A storm is coming!

It is on its way. I woke up this morning with that inevitable feeling of summer ending. Considering that it has been raining continuously since the end of the Panagbenga - Baguio Flower Festival 2009 in February - this year’s summer season for Baguio and much of the Northern Philippines is an epic fail. The coming storm is just adding salt to the injury.

A major percentage of Baguio’s business income is derived during the tourist months from November to May. The absence of a real summer has shortened that period to November-February, that’s a full 3 months off the tourist season. The hotels and restaurant owners here must feel really squeamish right now. Business on the regular rainy season from June to October isn’t all that good, so this “absence of summer” will surely take its toll on profitability.

It’s hard enough to get your laundry to dry the past few months, and this weird weather patterns are sure to impact much of the tourism industry in the Northern Philippines. I just hope the coming storm wouldn’t make too much material damage and make something bad even worse.

I just have this strange feeling we’ll have “summer” weather this coming July and August in the Philippines.

The day after Earth Day: some thoughts

It’s the day after Earth Day here in Baguio, and the whole city is back to where it was, unmindful of the changing environment around it. For the past 4 years or so, the city’s main thoroughfare - Session Road - has been closed to traffic every Earth Day to make way for children to make pretty chalk drawings on the road. The road closure was also intended to make the air around the Central Business District a little bit cleaner than usual - I find this rather unrealizeic since the adjacent roads and streets are clogged with traffic for the whole day, maybe it’s more “Eco-friendly” not to close Session Road?

Some people would probably dismiss the road closure as another publicity stunt by the City Hall, but I do believe their intentions were clean, if not a bit misguided. Perhaps a scientific measurement of pollutants in the entire business district (not just Session Road) is warranted to compare regular days with Earth Day? The results could be quite interesting.

By now the frequent afternoon downpours have washed away the colorful chalk illustrations in Session Road and the ethnic-inspired concerts are mere echoes in the honking of the jeepneys. Earth Day 2009 has come and gone without teaching much of a real lesson to Baguio’s denizens.

Abandoned Twitter Insanity!

Just installed a new plugin… twitter-updater for WordPress! While the whole planet seems to be going all wacko over Twitter, I guess it’s time to completely jump on the bandwagon - updating my Twitter feed everytime I make a new post or edit an old post in my WordPress-powered blog seems like a nice proposition. Nevermind that Twitter has no business plan whatsoever or that Twitter is completely primitive compared to Plurk! You can download the twitter-updater plugin here, requires a self-hosted WordPress installation. My best buddy is complaining you can’t add plugins into his blog @WordPress.com without paying for it. LOL. Oh yeah, while were on the subject, don’t forget to follow me on the bluebird - Twitter.com/iGomi

Baguio Centennial Carplates: Where are the numbers?

I recently made a post about the Baguio Centennial Commission improperly using and illegally modifying the Philippine Centennial logo for their own needs. One of the Centennial Memorabilia that has the modified Philippine Centennial logo ribbon are the carplates that are now being used by dozens of vehicles around the country.

The design of the carplates should be considered a crime against humanity, with its gaudy yellow background and less than elegant markings. One major thing missing from these carplates are consecutive numbers: you know, just like real LTO-issued carplates so you can track down where and to who these plates were issued to?

The Baguio Centennial carplates don’t have any numbers. Where are the numbers?

While we can just blame this on an “honest” mistake by the so-called-designer, having no numbers on the plates does mean that there is no real way of accounting for these things that are being sold for a couple thousand pesos. No numbers also mean no real way to know who owns a particular plate, useful for accidents and unforseen problems that may involve the vehicle. Heck! I’d even surmise some wanna-be-bank-robbers could just slap on a pair of Baguio Centennial carplates and get away with the crime!

Not including individual unique numbers to the carplates is a huge oversight. Was this an intentional “mistake”?