The Thorny Plant that Bothers the Roses

Low Rating on Governor’s Performance is Ironic
By Elen Francisco
Letter to the Editor - Philippine Daily Inqauirer

In its July 8 issue, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported that a traders’ group had joined the Pampanga Mayor’s League in giving Pampanga province’s Gov. Ed Panlilio “a failing grade” in governance.

How ironic that they should rate Governor Panlilio so despite his team’s success in increasing the quarry collections to P200 million in one year. Remember these were the same mayors and traders (or most of them) who tacitly gave former governors Lito Lapid and Mark Lapid passing grades for a P15-million-a-year quarry collection; the same people who never lifted a finger to the allegations that the Lapids pocketed quarry collections to the tune of billions of pesos in the 12 years father and son were in the provincial capitol.

It was very obvious that the Pampanga Mayors’ League (led by its spokesperson Mayor Jerry Pelayo of Candaba town) trooped to Manila for a press conference denouncing Governor Panlilio for mismanagement two days after he filed a plunder case against Bong Pineda. The intersecting interests of the Pampanga mayors and the Pinedas betray the real motives of the mayors.

If Pelayo wants to blame anybody for government inaction, he should look to his dearest President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. There is a dilapidated nine-kilometer national road leading to his town. Pelayo can’t blame the governor for the condition of the road because it is a national road.

By the way, one week after the publication by the Inquirer of a letter to the editor complaining of that dilapidated national highway, billboards announcing its rehabilitation were put up. On the billboards were the pictures of President Arroyo and Rep. Dong Gonzales. As expected, two months have passed since the billboards were erected. Until now nothing has been done about the road.

Pelayo and his colleagues may not be aware of it, but the recovery of the dignity of and respect for the Kapampangan race is the greatest achievement of Governor Panlilio and the people of Pampanga so far. (Unfortunately, a number of of Kapampangans continue to be a disgrace to the nation.)

----------
Among the plants in the garden, there are those with flowers and thorns. Sometimes they engage among themselves thorns for thorns, flowers for flowers. Yet the bees and butterflies in the garden could care less but the nectar that the flowers provide.

Thorns exist to protect the fragile. They are irritating to the harmful but harmless to the careful.

A Potential With A Lost Effectivity

Why do people stay in their homes instead of going to Mendiola
By blogger Patricio Mangubat

Dr. Carol Araullo was interviewed today (12 July 2008) by the Philippine Daily Inquirer. What she said was both interesting and a revelation. For the first time, it jibed with what the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (ISAFP) thinks about our current situation.

Despite the high prices of oil and food, it is not incendiary enough to foment riots. Nor revolutions. Nor anything violent. That's whay ISAFP Chief Prestoza said and that's what revolutionaries like Araullo also believes in. So much for revolutions. It's time to eat.

Why?

Well, Araullo thinks that Filipinos are too busy earning a living for them to mind going to those Black Friday rallies or even make those noise barrages. In fact, Araullo reveals that even activists right now are too busy thinking about how to support themselves that they forgot to go to Mendiola to support those League of Filipino Students (LFS).

I understand where Araullo is coming from. That pragmatic thinking might have arisen from the small number of people going to their rallies. Despite those scenes of rallies and demonstrations here and there, no sizeable number of ordinary folks have gone out of their homes to march with them.

And you know why?

It's not that people are hungrier than angry. No. People are just waiting for a group from among their ranks to rise up and call for a genuine revolt. People are tired of groups waging struggle in the name of "isms". They're tired blaming imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism for their problems. They already know they're being schemed by those in power. They already know that its the government who's digging their graves and choosing the ones most fit to benefit from a Noah's Ark proposal.

There's no one who can provide them with proper guidance and direction. They can't trust the Genuine Opposition simply because, in their minds, they're not genuine enough. [...]

Click here to read full text.

----------
It's not bad to be back online even if it is just temporary. Since typhoon Frank hit the nation, the internet facility of my dial-up ISP (Internet Service Provider) is still down. In the meantime, I'm temporarily using a prepaid card dial-up connection provided by another ISP.

What makes things more challenging for me these past days is that my PC's hard disk developed defects due to intermittent power failures at the height of typhoon Frank. Eventually my system broke down before I could fully backup all the important data on that defective disk.

My last complete system backup was about 7 months old! I thought I would lose all of my data stored on that hard disk. But thanks to the authors of various data recovery utilities for sharing free their softwares on the internet

Right now I'm in the process of restoring fully my system like it was before. I'm testing my system using this temporary internet connection

Maintaining a regularly updated backup of your entire PC's system (OS, Programs, Documents) is a task that most PC owners ignored because it seems useless and a waste of time. Well, if the documents on your PC's hard disk have no significant importance then you may just ignore maintaining a regular updated backup of it. But when in case your system crashes, it will still take considerably longer time to reinstall your OS and the individual softwares (not to mention the trouble of reactivating, re-registering, and re-updating your OS and individual softwares online) compared to restoring it from a complete regularly updated backup.

It's been a while since I did some technical works on a PC. There are times when you can be thankful that some "unpleasant experiences" come along once in a while because they will cause you to realize that there are some things which have long been inadvertently taken for granted that already needed prime attention. It is when we continue to ignore these things over a prolonged period of time that they slowly lose their essence.

Effectivity is lost when potential is undermined by repeatedly abusing its limits.