Vhong and Deniece

The national topic these days remind me of what CS Lewis talked about 72 years ago:

"Now suppose you come to a country where you could fill a theatre by simply lifting the cover so as to let every one see, just before the lights went out, that it contained a mutton chop or a bit of bacon, would you not think that in that country something had gone wrong with the appetite for food? And would not anyone who had grown up in a different world think there was something equally queer about the state of the sex instinct among us?

"They tell you sex has become a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty years it has not been. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still a mess. If hushing up had been the cause of the trouble, ventilation would have set it right. But it has not. I think it is the other way round. I think the human race originally hushed it up because it had become such a mess."

Or in the beautiful words of Switchfoot: "Look what a mess we made of love [sex].”

The Blame Game Begins

No one could have prepared for this. If the President ordered the whole of Leyte evacuated, everyone would have thought he's crazy. And even then, Yolanda would have gone easily north to Samar or south to Mindanao.

In the same way, no disaster relief operation will ever be satisfactory. Even if we have 300 C130s on standby, there will still be at least one old lolo we cannot reach on time. And you and I will still be up in arms for the sake of that one lolo. And that is understandable.

It's never quick enough, never prepared enough, never coordinated enough. It was never so for the US, for Haiti, for Bali, for Japan and it will never be for any other country. People have died and are dying, and you and I are frustrated. We want someone's head to roll for this. And guess who's head is the easy target?

You and I are trying to make sense of this calamity by looking for a villain. There has to be one, right? It has to be the President, right?

It's not. And the sooner you and I get over that fact, the better we can cope with the reality that no person will have the singular honor of being blamed for this mess.

Repacking Best Practices

Click for a big picture

I've seen how relief goods are being repacked all over the city and I think efficiency can be improved. Even the Philippine Red Cross near Fuente says it's having a very hard time with repacking. I'm not the best Process Engineer, but I have a simple 3-step process proposal for repacking relief goods. There are so much donations coming in, but if we don't address this crucial part of the relief operations, it will just be a bottleneck.


You can tweak the process however way you want. Obviously, variations on this process will depend on the number of volunteers you have and what kind of final product (relief box) you are thinking of. I think we will have to get inputs from those who are really on the field to know which configurations work best when handing out packs to those who need it.

I also think the Segregator role can still be improved. I imagine it might be a bottle neck, and I'm willing to give that role to the donors themselves. As long as the Segregator's flow does not go in the way of the Packer, it should be fine.

Process Improvement Engineers, please help of ways to improve this please.

Hopeful Leyteños

Hopeful Leyteños assembled for a chance to ride a military C130 flight to Leyte this morning today in Cebu City. The unmistakable sound of the Waray dialect filling the hall -- strong, deliberate syllables in rapid succession. Everyone looked so tired, undoubtedly from lack of sleep. Some eyes still red from crying from hearing news that comes in trickles. These are our brothers and sisters. Their hearts are broken and ours break too. Yet not for long, the time for sweet homecomings will be soon.

Godspeed, our friends. We send you not only medicines, bags of grocery and bottles of water, but also our heartfelt prayers and caring thoughts. God will rebuild your quiet cities, our brave neighbors from the east. Hug your families for us.

Bangon Sugbohol

Finally got out of the house this morning for brunch. Coffee shop was full of office workers working "from home" and having checkpoint meetings. Was especially touched when a boss opened the meeting with a prayer to thank the Lord for keeping everyone safe during the quakes.

Friends, Cebu and Bohol will rise. In fact, it is already rising: Everyone is eager to work, and life is moving along with that fierce Bisayan perseverance. Church buildings might have been destroyed but the Church is as strong as ever. She prays in coffee shops, in make-do offices, in schools, in cracked houses, in every place where there is God and a hopeful soul. Truly, not even the gates of hell will prevail against the Church.

Scrap Pork!

This is for everyone who read the papers religiously these past weeks, riveted to the news of the systemic rape of the nation's coffers in the hands of those who "lead" us. This is for everyone who took pains to understand the workings of the mind of that unintelligible woman, trying to look for any sense of morality in her actions and found none. This is for everyone who has seen the plight of the poor, the very poor, who are unnecessarily denied the basics for human dignity while their money is used to throw extravagant parties overseas. This is for everyone who wakes up every morning for work, slaves in front of their computers, puts up with targets and deadlines to earn a decent living and to pay honest taxes.

We have reached the tipping point. The President is doing a good job, by far the best a President has done in recent memory. It's a good start, now let's go further.

This is the repentance of a nation from our favorite sin: loving money more than people. We will start from the hallowed halls of power because leaders are suppose to lead. We will end when we have loved our fellow Filipinos enough to take care of each other selflessly. This is a call to righteousness.

See you at Fuente!

Iskolar than you?

Photo from the UP Circle of Entrepreneurs Facebook page

When I was still in High School and all through College, I was taught by one Dr. Sofia Logarta. She never failed to remind us that the reason why we are able to go to school is because every morning the jeepney drivers wake up early to ply their routes, the fishermen tend their nets for a day's catch, and the farmers till hard land to harvest decent crops. The common folk who build this nation from the ground up and the middle class who pay their hard-earned taxes must not be disappointed. It is a sacred trust they have given me and my classmates. It is a privilege; make no mistake about it -- not a right.

Now, I don't know where this hubris comes from that motivates an Iskolar ng Bayan to wear this shirt. It is almost alien to me, and I'm sure many of my classmates. I suspect it is borne out of a fundamental misunderstanding of who a UP student is.

If I'm still a student, I'll go around the campus wearing, "Iskolar because of You." Dr. Logarta will certainly agree.