MEDIUM RARE

It could’ve been a triple whammy. Taal-Mayon-Kanlaon showed signs of restiveness simultaneously, but after volcanologists said the three were not related – not even distant cousins? – two of them quickly calmed down, leaving Mayon alone fuming. Otherwise, imagine the cost of keeping an eye on all three, evacuating thousands of families, feeding them, etc. How eerie could it have been, that just as Mayon began grumbling, a nationwide earthquake drill was eagerly implemented. There’s another sort of trouble in threes. Your Meralco bill is going up, oil prices are on a spiral, NLEX tolls have been adjusted upwards. Unlike the law of gravity that pulls down whatever goes up, prices don’t fall after they’ve been raised. As a wag noted, “Money often costs too much.” Even the cost of (private) hospital admissions has moved a tick, which means medicines and medical equipment have followed suit or are about to. Nice of PBBM to include pregnant women, single mothers, lactating mothers in the food stamps program. That’s taking care of a slice of the future. If bad luck comes in threes, shall we cross our fingers and wish that the latest power outage on June 9 at the Manila international airport, the third this year (after Jan. 1 and May 1), was the last? As we speak, the government debt has hit the trillion mark. Pray tell, when will we feel the pinch, at which tax-paying season? In the United States, legendary land of milk and honey, there are poor people, too. Former US President Barack Obama has produced a gritty documentary on jobs and working in America. The first episode focuses on menial jobs – the rate is $6 an hour. In peso terms, that’s P336 an hour, or P2,688 for eight hours’ work, compared to our minimum daily wage of P570 in the NCR. The US rate looks like a lot – until you realize that if you’re in the US, you earn in dollars but you spend in dollars. According to a Manila-based American, a McDonald’s hamburger is cheaper in Manila than New York. Those of us who imagine a menial job in Los Angeles or San Francisco is bound to be better, more fulfilling than one in Metro Manila, should watch that Obama docu.