WALA LANG
Jaime C. Laya
It’s been nine months since life changed on March 17 when Covid-19 quarantined us all. I am in the super-vulnerable age group and am under doctor’s orders to stay locked in.
I still work and the immediate impact of the lockdown is extra time. Before Covid, it took me an average of two hours in traffic home-office-home. Add to that traffic time saved in having no out-of-office meetings. That’s easily an extra three hours of daily working time. I drive myself to the office on Sundays when no one is around but otherwise papers needing my signature are brought to me. I am not a bad typist and all in all, working from home on a computer is as good as being in the office provided the internet behaves.
We have physical meetings once a week on matters requiring extensive discussion and background documents. Everyone is masked and face-shielded, sitting around an enormous table (it seats 36) and it’s worked well.
VIRTUALLY TOGETHER. Joining Narda Camacho at afternoon tea.
I am on various corporate and NGO boards (each with one or more committees) and meetings have been on Zoom or MS Teams. Understandably discussions are less free-wheeling and more often than not, presentations are too tiny to read on my computer screen. It occurs to me, however, that the technology is perfect if the chairman and everyone else follow parliamentary rules, i.e., if people speak only when recognized by the chair and if decisions are made on the basis of motions duly seconded, debated on with people speaking one by one, and a vote is taken.
Zoom, apparently the most used virtual conference medium, has done wonders for family and social life. I’ve attended birthday parties, wedding anniversaries, wakes, funerals, and masses on Zoom, with participants from all over the world. My own family is in diaspora. We used to get together only during the year-end holidays when we gathered somewhere. Now we see each other every week while in Quezon City, Makati, Madrid, Washington, D.C., Singapore, and if those concerned wake up, New York and Boston. It’s awkward only because it’s 7 a.m. Sunday morning in Boston (too early for my college senior granddaughter) when it’s 8 p.m. in Singapore (bedtime for two grade school granddaughters).
Narda Camacho’s birthday party was something else. The theme was afternoon tea and before the big day, each guest received a proper three-tier tea tray brimming with tiny sandwiches, scones, pastry, cream and jam, and half a dozen varieties of tea (rose petals and lavender teas in little jars). Except that the action was on a blue computer screen, we could all have been in London. The celebration was complete with birthday cake and performances by cute great grandchildren contributing numbers from around the globe.
The Christmas party of the Society for Cultural Enrichment (SCEI) was similarly virtual and totally enjoyable. Members each received a large bilao of puto, kutchintâ, sapín-sapín, etc. and fully costumed and hatted, turned on their computers to participate in the raffle and fun program with chairperson Consul Helen Ong and president Bo Muralla.
Sad occasions, too, have been on Zoom. The funeral mass and interment of Conrado “Ado” Escudero was in Tiaong, Quezon but virtually present were friends including Mme. Imelda Romualdez Marcos in Metro Manila and from everywhere else. The same happened on the ninth day of former undersecretary and U.P. professor J. Antonio Aguenza whose life was celebrated with mass in his La Vista home with friends attending from the ether.
Online sales and delivery firms like Grab and Lalamove have boomed. I don’t cook and my kasambaháy has a limited repertoire (kare-kare and one other gout-provoking dish), so I’m on the lookout for alternatives. Luckily, I got tipped off about The Homemade Cook (Kris Que) who offers fantastic prawns thermidor and chili/garlic crabs. You’d also think you’re in the Middle East or India when you have the mutton biryani, chicken mandi, beef and chicken kebab, chicken butter masala of Manzil Al Taam-Cavite (they deliver). One has to be careful, though. I ordered durian last May from an Alabang fruit seller and got three rotten fruits. They promised to send me replacements but it’s been silence ever since. Another online invitation touted highly prized secret family recipes for highly priced dishes that proved inedible.
With most people indoors and with Edsa cleared, air became breathable, skies turned blue, and sunsets over Manila Bay were again spectacular.The dismal science, i.e., economics, however, came into play. Without customers, restaurants, movie houses, shops began closing down, many for good. Companies began laying off casuals and even permanent employees. No-work, no-pay employees suffered. Construction, till then in full swing, came to a sudden stop, leaving more thousands jobless. Without freight, agricultural products spoiled in the fields. With other countries similarly affected, cruise ships stopped sailing, OFW contracts were terminated and many returned. With reduced income, people stopped buying, causing companies to scale down, causing more unemployment, and the downward economic spiral accelerated.
Life is unfair and the poor are always the first and the most to suffer. Cecilia Tiamson, kapitana of my Barangay, tells me about hunger and misery in the barangay’s unbelievably congested informal settler colonies—e.g., 400-500 humans in 1,500 sqms—and how for weeks, jeepney drivers parked and lived on a nearby street because they could not drive back to their homes. The city government, kind-hearted barangay residents, and organizations help out, but she’s always short of groceries (little more than instant noodles), face masks, vitamin C, and rice for her constituents who have none.
I don’t know how public schools are doing. The better private schools have changed, some to the extent of requiring their pupils to be in uniform while at their computers attending online class. On the other hand, the latest is that the century-old College of the Holy Spirit is giving up the ghost as it were, because of the combined impact of free state colleges and universities, higher public school teacher salaries, and the additional two years of basic education. Covid-19 was the last straw. The hope of the fatherland may be dim unless public education adjusts.
The new normal is bound to be much different from the old. The name dismal science is apt and no crystal ball is needed to see that at least in the near future, economic activity will be slower. People will continue staying safely away from crowds and thus less malling and impulse buying, less eating out, less travel, more shopping online. The entertainment and hospitality industries will suffer. Concerts and plays will have smaller audiences while expanding couch potatoes watch Netflix. More employees will work from home as bosses find ways to differentiate working from home and paid vacations. And needless to say, internet usage will be heavy (email, social media, exotic apps) and consequently for oldies like me, an urgent need for teaching grandchildren.
Comments are cordially invited, addressed to [email protected]
Jaime C. Laya
It’s been nine months since life changed on March 17 when Covid-19 quarantined us all. I am in the super-vulnerable age group and am under doctor’s orders to stay locked in.
I still work and the immediate impact of the lockdown is extra time. Before Covid, it took me an average of two hours in traffic home-office-home. Add to that traffic time saved in having no out-of-office meetings. That’s easily an extra three hours of daily working time. I drive myself to the office on Sundays when no one is around but otherwise papers needing my signature are brought to me. I am not a bad typist and all in all, working from home on a computer is as good as being in the office provided the internet behaves.
We have physical meetings once a week on matters requiring extensive discussion and background documents. Everyone is masked and face-shielded, sitting around an enormous table (it seats 36) and it’s worked well.
VIRTUALLY TOGETHER. Joining Narda Camacho at afternoon tea.
I am on various corporate and NGO boards (each with one or more committees) and meetings have been on Zoom or MS Teams. Understandably discussions are less free-wheeling and more often than not, presentations are too tiny to read on my computer screen. It occurs to me, however, that the technology is perfect if the chairman and everyone else follow parliamentary rules, i.e., if people speak only when recognized by the chair and if decisions are made on the basis of motions duly seconded, debated on with people speaking one by one, and a vote is taken.
Zoom, apparently the most used virtual conference medium, has done wonders for family and social life. I’ve attended birthday parties, wedding anniversaries, wakes, funerals, and masses on Zoom, with participants from all over the world. My own family is in diaspora. We used to get together only during the year-end holidays when we gathered somewhere. Now we see each other every week while in Quezon City, Makati, Madrid, Washington, D.C., Singapore, and if those concerned wake up, New York and Boston. It’s awkward only because it’s 7 a.m. Sunday morning in Boston (too early for my college senior granddaughter) when it’s 8 p.m. in Singapore (bedtime for two grade school granddaughters).
Narda Camacho’s birthday party was something else. The theme was afternoon tea and before the big day, each guest received a proper three-tier tea tray brimming with tiny sandwiches, scones, pastry, cream and jam, and half a dozen varieties of tea (rose petals and lavender teas in little jars). Except that the action was on a blue computer screen, we could all have been in London. The celebration was complete with birthday cake and performances by cute great grandchildren contributing numbers from around the globe.
The Christmas party of the Society for Cultural Enrichment (SCEI) was similarly virtual and totally enjoyable. Members each received a large bilao of puto, kutchintâ, sapín-sapín, etc. and fully costumed and hatted, turned on their computers to participate in the raffle and fun program with chairperson Consul Helen Ong and president Bo Muralla.
Sad occasions, too, have been on Zoom. The funeral mass and interment of Conrado “Ado” Escudero was in Tiaong, Quezon but virtually present were friends including Mme. Imelda Romualdez Marcos in Metro Manila and from everywhere else. The same happened on the ninth day of former undersecretary and U.P. professor J. Antonio Aguenza whose life was celebrated with mass in his La Vista home with friends attending from the ether.
Online sales and delivery firms like Grab and Lalamove have boomed. I don’t cook and my kasambaháy has a limited repertoire (kare-kare and one other gout-provoking dish), so I’m on the lookout for alternatives. Luckily, I got tipped off about The Homemade Cook (Kris Que) who offers fantastic prawns thermidor and chili/garlic crabs. You’d also think you’re in the Middle East or India when you have the mutton biryani, chicken mandi, beef and chicken kebab, chicken butter masala of Manzil Al Taam-Cavite (they deliver). One has to be careful, though. I ordered durian last May from an Alabang fruit seller and got three rotten fruits. They promised to send me replacements but it’s been silence ever since. Another online invitation touted highly prized secret family recipes for highly priced dishes that proved inedible.
With most people indoors and with Edsa cleared, air became breathable, skies turned blue, and sunsets over Manila Bay were again spectacular.The dismal science, i.e., economics, however, came into play. Without customers, restaurants, movie houses, shops began closing down, many for good. Companies began laying off casuals and even permanent employees. No-work, no-pay employees suffered. Construction, till then in full swing, came to a sudden stop, leaving more thousands jobless. Without freight, agricultural products spoiled in the fields. With other countries similarly affected, cruise ships stopped sailing, OFW contracts were terminated and many returned. With reduced income, people stopped buying, causing companies to scale down, causing more unemployment, and the downward economic spiral accelerated.
Life is unfair and the poor are always the first and the most to suffer. Cecilia Tiamson, kapitana of my Barangay, tells me about hunger and misery in the barangay’s unbelievably congested informal settler colonies—e.g., 400-500 humans in 1,500 sqms—and how for weeks, jeepney drivers parked and lived on a nearby street because they could not drive back to their homes. The city government, kind-hearted barangay residents, and organizations help out, but she’s always short of groceries (little more than instant noodles), face masks, vitamin C, and rice for her constituents who have none.
I don’t know how public schools are doing. The better private schools have changed, some to the extent of requiring their pupils to be in uniform while at their computers attending online class. On the other hand, the latest is that the century-old College of the Holy Spirit is giving up the ghost as it were, because of the combined impact of free state colleges and universities, higher public school teacher salaries, and the additional two years of basic education. Covid-19 was the last straw. The hope of the fatherland may be dim unless public education adjusts.
The new normal is bound to be much different from the old. The name dismal science is apt and no crystal ball is needed to see that at least in the near future, economic activity will be slower. People will continue staying safely away from crowds and thus less malling and impulse buying, less eating out, less travel, more shopping online. The entertainment and hospitality industries will suffer. Concerts and plays will have smaller audiences while expanding couch potatoes watch Netflix. More employees will work from home as bosses find ways to differentiate working from home and paid vacations. And needless to say, internet usage will be heavy (email, social media, exotic apps) and consequently for oldies like me, an urgent need for teaching grandchildren.
Comments are cordially invited, addressed to [email protected]