Tolentino Chapel - Bulacan

Blessed to be Stressed!

Hectic hectic past 2 weeks...

Took the IELTS exam... for some applications abroad... ang dami ko kasabay... mostly nurses and care givers... funny conversation excerpt while waiting for registration>

Nurse: Nurse ka din?

Me: Ah... hindi po...

Nurse: Aaaahhhhh ... Caregiver?

Me: hindi rin po

Nurse: Nge... eh ano trabaho mo?

Me: Arkitekto po ako... actually hindi pa nga ho ako lisensyado

Nurse: Aaaaahhhhh... pero nagcacaregiverschool ka ngayon?

Me:  Uh... hindi po...

Nurse: Naku... wag mo sabihing nagnunurse ka...

Me: Hindi po... (at this point i decided to elaborate) nagaapply po kasi ako ng scholarship at trabaho sa abroad... kaya kailangan ko magexam...

Nurse: Kaya nga... scholarship at trabaho... Nursing?! Bagay na bagay ka... laki mong tao... kayang kaya mo buhatin lahat ng mga lolo't lola dun... lalu na sa Scotland... kasi nakapagtrabaho narin ako dun... (goes on about her tour of duty in the  British Isles as a nurse/caregiver to the graying  British population)

 

Hahahaha... at this point I think... hmmmm... oo nga no... pero... nah... mahal ko tong ginagawa ko eh... I was grinning during the entire listening part of of the test... hehehehe... I think I screwed up a bit with the writing exam... because they did not say that they needed our essays to be written in script/longhand... because of 5 years of writing freehand title blocks and technical call-outs with my print... I totally forgot that essays need to be written like a frickin love letter...

 

 

Uuuuuy si JM!

Kudos to my old bud JM... hope you and claire grow old and gray together... you deserve to be happy bro!

A note to the senior minister

Talk about dysfunctional political systems... I stayed up last night, I was working on the church... while listening to the 3 hour tape and the hearings in congress...

Somewhere, Lee Kwan Yew (the senior minister of Singapore) is probably laughing his butt off... "See the price of democracy?" Well... We misconstrue our dysfunctional democracy for the real thing... where else can you find a congress that breaks its own law, a supreme court playing executive and legislative branches by meandering into the eVAT implementation, and a president (well... i voted for her) who got into power by breaking the rule of law... now pushing for the rule of law...

Well... to Mr. Lee... I truly admire what they've been able to achieve in Singapore, the social engineering carried out in that tiny nation state - cum shopping mall has created a stable, abeit boring economic haven...

But I guess thats the price we pinoys have to pay for the liberties that we enjoy... the freedom to chew gum and voice or eternal distrust of our leaders are priceless... if we are truly poor and miserable, how come we are also one of the happiest nations on this planet?

Don't worry Mr. Lee... we are a nation of survivors... we have time on our side... soon our exploding population will overrun your little nation state with not just nannies and domestic helpers... soon... you might even have to pay us to migrate to your little barren rock in order to augment your negative population growth...

As Mr. Einstein's theory of relativity goes... the smaller the planet you are on... the faster time flies... and thus the bigger it is... the slower your clock "relatively" runs... your little nation state... with all your high-rise buildings and cute little housing neighborhoods really needs to progress quickly... because thats all you have! Heck... you don't even have a good source of drinking water!

Who said we're in a hurry? In typical pinoy fashion... we're getting there... fashionably late... Who said that we're good at getting rich anyway? We are a talented, caring, hospitable, God-fearing and cheerful country... except for the few brilliant chinese/american/spanish mestizo Pinoys who are great at business... we were really never that good with the capitalist frame of mind? Why? because our environment always provided what we needed... so we learned to be content!

Don't worry about us... if push comes to shove... we live in one of the most bountiful environments this planet has... we can all go back to the mountains, plant kamote, kangkong and kalabasa... and make pinakbet... we might actually get healthier and lose our excess instant-noodle and rice carbo driven pounds in the process too...

Don't worry about us... because as a student of history... anyone can see that a nation's path is always marked by the building of a critical mass... before going into the path of progress...

We're building a critical mass... a critical mass of what... I don't know...  

But then again... maybe if we could create duplicates of you to run our country... who knows? Maybe you could loan us your son... in exchange for a million gallons of virgin coconut oil? Or a million cases of mineral water? I hear he's doing a great job... where else would he get his built-in instinct from? You must be very proud of him...

 

another toxic week ahead!

Well let's see... I'll be taking the IELTS this saturday, I'm rushing the schematics for the chapel due friday... 3dViz/Maya Classes... Have to go to Sta. Rosa to check on one of our tenants... I'll have to manage the fix-up of the roofing/gutters... Have to finalize and get several endorsement letters from my old professors... for scholarship applications... meet with thesis students for consultations... patch-up some screw-ups in last week's submissions... habol 2 more items for a transmittal due yesterday! Arggghhhhh!!!!! Eto na yung sinasabi ng mga driver na jingle lang ang pahinga! Was up all night finalizing schematics for the chapel... but I honestly cant figure out what the owner wants... arggghhh!!!! Halos makatulog ako sa shower sa antok at pagod... basta... PUSH LANG!!!!   Daanin nalang sa kape at dasal!

Clogged Drains, U-turn slots and Parochial Politicians

So while we were wooohoooing! our way down Roxas Blvd… I couldn’t help but realize how boneheaded the Pasay City admin is by filling up the side-channels along Roxas Blvd’s main island. That’s just plain stupidity! By doing so, you are closing/clogging up the road’s main drainage system… This is going to lead to flooding along the main island… hay naku!

 

This is such a big frustration for me… because… in arki … we get trained to design what’s right and what works for a given situation. We get to create our own “ideal” cities/urban settings/buildings on paper. Literally, we get the training needed to help transform and change the world! Or at least our physical/built environment…

 

But the problem is that once we get out into the real world… we need clients to build… we need clients to make a change… So every time I see something so obviously screwed-up in our cities, I feel the urge to write or rant about it, because I know that unless I’m mayor or at least a person with influence/power, I won’t be able to affect major changes into our physical/built environment.

 

Which leads me to this question… Why are so many of our politicians (especially in the executive/LGU branch of government) lawyers? Shouldn’t lawyers be pigeonholed together in the legislative and judiciary branches of government? Shouldn’t more engineers, architects, urban planners, professional managers and economists be the ones in the executive branch? And less of the usual pa-pogi, parochial/sticky-phlegm politicians (which include lawyers, wash-out artistas, and their family members)

 

I mean… with all due respect to all the good lawyers and artistas... and to their family members narin… shouldn’t you stick to what you were trained to do? And do it well? Sure, if you want to serve… can you at least leave it to the ones who were trained to do these very critical “city-building” activities for you?

 

Case-in-point… two very effective current and former local government officials…   Manila mayor Lito Atienza and MMDA chair Bayani Fernando… Ironically, despite their arguments, they have been the most effective in turning around their cities and effectively improving their respective built environments… Lito Atienza is effective, because he has a strong idea of good urban design… why? Well he spent 1-2 years  in UST Arki as an undergrad, plus the fact that he is in touch with planners and design professionals who know what they are doing… of course he isn’t perfect, but hopefully his efforts snowball into more effective, accessible, interconnected parks, transport systems, etc. (One thing… his housing initiative I think is a bit lacking… mainly because of the sheer lack of buildable public land to devote for socialized housing projects in his city)

 

Bayani Fernando… despite all the criticism, get things done… he moves projects… why? He’s a trained civil engineer… and that’s what engineers do… get things done! Those heavily-criticized pink fences and footbridges? The agency actually commissioned an industrial/signage designer to find a color that would be instantly identifiable with cleanliness and urbanity… and that’s a sign of professionalism… he allowed people to do what they are good at! Those U-turn slots fences along Quezon avenue and Edsa? Well… believe it or not… are actually the work of traffic engineers who took their cue from New Jersey’s jughandles and interchanges… The term for this in traffic engineering is the great rotunda system… which is supposed to allow for free-flow of vehicles… of course, the system has had its share of hitches, but that will always happen, because they tried to implement a concept on an existing urban framework which doesn’t have much space to allow for optimum design. Ideally, the u-turn slots should be traffic jug-handles on the right side… but given our current road infrastructure, they had to make do with what we have.

 

So anyway… where am I leading to? I think I want to run for mayor of Paranaque in the distant future… hahahahaha… nah… just kidding…

Woooooohooooo!

Well, it’s a Sunday today, and I’m doing my “brotherly” duty by driving my sister Celina to UST for her ROTC training. We left the house inhumanly early for a Sunday morning… 5:00am, just as we were about to make a right at Roxas blvd., the radio plays Rivermaya’s “Umaaraw, Umuulan.” Celina tops the volume off at 30 clicks and we go into a rock-induced sprint down the scenic road, we turned-off the aircon, rolled down the windows, took-in the salty air of the bay, soaked in the beautiful overcast, orange pre-sunrise sky… Beautiful!

 

During my lamay days in UST, I would get so stressed out with work… with my brain constantly scheming and thinking up of ways to solve our projects… plus the daily drive going to and coming back from campus. Plus the kunsomisyon of traffic, my mom and dad’s constant badgering, the stress from my hyper-competitive circuits… plus the loads of coffee running in my already quaking bloodstream…

 

Call it shallow, but all it takes is a great moment like the one I just mentioned, to settle my nerves, remind me that God still smiles at me, and all of us… Sometimes… just being able to find an open parking slot inside the UST campus during peak hours would be enough to brighten my entire day… Its one of those… WOOOOHOOOO! THANK YOU LORD ! moments… Indeed, we have a lot to be thankful for.