I’m reading online that people were mostly apathetic about the whole drama. In blogs from Manila, while there’s a section that’s cheering on the renegade soldiers, the rest don’t trust them either and would rather go on with their lives.
Not that they love the President. Not that they do not think there’s no truth to any of the allegations of corruption hounding her. Not that they like it that even journalists doing their jobs covering the mutiny attempt were hauled off to a military camp for questioning. But they just won’t place their bet on these power-grabbers either, no, thank you very much.
Masala this, masala that 28 November 2007
Posted by bornonacusp in Dateline: Delhi.add a comment
![Amanpulo beach [Photo from Aman Resorts]](http://bornonacusp.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/pulo_scenery_beach2_alb.jpg)
India’s realty giant, DLF, had just announced that it is buying the luxury hotel chain, Aman Resorts.
Seems these gazillionaire Indians are not running out of ways to spend their money.
Aman Resorts is like the utopia of all resorts. I’ve never set foot in any one of them. (There’s one in the Philippines, in Pamalican island in the province of Palawan, pictured here.) But I do know that it’s the kind of resort reserved only for the high-end travelers. Something like a thousand US dollars per night for a room, maybe more.
And now India is taking over Aman. As FrenchBeard says, in a swelling fit of Indian pride, “Spreading masala throughout the world!”
Happyness 28 November 2007
Posted by bornonacusp in Uncategorized.add a comment
Interesting.
Among Asian peoples, Indians are the happiest of the lot. The second happiest? Filipinos.
So that makes me double-gleeful: I am now living in a country where people are the happiest, and was born in another where they are up there in the list as well.
The survey was done across eight countries of Asia — Philippines and India, along with China, Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore — and sought to measure how satisfied people are at present, and how optimistic they are about their career, family, health, and retirement planning for the next 12 months and five years of their lives. The respondents were supposedly “middle class”, and aged 25 to 50 years.
Funny that two countries that are so different from one another can be neck-and-neck in a poll on happiness.
Cambodia in my mind 22 November 2007
Posted by bornonacusp in Elsewhere in the world, Image Gallery.add a comment
A UN genocide court set up to try the surviving members of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime for crimes against humanity has begun holding its first hearings.
More than a million people are thought to have died during the four-year rule of the Communist Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.
A prosecutor has been quoted by the news as saying the trials will, hopefully, bring a sense of relief to Cambodians that the process is ongoing.
I made a very good Cambodian friend during my graduate studies, and the start of the Khmer Rouge hearings reminds me of him, easily one of the kindest and gentlest people I have ever met in my life. Although very young to remember first-hand the Khmer Rouge rule, my friend shares the overall desire of Cambodians to make peace with that era. Three decades have passed but, he says, the Cambodian people still have yet to come to terms with the brutality of Pol Pot’s rule. (Pol Pot died almost a decade back without being brought to justice.) I wonder if my friend sees hope in these UN trials.
(Photographs taken by bornonacusp. In Phnom Penh and Siem Reap.)
And what if the monkeys say, “But we were here first!” 20 November 2007
Posted by bornonacusp in Dateline: Delhi, Delhi life.add a comment
Delhi is in the midst of racking its brains to rid its territory of what they say is a soaring population of wild monkeys.
I’ve only been in this city for six months, and before that, have come down a couple of times for tourist-y visits. And every time I see a monkey on the street, it leaves me amazed. For, really, naïve as it may sound, never in my life have I lived with such a diverse collection of fauna as I do now. Squirrels, pigeons, monkeys. These are all exotic to me and hence, nothing to be concerned about but instead be breathed in as new experience. (Like seeing kangaroos crossing the streets of Australia, for instance). And from what I know, even wild monkeys can coexist with humans if they’re left alone.
Delhi, though, is alarmed. Last week, the newspapers reported that a wild monkey had gone on a “rampage” in a low-income neighbourhood and hurt a dozen residents. So now officials are hard-pressed at finding ways to win against these monkeys, hiring professional catchers and deploying them across the city.
But that’s the thing. The way these monkeys have been forced to settle in the city centre is only a side effect of India’s rapid urbanisation. As Delhi has expanded over recent years, the green areas in and around the capital — for centuries the monkeys’ natural habitat — grew smaller. With their territory encroached upon, many monkeys really had no choice but move to the centre.
I’m not romanticising their presence. If they do hurt people, then something must be done. I’m just pondering over why they’re here in the first place.
(Photographs taken by bornonacusp.)
‘Easier to get a handgun than a fruit’ 17 November 2007
Posted by bornonacusp in Elsewhere in the world.add a comment
Saw a CNN report about Los Angeles in California finding ways to fight the ubiquitousness of fast food restaurants there, in an effort to stave off their ill effects on the people’s health.
According to the report, south LA, in particular, is seeing an alarming trend of residents having too much burgers and fries in their diet and not much else. That area hosts almost half of all fast food restaurants in LA. One in every three of the residents are obese. (Health experts across the globe have made a convincing argument about the correlation of fast-food diet and poor health. Assuming other things constant, such as your lifestyle, as well as a factor of genes.)
A councilwoman was quoted by CNN to have said that food choices are so poor in LA, that in many districts in the city, it is easier to buy a handgun than a fruit.
What the city officials want is a ban on the establishment of new fast food restaurants in the city for at least one year. They are also thinking of ways to give incentives for sit-down restaurants (it is assumed they give healthier options on their menus), as well as grocery stores that will offer choices like fruits and vegetables.
Hurrah!
Philip-pines 101 14 November 2007
Posted by bornonacusp in Dateline: Delhi, Muni-Muni.add a comment
This post is less about the bomb blast that happened last night at the Philippines’ House of Representatives. Based on what I’ve read in the last couple of hours from Manila news online, as things are, there is so much speculation going around about the incident that has counted four deaths so far. And simply catching up with the twists and turns of the investigations can give one a headache: A month ago, for example, a powerful explosion hit one of the most popular shopping malls in the Philippines’ financial district; there, 11 people died, and over a hundred were injured. Since then, the police and their back-up foreign experts, and the mall owners and their own back-up foreign experts, have been trading their respective “theories” and “scientific findings”: it was an accident caused by the accumulation of methane gas (say the police); or ‘That’s impossible, our malls have sophisticated waste systems, the terrorist-attack angle must be pursued’ (say the mall owners).
After that long digression, however, I finally come to what really prompted this blog: As a TV news program was voicing over clips of last night’s bombing at the parliament, she mispronounced the name of the country as Philip-pines (as in plural pine, the tree). Nobody’s perfect, we all know that, but are news people not supposed to make sure they know of the correct pronunciation for whatever names and places they’re reporting on?
But it’s also less of the mispronunciation, and more of the fact that this reporter got me to thinking once again of how little most Indians know about the Philippines.
When I’m introduced as being from the Philippines, I have more than once gotten a variation of such conversational response as, “Oh, Philippines. We have a friend, whose son, is married to an Indonesian.” Uh, okay. Or, “I’ve been to Thailand, it’s such a wonderful place.”
Not that I expect everyone to know the Philippines like they know their favourite holiday destination. Of course, with all the knowledge that is out there for the picking, no one can be expected to know everything.
But even how to pronounce ‘Philippines’? Really?
I’m more wondering, less complaining. After all, I’ve seen it in other places too. On one of my earliest days of living in the UK a few years back, I had gone to post snail-mail for my mother in one of the shops at the university. I remember the conversation as if it happened yesterday:
Me: I need stamps for ordinary mail to the Philippines, please.
Girl at counter, taking my letter from my hand and reading it aloud: Philippines.
Philippines. Right, this is local, so that’s 70 pence.
Me: Ahhh … Philippines?
Girl #2, fixing some stock in a corner, and quickly rushing to the counter: Philippines? Philippines? That’s in Asia! That’s not local!! (And to me): I am terribly sorry about my colleague.
Good news, bad news 14 November 2007
Posted by bornonacusp in Dateline: Delhi.add a comment
Sure …
India joins supercomputer race. A computer system designed in India — known as EKA — has made it into fourth place in the world’s roster of ten fastest supercomputers. (Computer giant IBM continues to dominate the list, with a total of 232 out of the top 500 supercomputers.) EKA is installed in research laboratories in the city of Pune. Experts say the supercomputer system will have a direct impact on the lives of Indians as a tool for modeling the occurrence of natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis.
India launches data collection drive in rural areas. The country will begin gathering data on each of its rural villages — where 70 percent of the population live — using a comprehensive, online system that promises to aid good governance. The campaign is being piloted in 28 of the country’s poorest districts, where data will be collected on a range of variables including geographical features, infrastructure, schools and hospitals, number of toilets, access to roads, and gender-related data.
But …
India’s gender inequality remains stark. In the latest report on the Gender Gap Index released by the World Economic Forum, India is ranked 114 out of 128 countries. The index measures how well — or how poorly — a country allocates its resources and opportunities to women on a diverse of areas including education, health, politics and economics.
