Stereotyping

Walking inside the mall, it is sometimes very easy to spot what sport people are into based only on how they look. Basketball players are the easiest and virtually a give-away: they're almost always tall. A swimmer usually is dark or tanned and has a V-shaped body; a dragon boat rower has a mismatched pair of arms and shoulders- one side is bigger than the other; while runners are basically skin-and-bones types-- you could almost mistake them for famine victims-- there's hardly an ounce of flab in their bodies. If they're not the "Kenyan" types, then look "down there"... no not that one!... lower, the legs-- usually its bigger and muscled.

I swim, but I do not have the curves of a swimmer; I used to row and one side of my body was bigger than the other; and I run, which means my legs now resemble a construction worker's.

Torpor

With prices of just about everything going up, inflation hit double digits for the first time since, I don't know, the 1980s. People are tightening their belts: the main avenue near my neighborhood feels eerily deserted late at night, and traffic isn't as bad as before with less cars and trucks in the streets. I almost thought it was Holy Week again.

The overhead trains, especially the MRT along EDSA is horribly overloaded, even during non-rush hours, sardine-style. It's a good thing Pinoys generally do not smell bad.

It has been raining for a couple of days now. It's gray and dreary. I think I'm gaining weight. I can't do my usual jog because of the rain. Swimming doesn't appeal to me just now.

Sadako Experience

When my brother and his girlfriend watched the movie The Ring which featured the character we now see in our nightmares (courtesy of the movie), ya know, 'Sadako,' they only had the vaguest idea what to expect.

And so they watched the Sadako-starrer... at home. At night. Around 9 or 10 p.m. And so when Sadako, in her trademark all-white sleeping gown, her long, jet-black hair covering her chalk-white face and hiding a murderous, bloodshot eye, started to crawl on towards the TV screen, they both fell from their seats, half-expecting Sadako to come out of the screen to strangle them!

When I first saw it in the cinema, the audience reaction was an experience in itself: the girls behind me were screaming their guts out, ahead of the actual scary part. Anticipating the shock factor probably prevented them from having seizures and heart attacks.

Which reminds me of the time when my brother and I first saw The Exorcist on the big screen. At night. It was a special screening to benefit a beauty pageant contestant. There were no posters, no information at all about the movie. We thought it was an action movie starring Chuck Norris. When Linda Blair's face turned a full 180 degrees, we just knew there was no way we would ever sleep well that night.

Sadako, after all these years, I still remember you!

Centre Court

Finally, Nadal beat Federer to claim Wimbledon in a heart-stopping marathon battle that came close to five hours! Winning Roland Garros and Wimbledon in the same year puts Nadal in the history books as well. He's officially the new king of the centre court.

I have always rooted for the Spaniard over the Swiss, because the latter's clean, elegant almost ballet-like style didn't appeal to me, in contrast to the former's brute force: wild, feral and almost sexual, watching Nadal play is like witnessing a lion let loose in the Roman dungeons.

Da Who?

I used to work for a foreign securities broker which had a counterpart office in the UK. One London trader was a Swiss who spoke French. His name was Francois. I think it was Marc who said that somebody once sent a fax message to the London office, addressed to a Mr. Franz Wa.

Hair Cut

When I was a kid, the dominant hairstyles sported by boys my age were inspired by only two themes: (1) the airforce and (2) coconuts. I'll explain.

The airborne style is either a semi-kalbo ("shaved") or a flat top. Usually, mothers prefer this cut for boys who love to play outdoors because they do not have to deal with lice later on. We called it airborne because according to the movies we have seen, air force pilots sport this hair style.

It is the second style that defined my hair as a kid: the coconut husk cut. Yes, just imagine a coconut husk-- the same one you scrub the wooden floor in your house in the province-- and put it over my head. That was how I look like as a kid. Our town barber must have gotten his inspiration while scrubbing the floor. He must have thought that bangs would best complement my round face and chinito eyes.

I think I looked like Lang Lang as a kid, except that I was never a chub.

Finger Pointing

Sulpicio Lines is now turning the tables on the sea mishap involving its domestic passenger ship, Princess of the Stars by laying the blame on Pagasa, the national weather bureau and curiously, Del Monte Philippines for its toxic cargo on board. It claims that Pagasa's faulty weather forecasting caused the sea accident.

If there's one common denominator that binds economists, meteorologists and psychics together, it is forecasting. Although the first two rely on empirical evidence and mathematical models, psychics depend on personal "vibrations,"the crystal ball and tarot cards.

Forecasting is always a hit-and-miss scenario. Madam Auring probably predicted Muhammad Ali's win by sheer luck and now rely on cheap gimmicks for publicity. For economists, have you noticed how many times the IMF, World Bank, ADB and other think-tanks revise their economic projections? In fact, I think the weather bureau had more hits than misses compared to economists. (This reminds me of the Prophet of Boom in the nineties, the Harvard-trained Bernardo Villegas who was so optimistic in his projections that he already defied logic). How many times have the weather bureau advised the public to bring umbrellas for an expected rain shower, only to have the blazing sun shine brightly? Lately, one Bicol governor castigated the weather bureau for sounding the alarm of an impending typhoon in his area, which missed it entirely when the typhoon veered towards another direction.

My point is that forecasting techniques in meteorology (and economics) are far from accurate, it's somewhere between science and good, old-fashioned guesswork.

In addition, ships are equipped with weather forecasting equipment as well as satellite weather feeds and the ship's engineers have been trained to deal with weather disturbances to facilitate navigation. Actually, sailing ships need not depend on the national weather bureau, really. They're capable of doing forecasts themselves. The fact that no other shipping vessel sailed that day means that the accident was clearly a result of a judgment mistake by the crew.

Frank/Fengshen was supposed to track the westward route, until it changed its mind and turned northwards and accelerated its destructive force as well, which unfortunately, was the path Sulpicio Lines was taking, on the opposite direction.

And putting the blame on an agri-business company for the toxic chemicals on board is really mind-boggling, claiming that the ship didn't know that the chemicals have high toxic levels. Really, so if a cargo contained chemicals for the manufacture of shabu, Sulpicio wouldn't know? or wouldn't care?

Sulpicio, do the right thing. Claim responsibility for the accident and stop pointing fingers at Pagasa and Del Monte to deflect the heat away from the company. After all, it was clearly a bad judgement call on your part, which unfortunately cost human lives and may bring down the company to bankruptcy.