the name of the blame

*This is my second paper for my Journalism 103 (opinion writing) class.

Metro Manila is a mess. Roads are congested. Piles of garbage line its streets and fill its waterways. The city reeks of its own filth.

And that was before tropical storm “Ondoy” came.

On the day that over 400 millimeters of rain came pouring from the sky, the mess became a catastrophe. What we left mismanaged and damaged came back to haunt us all.

We stared in awe at the sheer volume of the rising flood waters and asked where all that water came from, knowing all too well that the denuded mountains and hills in the distance held the answer.

We watched helplessly as the homes, factories, and shopping centers of a poorly – if at all – planned metropolis sank in the middle of natural flood plains between the Marikina and Pasig rivers.

We waited desperately for help to come in the midst of the storm, only to be frustrated by news of rescue teams blocked by congested roads and suffering from a lack of equipment.

When the rain finally stopped we picked through huge piles of garbage. Our own trash, disgorged by the very waterways we turned into latrines, plus the debris from all the destroyed buildings and the mud and silt from the mountains, covered all the streets.

Metro Manila is a mess. Roads are congested. Piles of garbage line its streets and fill its waterways. The city reeks of its own filth.

This is after tropical storm “Ondoy” left.

In the days after the storm, thousands of volunteers picked up the pieces and gave food and supplies to those ravaged by the floods. Unfortunately, such a picture of one nation and one people engaged in bayanihan was not meant to last.

That fleeting moment of national unity was quickly overshadowed by politicians, personalities, and people all pointing fingers and blaming each other for the disaster that brought the capital to its knees.

Critics slammed the national government’s feeble disaster-response capability, even though the blocked roads prevented the rescue teams from getting to where they were needed most.

They scored the weather bureau, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA), for not warning the people about the amount of rain brought by “Ondoy”, even though the tools for doing so were not available.

They blamed the managers of the metropolis’ drainage system for not opening the pumps out of the city, even though doing so would have entailed pumping water into already full rivers.

But these critics need not look far for those who are ultimately to blame for last month’s deluge. They only have to look in front of them, behind them, beside them, around them, within them, for the cause of the disaster.

Yes. We are all to blame.

Our mad rush to build a city caused us to irresponsibly put houses and infrastructure in hazardous areas. Urban planning took a back seat to profit-making.

Our disregard for proper waste management filled our drains, our creeks, and our rivers with garbage that so congested the waterways that the water had nowhere to go but into our living rooms.

Our disrespect for the law led us to tolerate squatters who blocked the main drainage channels out of the city and added to the congestion of our waterways.

Our greed led us to strip the mountains bare of trees and plants, leaving our watersheds without any cover at all from the rains.

Our ignorance kept us from preparing for the inevitable, with money going into worthless endeavors such as junkets abroad instead of proper disaster response equipment, adequate warning systems, and Doppler radars which could have warned us of the amount of rain brought by “Ondoy”.

At the end of it all, we are left with what we have sown.

Now, let us plant new seeds in the mud left by this disaster. Let us learn from our mistakes, and not repeat them in the future, lest we suffer another “Ondoy”.

portfolio 2: surviving the university of pila

**I'll be posting my three best essays in English 1 for the next few days. Since I'm supposed to encode them, why not also post them? Hehehehe. Seriously now, I'll be submitting these essays as a final project so please feel free to point out any mistakes in spelling, grammar, and common sense. Violent reactions and brutal comments will be most appreciated.

Surviving the University of Pila

The enrollment process in UP is really simple. You simply get a Form 5A from your college, verify your subjects, add some more or drop a few if you want, then transfer the information to a Form 5. Have the form checked and assessed, and then all you have left to do is to pay your tuition fee. That simple, at least in theory.

Reality, however, is different from theory. Enrollment in UP, oftentimes referred to as registration, is oftentimes an exercise in frustration. Yes freshies, it's not as easy as you think. You've gone through it once, but we upperclassmen have gone through it lots of times. You still have top priority over us, so this coming semester, enjoy it while you can. Once you enter your sophomore year, you'll find out what I'm talking about. Better for you if you find out now though, so read on.

We UP students are very lucky; we get to choose which classes to attend every semester. We're not forced to follow some rigid schedule, and we can even avoid the so-called terror professors! However, this comes at a high price, and payment is due during the enrollment period. Yes, this is the main problem you will encounter once you become sophomores. The mad scramble for subjects and classes is what makes enrollment in UP so frustrating.

Let's go through all the steps once again. The aforementioned Form 5A is the product of what we call PRE-ENLISTMENT. The Computerized Registration System (CRS) is responsible for getting you the subjects you want. As freshies, you can just collect and select any subject you want, thanks to your "priority" status. Once that's gone, you'll join every other student in what amounts to a lottery; when you pre-enlist in a subject, there is a large chance that you won't get it, especially if it's a GE subject. The CRS will randomly select from the students who pre-enlisted in that subject. So while you get to see filled-up Form 5As, the rest of us end up with nearly blank pieces of paper come ENLISTMENT time.

So we've got our Form 5As. You haven't gone through ENLISTMENT yet, so let me tell you now: be prepared. While PRE-ENLISTMENT is done in front of a computer, ENLISTMENT is the hard leg work. Bring food and water with you. Charge your cellphone and stock up on prepaid credits. Grab a thick paperback book as you leave home. This is where you'll find out why UP is often referred to as the "University of Pila". Woe to the poor schmuck who didn't get his classes through CRS; he now has to line up at various enlistment rooms to get the class he wants - or even worse, needs. Pray that you don't end up like that. But, in case you do, the food and water and book will help greatly. You won't have to leave your line and you won't die of boredom. The cellphone will help you keep connected with your friends who might send you important information, like when new classes have opened up. I can't stress this enough: come enlistment time, the person who is the most well-informed has the best chance of surviving the entire enrollment process with his sanity intact.

Aside from keeping informed, you have to be mobile. This is not the time to bring laptops with you. Limit yourself to a pen and essential documents, plus the other items mentioned above, as you will find yourself running to and from different and often widely separated buildings. You have to memorize the layout of the campus - where the important buildings are, the routes of the jeepneys, even the best shortcuts to take. Remember, you are also competing with thousands of other students, so the faster you get to that newly-opened GE class, the better your chances of getting it.

Once you get all your desired classes, you have to transfer all the information from your Form 5A to a Form 5. Be careful with this! Check that all the information on your Form 5A is correct before you write on your Form 5, as this will save you the trouble of having to rewrite and start from scratch when the people at CHECKING find a mistake.

When you've had Form 5 checked by the registration assistants, your next step will be ASSESSMENT. This is the easy part. You go to a room where accounts look over your Form 5 and tell you how much your tuition fee is going to be. You are then all set for PAYMENT. One last line, and you're all done.

As you can see, the major problem with registration is in the ENLISTMENT part. This will take up most of your time and will be the main source of your frustration. Trust me. I know. To get through the enrollment process, or more precisely the ENLISTMENT process, you have to be prepared, be informed, and be mobile. Those are the keys to surviving enrollment at UP.

Don't worry. You'll only be doing this at least four times during your UP life, unless you opt for summer classes. Once you reach "graduating" status, you'll be a "priority" once again.