The air we breathe

"In tough times, some of us see protecting the climate as a luxury, but that's an outdated 20th-century worldview from a time when we thought industrialization was the end goal, waste was growth, and wealth meant a thick haze of air pollution."

~Alex Steffen, American futurist and sustainability advocate

This is the same view of Metro Manila as my post from May 8 but taken early in the morning rather than in the middle of the day. Unless one lives in a building more than one kilometer high, there's no way to escape from that air pollution. The Philippines enacted a clean air law back in 1999 but, like many of our other laws, it isn't fully implemented or enforced.

"Official" graffiti

In a country full of politicians who slap their names and faces on publicly-funded projects every chance they get, Quezon City's politicians are probably the worst. They don't even wait for projects—if there's a blank wall, it'll end up with one local politician or another's name, in the guise of public reminders. Similar to Vincent Belmonte's sign, councilor Jessica Castelo Daza says that "Cleanliness is a sign of a progressive nation." I guess neither realize that cleanliness isn't just the absence of garbage.

Today, we troop to our voting precincts for national and local elections. I honestly still don't know which local candidates to vote for.

Clean?

"Clean and Green, let's do it in this barangay." I think that Quezon City Councilor Vincent Belmonte should have made provisions for an eco-aide to clean the area around his sign regularly.

What a mess!

How our utility men can make sense of this jumble of cables—power, phone, cable TV, internet—I have no idea.

Deterioration

Yesterday, I showed you the finely detailed ornamentation of the pavilions in the Chinese Garden of the Rizal Park. Unfortunately, the quality of the maintenance doesn't quite measure up to the design's magnificence. I noticed a few missing tiles and some of the paintings on the beams have been either been damaged or have faded. I hope the park can find the high-caliber artisans—and has the funds—to have them repaired.

Charbroiled

An abandoned eatery with a sidewalk counter specializing in charbroiled steaks. Looong abandoned. Manila's phone numbers were changed to seven digits in the early 1980s.

Ziggurat ruins

Not as tall as the abandoned building behind Quezon City Hall but in a more prominent location, this terraced eyesore stands on government property at the corner of one of the roads which radiate from the Quezon Memorial Circle. When the land was still empty many years ago, the rumor going around was that Ayala Land was negotiating to lease or buy it so they could build a mall there, which would have been their first in Quezon City. When this terraced structure went up, the rumors became even fiercer. Then construction stopped completely without any explanation, as is quite usual in my country, and the thing's been standing there since. Ayala Land did eventually build a mall in Quezon City and I don't know if there's any truth to the old rumor, but the design of certain parts of Trinoma sure look very similar.

Inappropriate

I have featured many of the beautiful buildings and ruins of the historic walled city of Intramuros, which used to be the city of Manila during the Spanish colonial period. Now let me show you the most glaringly out-of-place structure in the district. Called the Clamshell, it is a huge airconditioned tent used for commercial and tourism exhibitions and trade fairs. It stands on the corner of Santa Lucia and Anda streets, which used to be the location of the Ateneo de Manila University when it was still in Intramuros. To come upon this tacky structure, especially when it's screaming with promotional banners and streamers, after seeing the elegant Spanish architecture of the rest of Intramuros, is jarring, to say the least. I really hope that the Intramuros Administration and our Department of Tourism decide to take it down in the very near future.

No room…

to run,

Tiger (Panthera tigris)

Lion (Panthera leo)

Double-wattled Cassowary (Casuarius casuarius)

to crawl,

Albino Burmese Python (Python molurus bivittatus)

or to fly

Kalaw or Rufous Hornbill (Buceros hydrocorax)

at the Malabon Zoo. :'(

Don't blame the rains

Because of the long and wide Pasig River, which connects Manila Bay on the west and Laguna de Bay in the northeast, many cities in Metro Manila are crisscrossed by its numerous estuaries and tributaries. Unfortunately, with the fast and uncontrolled growth of this largest of the Philippines' urban centers during the sixties and seventies, the river system was completely neglected. The esteros of the cities of Manila, Makati, San Juan, Mandaluyong, Pasig, Taguig and Marikina are little more than open sewers. This particular garbage-choked estuary is in Binondo, Manila. It will take much more discipline and political will than we have shown so far to rehabilitate this very important resource. And people wonder why we always get floods during the rainy season.

Open invitation

A demolished building with the walls left standing is something that no graffiti 'artist' can resist. This is at the corner of Katipunan Avenue and Aurora Boulevard in Quezon City. Before the demolition of the low structures for another high-rise residential condominium, which is now suspended because of some legal dispute, it had the last mini-golf course that I knew of in Metro Manila. My husband and I used to play there before we were married.

Bored

Caught in slow-moving traffic one rainy morning, I finally noticed the graffiti-covered buildings under the Katipunan Avenue flyover. They're not abandoned but are still being used as offices of some kind. And no, I wasn't driving.

Natural or man-made, take a refreshing dip in Watery Wednesday.

Across another street

A view of the front of the Quezon City Hall compound from inside the Quezon Memorial Circle. I call this 8-lane road the wild, wild west (imagine trying to cross it!) and is the reason why I love Mayor Sonny Belmonte for creating the pedestrian underpass which links city hall with the memorial park. Of course, there's no way to hide that huge eyesore of an unfinished building behind city hall. Architect Reena of Reena's Thoughts said that she heard that the developer has a pending case in court over this building because Quezon City has a law which states that no structure at a given area around the Quezon Memorial should be taller than it. I've looked at the memorial, city hall and the eyesore from afar and I think she's right. City hall's tallest building is shorter than the memorial but the unfinished building is definitely taller than the memorial. Now I want to know who in city hall gave the developer a permit to build in the first place.

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I recently found out that My Manila made it as a finalist in the Best Photo Blog nationwide category of the Philippine Blog Awards! Whether I win or not, I'm just happy to have made it that far, especially considering the fact that many of the finalists are professional photographers or serious hobbyists. For me and my itsy-bitsy camera to be counted among them is a great honor.

I hope you can visit all the finalists but if you only have time for one, then I highly recommend the blog of Dennis Villegas, my favorite among the ten (yes, including mine—if I were a judge, he'd be the winner). I don't know who he is or what he does but his photo essays are an amazing, though very gritty, look at Manila.

Metal monstrosity

When our typhoon season rolls in, some of the more responsible outdoor advertising companies roll down the large tarpaulin billboards found all over Metro Manila. Too many have fallen in the past and brought down power cables, destroyed property and caused car accidents. Of course, the empty metal frames make for an awful city skyline, but then I think that's true of most advertising billboards in general.

Visit the Sky Watch Friday home page and tour the skies of our interesting world.

This should have been scenic

Standing on the outer walls of Fort Santiago beside the Pasig River, one can look east and see Binondo (Manila's Chinatown) across the river and the Manila Central Post Office building just beyond Jones Bridge. The 25-kilometer Pasig River connects Laguna de Bay (the largest lake in the Philippines) and Manila Bay. During the Spanish colonial era, it was a very important transport route, but because of uncontrolled population growth and industrialization after WWII, the river was neglected. Factories and scores of informal settlers on its banks dumped—and continue to dump—their waste in it, using it as their personal sewage system. Since the 1990s, the Pasig River has been considered ecologically dead. Needless to say, its pollution also affects Laguna de Bay and Manila Bay. There have been several attempts to gather support for the river's rehabilitation through the Pasig River Rehabilitation Commission, but they have been intermittent and never gained much ground. With 50,000 to 100,000 potential voters settled (illegally) on its banks, and national elections coming up next year, I don't think that any attempt to rehabilitate the river will succeed any time soon.

They are definitely not tree-huggers

On Monday, I showed you some of the beautiful acacia trees that are still numerous in my little corner of Quezon City. This 'corner' is actually an academic district which includes the University of the Philippines – Diliman, Miriam College (formerly Maryknoll College) and Ateneo de Manila University. The road which connects these three is Katipunan Avenue, which used to have a narrow island which separated the main road from a side road that gave motorists safe access to the commercial establishments and condominiums on one side of the road. That narrow island used to be lined with beautiful acacia trees too. Then about four years ago, the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) started cutting down the trees. Of course, the students, faculty and employees of the schools and the residents of the subdivisions in the area raised a massive howl of protest. To make a long story short, the MMDA was forced to stop cutting the trees but by that time, only the trees at either end of the road were still standing. On February 13, 2009, my husband and I went home from work as usual and those few remaining trees were still there. On the afternoon of February 14, we saw these men hacking the curb of the island and all the trees were gone! There was a sign that said that the trees were not cut down but removed with their roots and planted elsewhere. Where? No one knows. How deep do you think the roots of Monday's 60-year-old acacias would be? How big a hole do you think they would leave behind? The holes I saw looked to be about one meter (3 feet) in diameter and depth. The MMDA did not give the communities here any warning or information before the trees were uprooted in the middle of the night and the early morning of a Saturday when most students and faculty weren't around because there were no classes. The MMDA has not released any information or photos to reassure the communities here that the trees were planted and are thriving in their new home. This is my first story about the MMDA but it won't be my last.

Eyesore

I don't know if this was supposed to be an office or condominium building, or what company was constructing it, but it has been standing unfinished behind the Quezon City Hall for more than a decade. An eyesore and a waste.

Find more Odd Shots—or post your own—at Katney's Kaboodle.

Caged sidewalk

In many of Metro Manila's major roads, the sidewalk is separated from the road by barriers. Sometimes, they're just waist-high rails but in extremely busy roads and intersections, wire mesh barriers are higher than your average Filipino. These are meant to stop people from (1) using the road to walk on; (2) crossing the road just anywhere and anytime; and (3) flagging down buses, jeepneys and/or taxis wherever they happen to be when they see the vehicle. It's only been a decade or two that road rules for pedestrians and commuters are being enforced more strictly and it's been a struggle. After all, roads in the provinces (the rural areas) are meant for everyone and everything, whether they're people, animals or vehicles. And I have no figures to show but I suspect that people like me who are Manila-born and bred and whose parents were also Manila-born and bred are actually a tiny fraction of the metro's population. I'm submitting this as an Odd Shot Monday post because I'm sure the barriers will be odd for those in other countries, but to be honest, this is a very common sight in Metro Manila.

Find more Odd Shots—or post your own—at Katney's Kaboodle.