Maritime Piracy and Economic Chaos in Old Manila
According to the International Maritime Bureau’s piracy reporting center, there has been an alarming surge in pirate attacks worldwide. Africa remains the world’s top piracy hotspot, with 24 reported attacks in Somalia and 18 in Nigeria this year.
Recently, Somali pirates seized the cargo ship Faina off the coast of Somalia on Thursday as it headed to Kenya. The Ukrainian-operated ship is carrying ordnance ordered by the Kenyan government, which ncludes 33 Russian-built T-72 tanks and a substantial amount of ammunition and spare parts.
The pirates are demanding a $20 million ransom to release the Faina and its crew. Although the Kenyan government stands firm in its policy not to negotiate with pirates or terrorists, what’s on board deeply concerns five nations — Ukraine, Somalia, Russia, the United States and Britain — and have been sharing information to try to secure the swift release of the ship and its 21-member crew.
Meanwhile, in America, in its attempt to thwart a shattering financial crisis with major global repercussion, the Bush administration and congressional leaders agreed on a deal to authorize the biggest banking rescue in U.S. history — the $700 billion bail out program.
According to the Wall Street Journal, at its core is Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson’s concept of buying impaired mortgage-related assets from financial firms — giving them cash to replace the toxic debts that have put them in danger or dissuaded them from lending. The plan is to help the firms restore their capital bases as well as the trust that enables them to borrow and lend at reasonable terms. Without this, officials worry that the credit markets, the lifeblood of the U.S. economy, would grind to a halt.
An extraordinary week of talks unfolded after Paulson and Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, went to Congress 10 days ago with ominous warnings about a full-blown economic meltdown if lawmakers did not act quickly to infuse huge amounts of government money into a financial sector buckling under the weight of toxic debt.
These two crises — maritime piracy and economic turmoil — in one fell swoop, at one point during the 16th century, similarly roiled in and shocked Manila.
In the early morning of November 4, 1587, in the bay of Augua Segura or Puerto Seguro, now named San Jose del Cabo somewhere in the tip of Baja California, the English pirates led by Thomas Cavendish sighted the galleon ship Santa Ana, on her way to Cabo San Lucas at the tip of Lower California to make a landfall and check her course prior to continuing on to Acapulco.
Cavendish’s ships, the Desire and Content gave chase with all sail. It was afternoon when they came up broadside with the Santa Ana — tagged as the “great rich ship” — under the command of Tomas de Alzola. It left the port of Cavite the last week of June, some four-and-a-half months earlier.
The English ships attacked the Santa Ana with full force, killing and maiming many of its men who fought valiantly and refused to surrender. After about six hours of intense resistance and having suffered heavy loses — with the hull of Santa Ana also sustaining a canon blast at the waterline — Captain Tomas de Alzola finally hung out a flag of surrender.
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Cinema Eskandalosa
The only visible aspects of this theater is its narrow entrance and the wall with the posters of its current features. Other than that, one can walk along Recto and hardly notice its existence. That is, except for one other thing: the stench that emanates from its interior.
It smells like a cocktail of stale sweat, rancid kitchen rag, bedraggled ditch digger’s overalls, dried infant’s puke, and God only knows how else to describe it.
Hence, there’s no way you wouldn’t notice this theater’s existence when you pass by it. However, this distinctly foul smell is rather universal, for I’ve smelled it before in New York’s seedy Times Square area before it got Disneyfied — whenever I passed by any movie house that featured soft porn or adult film. Therefore, this odor is not exclusively indigenous to this movie theater in Manila.
Even If you’ve never been anywhere near this part of Recto Avenue, you may still have seen this theater in the evening news or read about it in the tabloids — being raided by the police for the scandalous activities that some of its patrons engaged in while inside the theater. I heard it gets raided at least once a month.
Nonetheless, what I find intriguing about this particular theater are the suggestive titles of the films it features. Truth be told, whenever passing by, it has become a habit to check them out. If I were one of those romance novelists who write in the local vernacular, I might make a list of these titles for reference for some future steamy, salacious scenes.
Besides the suggestive titles you see in these photographs, the following are some I remember seeing, or had heard from friends who are into local films:
Click here to view list and read the rest of article.
2008 PBA Winners
Congratulations to all the winners of the 2008 Philippine Blog Awards!
And THANK YOU for the three Best Single Post awards:
Ang Tibay Naman – Category: Business/Entrepreneur
Diviner’s Sage
Ever since I had posted Nganga about a month ago, the mere sight of herbal vendors of Quiapo nowadays prompts a chuckle. The witty, if not outright hilarious, comments from fellow bloggers made it one of the funniest entries I had posted to date.
I was in Quiapo the other day to buy makabuhay twigs for my mother. While paying for my purchase, I was tempted to ask Manang (my herbal vendor suki in Quiapo) if by chance she had any talampunay in stock. But then again I didn’t because I had already asked her once before; the first time proved funny, but a second time might be annoying. As I now know, thanks to Noypetes, talampunay leaves and seeds are smoked like cigarettes to assuage asthmatic conditions; however, its sale has been banned due to its narcotic and antispasmodic properties.
However, as I bid Manang a fond adieu, what came to mind was this obscure hallucinogenic herb from Mexico, salvia divinorum. It’s once again making the international news circuit as of late. In the United States, this herb remains legal, trendy and not thoroughly studied. I didn’t bother asking Manang if she has any in stock, though I wonder if it does exist in the country, especially with the special relationship that Manila enjoys with Mexico.
Until a decade ago, this mind-altering member of the mint family, or “diviner’s sage” as some call it, was largely limited to those seeking revelation under the tutelage of Mazatec shamans in its native Oaxaca, Mexico. Today, it is widely available for lawful sale in the United States — online and in head shops.
Americans youths have started favoring salvia over the older Americans’ marijuana. In fact, more than 5,000 YouTube videos have been uploaded which depict these thrill-seeking youths’ journeys into various altered states of silliness.
Read complete entry here.
Cheers!
Sweetened & Stirred
Unlike many photobloggers who post their choiced works accompanied with only minimal technical details and/or a short blurb about the subject and nature of the locale, I am one usually inspired to post images — including the ordinary and seemingly mundane — with a short story, news article, work of fiction, evocative quote by a popular figure, or in this particular case, an inaugural address by President Joseph Ejercito Estrada delivered at the Quirino Grandstand on June 30, 1998.
In the photograph I had taken of my suki candy vendor on Avenida, it was the abundance of sweet candies with their colorful wrappers that brought to mind Erap’s speech, which according to Manolo Quezon, “a masterpiece of mass psychology; of personalistic rule appealing directly to the people; it is the most perfect example of a speech designed to pander to the longings of the masses.”
In essence, it was a superbly crafted discourse, saccharined to appease the soured spirit of the tired toiling masses who gifted him with a landslide victory, or in more vulgar terms: a speech akin to a proverbial kiss that precedes the anal trespass.
To view image and read complete entry, click here.
Cheers!
Manila North Cemetery
This is a trilogy photo essay on Manila North Cemetery (or Cementerio del Norte), the biggest of the three-cemetery complex of Manila — La Loma, North and Chinese.
Around two to three million people visit this cemetery every year, and up to about half million visitors are expected to pass through its gate on All Soul’s Day.
2. The Early Birds of the North
3. The Cemetery’s Entrepreneurs
Happy Halloween!
Ghost Stories
They are nowadays referred to as controversial anomalous phenomenon which is believed by some and shunned by the rest as mere figments of the imagination.
My eldest sister Fraulein could see them. Once during the night of a neighbor’s death, she saw the spirit of the dead man outside his house, looking in through one of the windows as if checking on his family. On another occasion, an hour before my brother Junior died in his hospital bed in a Makati hospital, Fraulein saw him sitting on the step of her house as she was coming home from work. Instead of approaching him, she immediately turned around and took a cab to the hospital. Already comatose, Junior was pronounced dead shortly after her arrival.
Read complete entry here.
Manila Center For The Arts
An author and freelance writer based in Hawaii, Patricia was crestfallen by what she sees as the obliteration of our nation’s soul — culture, traditions, the arts. So along with a group of artists and writers, she decided to do something about it by envisioning the Manila Center for the Arts.
Its intention is to provide a platform for established and emerging Filipino artists, students, and untapped talents, educators and arts enthusiasts. It will be “a convening venue to serve as a cooperative for Filipino visual and performing artists, musicians and writers whose work is pushing boundaries in content and form, and whose passion involves challenging the status quo.”
Coffee Mug Design Contest
Now here’s your chance to win a three-day stay in Banaue, including gift certificates from Club Intramuros, Kape Isla, and Pinoymade.Biz and My Philippines shirts!
Youth Tourism Response – Philippines (YTRiP) in preparation for the upcoming Philippine Coffee Festival, has launched Pilipinas: Biyahe at Kape – a coffee mug design competition in search of that Pinoy coffee mug design that best reflects Pinoy sites and culture, as well as promotes the enrichment of Pinoy taste.
All coffee afficionados and travellers are invited to submit designs for coffee mugs. The winning design will be reproduced into real mugs, with the designer’s name. Submissions end on October 20th and winners will be announced on the 25th.
The list of prizes are as follows:
First Place:
Board and Lodging at the Banaue Hotel for 3 days/2 nights
Gift Certificates from Kape Isla, Pinoymade.Biz
My Philippines shirt
Second place :
Php 2, 000 worth Gift Certicate at Club Intramuros
Gift Certificates from Kape Isla, Pinoymade.Biz
My Philippines shirt
Three finalists:
Gift Certificates from Kape Isla, Pinoymade.Biz
My Philippines shirt
For more information, visit YTRP’s Pilipinas: Kape at Biyahe.
The City That is Manila
Whenever ageing senators realize their chances for getting reelected appear predictably nil, or are about to fully exhaust their allowable number of terms as legislators, somehow the idea of becoming the next mayor of Manila suddenly becomes enticing.
What’s the motivating factor at play here? After all, Manila is supposedly nothing more than a cacophony of images depicting chaos, stink, litter, corruption, and apathetic blight. In short, a has been. A city that lived its better days eons ago.
Yet, Ernie Maceda made a run for it only to lose pathetically. Ping Lacson launched a similar intention with great media fanfare but soon withdrew (after God supposedly told him to remain in the Senate). The current mayor, Alfredo Lim, already served as Manila’s mayor prior to winning a senatorial post.
Continue reading here.
