Book Series: SENIOR MOMENTS ARE FOREVER

30th Moment: Tuk-Tuk, Gender Surveys and Solving National Problems

Tuk-tuk: The Tuk-tuk is an intrepid, regular, even a traditional three-wheel transport vehicle in South Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and India. Lately I saw many plying the roads in Naga City and in Pasay City. some friends say they are also found in other cities. So, I am starting to wonder whether we are progressing or regressing! --------------------------- Development work in post-crisis situations: Working in post-conflict areas needs great patience. We comfort the evacuees, appease the orphans, dine, and laugh with politicians, unashamedly beg for money from donors and many other things that we do not like to do for ourselves. In love relationship it is called “IT’S COMPLICATED”. ---------------------------- Women Survey says, women hate two kinds of men: 100-meter sprinters, and chess players. The first kind is fast to finish while the second are slow to move! ---------------------------- Men Survey says: men hate lady Lawn Tennis and Ping-Pong players, they play balls with rackets; but men like lady basketball and volleyball players, they play balls with bare hands. It does not matter how they smash or shoot the ball. ---------------------------- Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship is a state of the mind; but it is not like a state of the nation, or a state of calamity. In the state of nation, the President talks about the country, in the state of calamity the people search for the missing bounty. ---------------------------- How do technocrats solve socio-economic problems? - By redefining terms or changing terminologies: Squatters to informal settlers, underground economy to informal sector, OCW to OFW, evacuees to internally displaced people, persons with disabilities to differently able persons, old people to senior citizens, juvenile delinquents to youthful offenders, native Filipinos to indigenous peoples, new generation to millennials, third sex to LGBT community! I remember somebody wanted to change Philippines to Maharlika! ---------------------------- God’s Face: Although working with people in foreign and distant villages offers psychic rewards it is truly melancholic: you think of each day as the last day of your life, or the first day of another. God becomes real in every face of your poor beneficiaries. ---------------------------- Apple for the poor: I seldom eat apple, I thought the fruit is only for the rich, until I was forced to eat it - because of my Poor Doctor’s advice. ---------------------------- A famous US Army General once told his soldiers: Do not die for your country; let your SOB enemies die for their country. ---------------------------- Project designing: What is the best project design that can be done in a flood-hit cemetery? Cemetery organizing! ---------------------------- After 23 years of working with village people in 14 different countries I learned that the issue of poverty has been blown out of proportion by most “experts”. To the poor poverty is simply the absence of income to acquire basic needs, and loss of hope on the government to address their needs ---------------------------- Theory of Freedom: The beauty in democracy is there is freedom in almost everything. The problem is that freedom is anchored on the theory of natural selection: the strong eats the weak, the rich exploits the poor; it is survival of the fittest. Man tries to correct this through the social contract, but the contract is still onerous against the weak and against the poor. ---------------------------- Do you know that there are only two kinds of snakes? The male and the female! And there are only two kinds of insects, still the male and the female! O Ha! ---------------------------- Poor boy’s toys: When I was a young boy was already happy and contented with toy cars, I made from banana trunks with sarsaparilla (tanzan or cover of coke) as the wheels. Today when I see boys crying because their battery-powered cars do not work I feel lucky that we do not have them before. ---------------------------- Only training outputs: During my days as shop instructor in NYMC (now TESDA) we had memorable training project outputs: a sofa with uneven legs that the trainees justified as suffering from polio; typewriter repair training where the carriage does not complete the whole rail and the trainees justifies as a special one for daily time records; TV repair that the figures are horizontal and will only be vertical when you tap the housing, and the trainees would explain that sometimes the people inside also need to rest; and a training in coffin-making that is marketed as buy one-take one! ---------------------------- Insurance jokes: And then there were three life insurance agents convincing a client. Agent 1- My Company pays our clients within three days after the death. Agent 2- My Company pays within 24 hours after death. Agent 3- If our client falls from a 30-floor condo my company pays even before he hits the ground.