WHAT a great editorial on Saturday - 'Planning on a month's wage' – and what a great punch-line - 'Invest in Mindanao (But bring your own power supply)'.
The theme of Saturday's editorial was the nation's shortsightedness - how all of us, civil and administration, plan for the short term and not the long; a fact brought home last Friday when I visited the Office of Senior Citizens Affairs to pick up some 'purchase slips', the booklet we oldies present to store cashiers to claim our discount.
"No stock," said the guy at Osca. "Not until the end of March (Siguro)." Which means that any senior citizen who's run out of room on his purchase slip will be unable to claim his tiny benefits until the new booklets arrive.
Because someone at the Office for Senior Citizens Affairs failed to order ahead. Because someone at the Office for Senior Citizens failed to plan for the long term.
I was also intrigued to learn this last week that, apart from the NGCP (The National Grid Corporation of the Philippines) and the ERC (The Energy Regulatory Commission), there is a Psalms, the Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corporation.
One wonders how many more outfits have a finger in the power pie? Jobs for the boys? Here's one for Tek and Testigo.
Talking of Tek, I love the way he tries to poke out the camerman's eye at the close of the show. What is it with all these hand signs? There's Manny with his telephone sign, little finger and thumb extended; there's Camp Nograles with a sort of finger-flicking and a thump to the chest and so on. I blame it all on Kris or maybe Ted Rogers with his three, two, one finger countdown. And why are we getting an ad for a Cebu politician? "Decongesting the siddy leads to a bedder life," spiels the voiceover. The demise of the t.
Have you noticed that? Nobody pronounces the letter t anymore. Sons and dorders. Baddle stations. A brider future.
Still on words, on Wednesday, we got mail from secretary Jesus Dureza commenting on the Mindanao power shortages. The usual stuff, nothing we didn't know already, but I was impressed by Mr Dureza's talk about 'embedded' generators.
These are, apparently, the standy generators hotels and so on have had, err, standing by since the year dot but why embedded?
It must be a new buzzword, once reserved for journalists 'embedded' with military units, now about to be trotted out by anybody with a soundbite to spare.
Politicians - lots of them about lately - will be promising embedded calamity funds, even embedded scholarships while Tek and Testigo will be going after embedded corruption.
Such fun.