VERTIGO

by Bernie Lopez

Vertigo is a physical sickness, an abnormality of the middle ear that causes the loss of the sense of balance and total disorientation. But in rare occasions, there are spiritual causes.

There are vertigo cases where patients experience intense attacks for one to two days once or twice a month or even a year. Joel, in his sixties, was a very successful executive, the Chief Executive Officer or CEO of a medium sized firm, the small empire he had built through the decades of hard work. Joel's advanced stage vertigo was different. It was not occasional attacks but one protracted unending attack.

 

He had heard about Sister Raquel Reodica, RVM, the healer from Novaliches known to many. He went to her, hoping to be healed. He had to be guided by two persons on either side. He complained to her about his continuous vertigo. But there was something more, Joel posed. Hearing the words ‘something more’, Sister Raquel had instinctively a strange discernment about Joel's problem.

She said, "Let me guess the real problem."

 

"Go ahead Sister, take a shot", Joel dared her.

 

"You don't know what to do with yourself and your life. You are lost."

 

Joel was stunned, "How did you know?" Sister Raquel hit it right on the head. They had been talking just for a few minutes. Sister had no idea who and what he was. And so, Joel told everyone to stay away, as poured out everything to Sister, like a waterfalls spewing out waters of misery. No one knew about his problem. His family and relatives all thought he was happy and cozy in his job. He kept the seething volcano inside him. What he was about to say was a secret deep in the bosom of his soul that no one, not even his wife, knew about.

 

He went on. He was at the top of his career. He had attained everything he wanted. He sat in a plush office, giving commands to his people like a general, or more like an emperor. There was nothing he could not get if he wished for it. But he was bored to death giving orders and being in charge. He had a lot of 'bored meetings'. He had no desire for more fortune as he had it all. He was bored being respected by everyone. All their praises and awe were nothing to him. There was something missing in all these. At the apex of his career, Joel felt there was no meaning in life. There was nothing there on top, just emptiness amidst all the frenzied tasks to keep the empire going. Joel’s case reminded me of the book ‘Hope for the Flowers’. I told Sister to tell Joel to read the book. It is a book for children. You could finish the book in one sitting, say two hours. It had a very simple plot but it was deep and powerful and hits the spirit in search of one's self.

 

Sister told Joel everyone had a calling or vocation. Everyone had his mission-vision to fulfil. You do not have to reach your goal in your lifetime. But you must try to reach it, approach it. The effort is more important than the goal. The journey is more important than the destination. Sister reminded Joel of the parable of the talents. She said the talents God gave you are not for yourself. They are for others. Your career and business skills are the same. They are not for you, that was why Joel was bored with himself at the top. Even your empire is not for you.

 

Sister started probing, "Do you have God in you?"

 

"Not really, Sister. I hate novenas. I go to mass only as a habit to accompany my wife. It is nothing to me. No, I am not the religious type." Joel was silent for a long while, thinking hard. 

 

"Your spiritual energy has no outlet. It is all bottled up inside you”, Sister added.

 

Joel did not realize it but Sister was opening up a whole new world to him. She was laying out a trap to catch him and bring him out of his dilemma of success and boredom all at once. The meaning of life that he was looking for, more spiritual than material, was staring him right on the face.

After her short sermon that made Joel think hard, she asked, "O saan ka ngayon?" (Where do you stand?)

 

Instinctively, after his instant catharsis, after all the misery of his success, he instantly shouted, "Kay Hesus. Kay Hesus ako, sister." (I am for Jesus.)

 

Joel embraced instantly the answer to his dilemma, his spiritual vacuum, his spiritual vertigo. And in his reply, his physical vertigo vanished instantly. Joel stood up and brushed aside his aides. His sense of balance was back. He could suddenly walk. The Lord he turned to after all these years healed him instantly. Many cannot understand that there are spiritual solutions to physical problems, as in Joel’s case. By instantly placing himself in the hands of the Lord, after all these years of being on top, there was meaning and fulfilment.

 

Healing sessions at the Mother Ignacia Healing Center are every Wednesdays and Saturday; 857 Bagumbong Road, Novaliches. Inquire by email, are just ask around. People can guide you to the place.

beteljuice7@gmail.com 

BAGOONG RICE

By Bernie Lopez

’Bagoong’ rice is an exotic fine-dining entrée which has actually been in existence since pre-Hispanic times. It is the food of the very poor in lean months when there is only rice and seasoning of salt, patis or bagoong at the dinner table. The exotic variety was a product of creative packaging and restaurant marketing.

Alternatives to bagoong rice during the lean months include patis-rice, pancit sandwich and other forms of creative pure-starch menus. With shortages and expensive rice and bread, pancit sandwich might evolve into ‘bread sandwich’, if you know what I mean. But alternatives may veer towards non-starch experiments. There will be new creative dishes, I am sure, learning a lesson from Mangyans of Mindoro who eat ‘stones’ in the lean months. It is actually mineral-rich hardened mud-pack found along rivers and creeks, quite nutritious, but you cannot eat a lot of it even if you are very hungry.

I remember the days I covered the Mangyans in Mindoro. There was a big conference at Abra de Ilog which was ‘over-attended’ by about 400 people. ‘Over-attended’ meant 80 Mangyan heads of families were invited but 300 came because they could not leave behind their wives and children at home. So there was panic in the kitchen. The Mangyans said they would take care of breakfast the next day. They woke up at 3 a.m.

When I woke up at 6 a.m., I saw the largest bagoong rice plate of my life, something for the Guinness Book of Records. They laid out huge banana leaves for 30 meters along the school corridor and poured the rice from one end to the other, looking like a white replica of the Cordillera mountain range. On top of the mountain, they poured pure unadulterated bagoong, dark snow-caps on white mountains. There were no utensils, no plates.

The conference attendees lined up on the sides of this bagoong-rice superhighway and we started to eat with our hands. We simply took lumps of bagoong rice and set it in on the free space of the banana leaf along the sides. After breakfast, it was as if the mountain range was hit by a nuclear blast.

It was a noisy spirited breakfast. Everyone was talking. There was a much-appreciated pandemonium. It was one of my best breakfasts for a long time and the ethnic spirit was inspiring. The lesson I learned then was – you can be poor and happy anytime you want, a matter of will power. But there are new lessons to learn today – you have to fight poverty and hunger.

Looking back, if that conference was done today, it would be disaster because there would be less rice and more bagoong, or just boiled kamoteng kahoy or gabi with sugar, the dinner of Mangyans in the lean months. Creative menus are a challenge today not so much on how to prepare but what to prepare.

GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS

With a world food crisis emerging and climate change further undermining food production, Man today is faced with a looming crisis. He must find ways of dealing with a new situation never before encountered in history. He must deal with the planet and with himself at a deeper plane all at once. He must address global warming which must necessarily affect food production. It is a planet dilemma.

One of the main culprits in the world food shortage is the U.S., the biggest corn and soya producer in the world. When it shifted its corn and soya bumper harvests from food for Third World nations to biofuel for local consumption, it essentially caused an instant staple shortage in Africa, which triggered food riots.

The heightened awareness of global food shortage has triggered food export bans everywhere, as in India, Vietnam, Indonesia and Brazil. This has increased the burden on institutions. The Asian Development Bank has pledged food aid, but remember these are loans rather than grants. The African Development Bank has pledged $1 billion. The United Nations and the World Food Programme are mobilizing, but they predict there will not be enough for the increasingly many hungry.

As for rice, Thailand and Vietnam, the two largest exporters of rice worldwide, instituted export bans to insure local supplies after global-warming induced deluge and drought halved production. This started a world rice shortage.

 

Thailand is thinking of organizing a rice cartel similar to the oil cartel. A rice cartel will be composed of the premiere rice nations of Asia, namely, Thailand, Vietnam, Burma or Myanmar, Cambodia, and Laos. This contradicts the promises of food cooperation among ASEAN nations stated in the recent Bali conference. Cartel and cooperation are diametrically opposed. The only way to weaken the clout of a cartel is to have bumper harvests and an oversupply, which is unlikely, considering runaway population growth and global-warm. The ASEAN must stop the rice cartel through pressures based on non-rice trading quid-pro-quos.

The Philippines is the largest importer of rice worldwide, and our government’s knee jerk reaction was to over-buy, to double imports, no matter if prices doubled, anticipating a protracted shortage beyond 2008. Lately, it is thinking of slowing down a bit after it has procured 1.6 million metric tons (MMT), larger than the original target of 1.2 MMT. The obsession to increase buffer stocks is a political motive for a government increasingly insecure about its popularity. Still, the hunger and food security issues dwarfs politics.

beteljuice7@gmail.com 

QUEEN’S GAMBIT

by Bernie Lopez

GMA recently threw the apple of discord by directing the DTI to appeal to the ERC for lower Napocor rates for Meralco, a seemingly creative entrapment to force Meralco to lower its rates to consumers correspondingly. The gambit may work in exposing Meralco’s excuse for a scandalous 12% increase in generation rate in a single month.

 

Observers say it is a GMA move to take over Meralco, using the GSIS as the rook. But who is saying there is a take over? Is it the Meralco boys, to make GMA look like the wolf? Or is there really a takeover, hinted by GSIS head Winston Garcia wanting ‘transparency’ in Meralco’s books? The take over theory seems flimsy to me. Why and why now? In my opinion, it is really the gall of this giant utility to increase rates arbitrarily and unilaterally which has angered both government and the general public. In other words, sobra na.

 

Pete Ilagan, the electric consumer advocate from NASECORE, updated me on this raging issue. He explains that Meralco raised the generation rate from P4.38 in March to P4.90 in April, a scandalous 52 centavos increase. Pete explains that a centavo increase translates in an increase in Meralco revenue of about P270 million. Multiply this by 52 and you get a staggering P13.5 billion, all in a single month.

 

Meralco says the increase was due to corresponding rate increase at WESM. But Meralco buys only 8.9% of its power from WESM, 35% from Napocor, and the rest from its own Independent Power Producers (IPPs), Sta. Rita, Quezon, etal. So why the sudden 52-centavo or 12% increase in a single month?

 

It is against the law to buy power higher than the Napocor rate, more so if you buy from yourself and charge the high rates on consumers. This is not only illegal, it is immoral as it victimizes the general public. Is this is why Meralco tries to keep secret the price it buys power from itself, namely the same Lopez-controlled IPPs?

 

But it comes out in the papers anyway. A columnist claims Meralco buys from itself at P5.30 which is higher than the Napocor rate of P4.38 (April rate). If this figure is correct, then Meralco must be penalized for passing on such illegal rates to consumers.

 

If Meralco has been illegally buying power from itself for many months now, why is the Electric Regulatory Commission (ERC) not able to stop it? And why is Meralco permitted to unilaterally increase its rate arbitrarily without giving numbers to justify it? Pete says that Meralco says it is simply based on 'pass-on cost'. This means, whatever the cost of power, Meralco simply passes it on to users without adding or subtracting. This explanation is not enough. Meralco must give exact numbers. Instead of taking the side of the queen, ERC Director Albano questioned DTI’s authority to request for the lowering of rates. Is there an ERC-Meralco partnership that is trying to defy the queen?

 

The Queen's Gambit was a directive to Napocor to lower the generation rate charged to Meralco to P4.11, the average rate for Electric Cooperatives. If this is done, then the generation rate charged by Meralco to consumers should also go lower correspondingly and proportionately. Meralco is in dilemma if it still increases its rates after the directive, or if it lowers but not proportionately. Remember it is a 'pass on cost'. It has to justify its changes in generation rate exactly and quantitatively. GMA is Ahab and Meralco is Moby Dick.

 

But it is not as simple as that. The P4.11 rate charged to Electric Cooperatives is an average rate. The rate can actually swing like a pendulum from about P6.00 at peak hours to P1.87 at non-peak hours. So it is complex in the sense that volume of purchase at specific times involves different rates. But it is impossible not to have an exact gauge on actual charges. So we do not have to talk of averages but of actual total charges, to determine exactly at what rate Meralco purchased and at what volume.

 

Another question is - is Meralco intentionally buying at high peak prices from its own IPPs to unduly up its profits by passing the cost to consumers, while buying at non-peak from Meralco or WESM? Pete and Freedom from Debt Coalition (FDC) should look into Meralco’s books.

 

There is a scheduled critical Tuesday dialogue that Pete and FDC requested from the ERC with players like PSALM, TRANSCO, WESM, and Napocor to attend and air their sides. Unfortunately, it is too late to include the results of that meeting in today’s column. So let us leave that for next week.

 

One last point. Homeowners are entitled to a 30% discount if the power comes from Napocor. Since Meralco buys 35% of its power from Napocor, there should be a 30% of 35% or about 4.3 centavos based on the March rate of P4.11. Is this discount being given? It seems this is not being reflected on our electric bills.

 

Meralco has two sweethearts, Sta. Rita and Quezon, not to mention future IPPs it will have. This is not only incest, it is bigamy.

beteljuice7@gmail.com