MEDIUM RARE

At the cash counter in the little crafts shop where I bought PH-made stickers and paid ₱400 for four tiny sheets, I told the cashier, “Imagine, stickers costing ₱100 per sheet.” She said, poker-faced, “Everything’s expensive now. Transportation two-way is hurting my wallet, who knows what it will be like next week, next month.” I would’ve told her about Cook, who comes back each time from the market looking like she’s just seen a ghost when she reports, “Nakaka-trauma! Tomatoes up from ₱50 to ₱100.” Two weeks ago, I didn’t dare ask her if she got any cilantro, even just a wee bunch after she swore not to look at the fragrant, lace-like leaves, not even when the price had gone down from ₱800 to ₱300 a kilo. At ₱300, it was still a mortal sin to her, not even when I pleaded, “You didn’t have to buy a kilo, a few stems would’ve been enough.” And still she refused. What is life without cilantro? When it rains, it pours. It’s not just a truism, it’s a curse. But flip the coin, see what happens when the skies won’t weep and send rain falling down like silver. Rain is a gift of nature. Some floods are manmade, caused by man and his mistakes, his stupidity, his bad habits. Look at the pumping stations in flood-prone cities like Manila, where the machines are all but useless, overcome and overwhelmed by floods of garbage, most of it plastic. Good luck to MMDA and its wish to come up with a masterplan to rejuvenate the drains, develop a system to prevent floods or mitigate their expensive, sometimes deadly aftermaths. If memory serves, urban planner Jun Palafox had such a plan drawn up 30, 40 years ago. For unknown reasons, though certainly not for a lack of trying to show and share it with the powers that be, the plan never did see the light of day. The present MMDA’s plan might as well include the construction of permanent evacuation centers like the one built by Manila Mayor Fred Lim in Del Pan. So much to learn from what the most hardy, tried-and-tested evacuees have to say of their “bakwit” experience!