WTF PHILIPPINES?!

With the lack of job opportunities in the country and the more competitive financial compensations abroad, there has, there is, and there will still be an exodus of Filipino workers away from the Philippines. It is hard and pitiful to imagine that because of these circumstances, licensed medical doctors are leaving the country to become nurses or care givers abroad. As a result of this massive departure of many Filipino professionals and other manual labors, the brain drain phenomenon is significantly felt. Apparently the brain drain phenomenon is beyond what I have imagined. This I irritatingly realized last Saturday.

Fort Santiago is one of the Philippines’ historic sites because national hero Jose Rizal was detained here prior to his execution. It is at present a tourist spot frequently visited by foreign and local tourists. I have visited Fort Santiago several times. Likewise I have photographed the place several times. But my visit to Fort Santiago last Saturday along with four of my club mates in my photography club was different from my past visits for the reason that we were not allowed by two of Manila’s most brilliant security guards to go in. Why? The security guards, backed up by Fort Santiago’s intelligent management did not let us in because we were to bring SLR cameras inside the famous tourist spot. But ironically, a group of foreign tourists who were likewise carrying SLR cameras were allowed to enter. BRILLIANT! Was there discrimination? Not really. They were just stupid, S-T-U-P-I-D, plain and simple.

To be fair with the management and to the two security guards preventing us from entering, I asked the logic, if there were any, behind their action. I did found a minor logic and understood their point. According to them, they were just preventing a former incident of using photographs of the place for commercial purposes without the knowledge of Fort Santiago’s management. In other words, they want to have a share of the profits from the commercial sale /use of the photographs. They just want to have money. This is understandable but what I found utmost stupid and obtuse was that they were not letting in Filipinos who were carrying SLR cameras, but were letting in those carrying point and shoot cameras. Logical? Hell NO! The bottom-line is, regardless of their type, all are cameras and all are capable of capturing images, which are their fundamental purpose. Moreover, any photograph captured by any type of camera whether it is an SLR, DSLR or any point and shoot camera can be used for commercial purposes. You can give me a toy camera and I am confident that I can still produce stunning images apt for commercial use.

I commend the person or the group of persons who squeezed all their intellectual capacities to arrive at this policy. At the same time, I am calling the attention of the Department of Tourism to address this ridiculous policy of Fort Santiago because it is shameful. Better yet, let them just place a [B]“NO CAMERAS ALLOWED!”[/B] sign at the entrance.

Circles are out

There is an old custom that many Filipino families follow every New Year’s Eve wherein they serve different kinds of round fruits during what we call media noche, a sort of midnight snack in welcoming the New Year. According to the custom, serving 12 different kinds of round fruits would bring good luck because the round shape of the fruits symbolizes money or coins. But there are changes that constantly and inevitably happen each and every time we welcome a New Year. For this year, one of that changes that we have adopted is to revise and to update that old Filipino custom of serving round fruits.

Coins have devalued progressively, better yet degenerately, through time. In fact, it has been often said that the more coins there is in a country’s monetary system means the much poorer that country gets. Therefore, the old custom that most Filipino families follow no longer follows it objective. To update and salvage this custom, we have included rectangular shaped foods in our dinner table during our media noche meal along with the circular fruits. Instead of representing coins, the rectangle shape would be representing checks and bills, which bears greater value as compared to coins. =) Still, we made sure to specify what we wanted to generously flow in this year so we served a “100 dollar bill” chocolate. =)

We have done our offering so now we would just wait and see if our updated and revised New Year’s Eve custom would indeed bring us good luck and dollars. Welcome 2007! Happy New Year to all!