A OPINION PHILIPPINE ASIAN NEWS TODAY January 1 - 15 , 2017
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Breaking Point
By Rosette Correa
I love snow . Growing up in a small county of the Kerman Province in Iran called Sarcheshmeh , I was five when I first experienced snow , and coming from a tropical country , it was an amazing sight . For a child , snow meant more playtime , and in the 1970s , there were no electronic gadgets to keep you away from outdoor play . For an adult , though , snow means more pain than pleasure - slippery or impassable roads , and more hours on the road to get to work .
Winter dumped an awful lot of snow in the Lower Mainland in 2016 , and while it was a welcome in the beginning , it became a nuisance towards the end , especially when municipalities did not know how to handle the amount that fell . All the cities were scrambling around to de-ice the roads , but as they snow fell day after day , the layers piled up , with ice staying at the bottom of the layer . While the city engineer ’ s office was able to cope with the amount of snow on the main roads with salt and sand , side streets became landscapes of white from the neglect and unprepared city administrators who had no contingency
Bulong Pulungan
By Deedee Siytangco
Reprinted from Manila Bulletin
ANGEL THOUGHTS
It ’ s never too late to be what you might have been ! — T . S . Eliot ****** So , how was your New
Year celebration ?
We had a quiet New Year ’ s Eve in our home Bella Vista , in Tagaytay .
My two eldest children had their own families ’ celebrations , so it was David and Kristin and AJ and Ayet with me . My apos were with their parents and the other set of lolos and lolas as with my Monchu and Miggy , but this grandma understood .
It was also smoke-free ,
for a problem such as this . mystical foggy weather from the gentle rains of New Year ’ s Eve on the windy ridge city . As usual , we had no “ paputoks ” of our own , but we were not deprived of a spectacular display of fireworks when the clock struck midnight , thanks to the cities and towns around the Taal Lake whose residents lit up the sky . We had our own free show from our view from the ridge !
The lake fireworks provided us with long minutes of smoke-free bursts of colored light patterns in the dark sky . Thank you Lord , for another year , another chance of becoming better persons and
If you think about it , Vancouver gets this much snow once every five or six years , so one would think that because we don ’ t have this phenomena happening to us every year , we would have at least a little bit of money in our city budgets to cover years when these things do happen . One would also think that the city engineer ’ s office , since they don ’ t have a lot of infrastructure problems because of the budgets they have , would have a contingency plan when winter hits us with a snow storm . As a mater of fact , instead of preparing for situations like these emergencies , they ’ d rather tear up streets for new water and electrical lines , and neglect to put them back in their old , nicely paved condition ( attention city engineer of Surrey - check out 68th street in front of Unwin Park ) or mess up traffic and lose parking spaces for bike lanes that aren ’ t even used 365 days in a year by the entire population of the city .
Unfortunately , none of our city administrators had the foresight nor the blueprints ready for such situations . Perhaps too much coffee and donuts are weighing them all down , and they stop planning for things because they don ’ t see it happening ; however , isn ’ t that what planning is all about ? American engineer and economist William Deming , who helped take Japan out of its rut after World War II , said , “ If you fail to plan , you plan to fail .” I guess the city administrators don ’ t even know who Deming was , because they failed miserably .
Another thing that comes out of this is how some people behave in adversity . Canadians have always been known to be a patient and giving people , so when the city dumped salt on the
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From Sea to Snow
truly being reflections of your love .
While stray bullets and fireworks fatalities were lower this season , there were still children who became statistics because of careless gun shooters and “ paputok ” accidents . We commend the PNP in keeping the peace this holiday season . Now if only they can purge their ranks of overzealous policemen barging in on “ targets ” on the drug addicts list they hold and shooting them dead because “ they put up a fight .” * * * At the beginning of the year , I want to commend MMDA chair Tim Orbos for his streets of Vancouver , some scrambled , elbowed , pushed and shoved neighbours to get to the bounty that every one was after . The behaviour was featured on the news , and it made me feel embarrassed , as most of the mob were non-English speaking and Asian . It was not very Canadian at all , and the behaviour that they displayed makes you shake your head in disbelief and disgust . Every homeowner should know that it is their responsibility to clear the front of their sidewalks , so these things should not happen in neighbourhoods . The neighbourly and Canadian thing that should have happened was for these people to
calm but no-nonsense style of leadership of the agency . He has been able to work with local government officials as well as private individuals who make the highways and main roads their informal food stalls and parking for provincial buses .
We saw him in action the other day and was impressed with his firm determination to clear the informal “ parking garages ” of buses along EDSA and other main roads . He also warned the “ ukay- ukays ,” “ carinderias “ and other stalls cluttering the sidewalks and spilling out onto the main roads that his men would come back and have come together and help each other out clear their own street and sidewalks so that they did not have to behave like animals for a bucket of salt . Instead , they chose to show their children how not to behave .
Despite the pitfalls , there is much to thank the city administrators for , especially the road workers who braved the cold during the storms . Without them , the major roads would still be ice rinks . The bottom line is hopefully , the city governments learned their cold , hard lesson this year , and plan ahead so that they can avoid failure in the future .
MMDA ’ s Tim Orbos flexes muscles
clear them out .
It ’ s a hard job , being MMDA chair , as former head Francis Tolentino will tell you . It ’ s a “ damn if you do , damn if you don ’ t ” job because it ’ s not only traffic management that you worry about , its natural calamities , waste management , urban development , pollution , etc . Thankless too , as Tim realizes by now . He is up to the challenges , his older brother Fr . Jerry Orbos assured us . But please pray for him , Jerry urges us , and for his detractors too . Why would they want a good man who is trying his best to fail ?
Tim also did a good job shepherding the Metro Ma-
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