When we aren’t on a shoot, this is what we do. Transcribe and archive tens of pages of shot lists for hours. It can get very, very boring.

Fortunately, they are sending us out with the shooting crew more often. Just not outside of Metro Manila though. Like, a few days ago, some of us were sent with a crew to cover the Aliwan Fiesta in Manila. We even had privileged organizer ID’s. Unfortunately (or not, I can’t be choosy anyway), the other shoots are for Kikay Machine, and tomorrow, one of our destinations is apparently a bra shop and another salon/spa. Heh.

For two days last week, instead of taking two jeepney rides and the MRT to my internship, I took un-airconditioned buses that go straight to Ayala from Quezon City.

It saves me ten pesos one-way, and some distance of walking. Nevermind the heat, and the smoke and dust of EDSA.

Last Tuesday was a change in routine for my internship at Living Asia. Eka and I were sent to shoot a couple of segments for a certain show (that doesn’t air in the Philippines anyway). We finally did something outside the office! Though it wasn’t as full-blown a production nor was as hectic as I expected or even as stressful our productions in school, it was a pretty cool experience.

But before we left the office, we had some cake for Rina’s birthday. There, igi-greet kita kahit di ako nangi-greet usually sa blog. Happy birthday, Rina! Sorry sa pag-”walk out” ko kahapon.

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Perhaps I should get used to this. Since I’m an incoming college senior, soon enough, I will not look forward to summer for its days-stretch of lazy sunny afternoons. It will no longer be equal to free and leisure time. I just didn’t expect it to come this soon. Aside from my daily ten-hour internship in Makati, other commitments just keep piling up. Sometimes I just want to drop everything and fly off somewhere abroad (which will happen anyway in a few weeks).

Last Monday, I got at the Quezon Avenue station of the MRT at a quarter past seven, and gosh, it was a riot. The entire platform and staircase was filled with people, with multiple and slow-moving lines stretching all the way down to EDSA. I was obviously surprised, since I was never a regular MRT commuter in the morning till now.

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Internship at Living Asia Channel has made me fantasize and day dream a lot about traveling around the country. One of the things I’ve been doing the past few days was capturing raw mini-dv footages from their out of town field shoots into their digital archives. Watching hours and hours of raw footage and edited but unaired programs can, admittedly, get boring, but it still makes me envious of all the traveling the field team and the hosts get to do, as part of their job.

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We spent the whole day in Sta. Maria last Saturday for my brother’s birthday and for the opening of the salon my mom franchised.

The proprietor of the salon is some talent manager or something from a certain TV network which was why he brought in some celebrities for the opening of the Artista Salon branch in Sta. Maria. It was pretty amusing though.

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When I revealed to my friends, and more importantly when it was revealed to other people in school, that I joined a fraternity and the Upsilon Sigma Phi at that, I was met with surprise. I’d be surprised at myself too, if I didn’t know myself better. Foremost, the fratman stereotype is quite out of my character, me being a timid and shy boy from Mass Comm at that, and second, my political affiliations and those of the fraternity’s and a majority of its resident brods are ‘officially’ incongruent. Upsilon is, after all, a founding member of my university political party’s two present rival parties. This proved quite odd for me, especially during the student council elections (where I lost).

Despite all these minor contradictions, and all the difficulties (understatement) of being a neophyte and a junior fellow, I don’t regret joining, and I am proud to be an Upsilonian. Anyway, my reasons for joining and other such apologetics won’t be the topic of this entry.

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Commuting to and from Makati’s central business district for my internship has been quite a tiresome ordeal. I just came home from my second day. I actually left the office early today, at around 4PM, thinking and hoping I would have avoided the rush hour traffic. That didn’t quite work out. It took me almost two hours inside a cramped and stinky “air-conditioned” bus to get near our place and walk home.

I’ve got an anecdote from this afternoon’s commuting experience however. Stuck in traffic between EDSA Buendia and Guadalupe, I looked through the bus window beside me and lo and behold it was Rep. Francis “Chiz” Escudero right next to me on another vehicle, side windows rolled down, speaking on the phone, stuck in traffic just like the rest of us. It was sort of a pleasant sight. A politician, and senatorial candidate, on a simple almost run-down vehicle (or so it seemed) with his side windows rolled down, with no sirens nor back-up security vehicles, stuck in traffic, breathing all the pollution there is in vehicle choked EDSA. And he was not campaigning.

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I was able to catch the third installment of GMA Network’s Philippine Agenda series last night. Below is a portion of the episode which tackled the serious problem of political and bureaucratic corruption in the Philippines.

The clip below specifically tackles the issue of the severe over-pricing of lamp posts acquired for the ASEAN Summit in Cebu months ago. Individual lamp posts were acquired by the government at 200+ thousand pesos EACH, jacked up scandalously from an original 11 thousand a unit. It’s really maddening and frustrating. Even Mike Enriquez, amusingly at times, exhibited such frustrations on screen.

[Links to Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4]

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We didn’t do a Visita Iglesia this Maundy Thursday, as we usually do almost every year. We just visited my grandfather and other relatives in Amadeo, Cavite. And since we were in upland Cavite anyway, my parents, against all odds, decided that we spend a night at Tagaytay in one of its numerous hotels and lodges. As expected, however, traffic in Tagaytay was severe, and since it was nearing sunset and we were still on the road, we all decided to just go back home to Quezon City.

The rest of the days were spent lazily at home.

A few nights ago, I came across the second episode of GMA Network’s Philippine Agenda. It was a tragic and morbid episode that tackled the public health services situation in the country. Tragic, obviously because the whole health sector situation is tragic in the first place, and morbid because two of the program’s subjects, after being shown struggling with their conditions, eventually die on screen. They couldn’t afford check-ups, nor the medicines, nor the other hospital fees. [Part of the documentary can be watched here].

When asked why public hospitals, which should ideally render much of its services for free, extract fees from things as minute as a patient’s use of a hospital bed, a government doctor said, “The government’s not giving us enough. We are being told to generate our own income.”

What an all too familiar line, even in the University of the Philippines.

From tuition increases in UP to fee increases in government hospitals, these have to be seen as part of a real and ongoing state policy of slowly abandoning social services. These has to be seen as a real and ongoing state policy of following dictations from foreign financial institutions. They are not unrelated situations.

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