Because we squeaked

The Philippine Senate has passed a bill declaring the Chinese New Year as a special working holiday. Hurrah for the organizers of the Bacolaodiat, they now have more reason to celebrate the day. This festival has been gaining in popularity and participation since it was first initiated, and this year’s celebration is expected to surpass all the previous ones.

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Bacolod’s Tourism Strip, now a new name for Lacson Street, will again reverberate with music and glow with the fantastic parade figures that members of the Filipino-Chinese community are now readying. The festival has also become a crowd drawer, and not only Bacolod residents flock to the sites where the activities are scheduled, but fun lovers from the other towns and cities in Negros Occidental, and even in other provinces also take this as an opportunity to come and visit their relatives here.

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It’s true! The saying that it is the bolt that is squeaking that gets the oil was proven again when the news came out that President Benigno Aquino III had ordered the installation of equipment and facilities in seven airports in the country to enable the landing of international flights on them. We like to believe that this was triggered by the sound and fury raised by local officials and civic groups over the failure of the visiting Korean golfers to come, because the Bacolod-Silay Airport, although constructed to meet international standards, did not have the facilities and manpower to allow landing even only of Asian aircrafts.

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So the President has directed the agencies concerned to attend to this matter, and we hope they do not twiddle their thumbs until we need to raise another hue and cry. I really believe that the representations and the manifestations from various groups, indignant over the lack of support from the Immigration Office, had prodded Malacañang to do something. Then, perhaps, we can even offer our golf courses here to other Asian countries, like Japan and Malaysia, where there are many golf players looking for courses where they do not have to pay through the nose to play, and where people are hospitable and friendly to visitors. But let us not stop nagging until we see the foreign planes start landing.

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The tennis world was stunned yesterday when the seemingly invincible Serena Williams, who has been capturing all kinds of titles and trophies as one of the world’s best, got beaten by a virtual newcomer, and a teenager, at that! What a shock it must have been to Serena, who has confidently grabbed honors for the United States for so many years now. Now this upstart, also a black American who is only 19 years old, succeeded in trouncing her! Sloane Stephen probably could hardly believe herself that she had dealt with the tennis icon on decisively.

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Well, Serena’s case must have given our own Manny Pacquiao some consolation and impressed on him that, no matter how good you are, you can’t win ‘em all. After so many successive victories and so many titles and belts, he was felled by the man he had already beaten twice and drawn with once before. But Manny Pacquiao is still raring to have another go at the man who sent him to the canvass hearing tweet-tweets. Last I heard was that his fifth match with Juan Manuel Marquez has already been scheduled for September this year. The problem is that the fight is supposed to take place in Mexico, definitely enemy territory. Well, that’s his call, and we his loyal fans will continue to pray for him and cheer him on, anyway.

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At last the mastermind of one of the worst swindling operations ever staged in the county has been arrested. Manuel Amalilio, ringleader of the group that had divested residents of Mindanao and some Visayas towns and cities, of millions through his get-rich-quick scheme, was nabbed in Kota Kinabalu by Malaysian police. And, surprise again. Amalilio was found out not to be the Malaysian he had claimed to be, but a Filipino citizen! The Malaysian passport and identification cards he was carrying were discovered to be all forged. Should we apologize to the Malaysians?

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Filipinos working in Algeria have started trickling home after fleeing from the crisis there, but reports said about six had been killed in the conflicts. A pathetic story was about a wife whose husband is believed to be one of those killed, and who only asked that the right body be returned to her family. She probably knows about cases where the cadavers sent home were not the right ones, like the old mother who reportedly fainted when the crate supposedly bearing the body of her dead daughter was opened and the corpse inside turned out to be that of a big bearded man.*

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