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Bacolod City, Philippines Friday, May 4, 2012
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with Rex Remetio
OPINIONS

Goodbye horror road?

There are all sorts of roads – the smooth, wide highways you literally glide through in your vehicle, the tortuous, cracked, uneven roads, full of ruts and holes that can break your car apart if you’re not careful. Like the circumferential road officially known as the Carlos Hilado Highway starting for me every morning, going to my office, from Bangga Cory (Taculing) and ends (for me) at the bridge that spans the river near the government center. For obvious reasons the roadway in front of the government center is okay. I do not know how many thousands of drivers, cars, motorcycles, bicycles ramble over the rutted area, trying to dodge this pot-hole or that rut in the highway, morning, noon and night. But apparently as a people we have enormous patience and tolerance so we do not hear loud complaints.

But as I was about to emit a wail of anguish I read the following posted in a big board along the “horror highway”

UPGRADING B. CIRCUM RD.
SOUTH SECTION STATION 002+700-
STA. .003 + 550 WITH EXCEPTIONS
NORTH SEC. STA. 004-420 –
STA. 011 + 095.57 W/ EXCEPTIONS
CONTRACTOR 3 BROTHERS
ALTA NEG. IND. SUPPLY
CORP. (JOINT)
DATE STARTED: MARCH 4/12
COMPLETION DATE: FEB. 2013
CONTRACT COST P92,388,879.07
IMPLEMENTS: DPWH BCDEP
SOURCE OF FUNDS: CY 2012 REG.INFRA PROFIT)

Hooray, Hooray – - at last the government is improving the circumferential road. I understand that they are planning a four-lane road so who could argue against that? I can only try to erase from memory the aggravations of the “horror highway”

As I pass the area today, they are felling the trees along the road. They’re really bent on finishing the highway on or before February of next year. By then we can forget the “horror” and welcome “happy”.

A FAREWELL TO APRIL? Since April has expired, maybe I ought to add a note on its passing: Is that you April? Were you that month that I used to know, filled with sunshine, clear skies and promises of fun and frolic. It used to be, April, that you saw us climb wooded peaks in some corners o our archipelago. April you knew how we torture our lungs, gasped for air, spurred our legs toward some crazy peak --- and for what? Was it because of you, April, because you were summer and summer spells abandon, travel adventure, shedding the usual restraints.

But now, April, you seem not to be the April I knew. Instead of crackling sunshine there is always a hint of rain. The skies, which were deep blue, now seem to be coated with a dull blanket of thin clouds. I know now what you lack, April. And that is: Intensity. You have lost the ability to burn, to suffuse the air with heat. You have lost the capacity to conjure images of brown grass of mountain quivering in the summer heat. But maybe, April, it’s all for good. Maybe we are part of changed – the weather, even the globe itself shudders more frequent, more violently. Is this what they have described as the new normal? Maybe, it’s not only that you have change, April. Maybe it’s also because we have changed.

But wait. Even as I continue to write this morning, I can see a cloudless sky. Except for the edges of the horizon nibble, faint clouds, there is familiarity. Maybe climate change has taken away much, but much of you remains.

Here’s to you, April!*

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