2nd day vacation-Phil. Issues

2nd day in ten day vacation:

hesitantly woke up. i was dragged out of be by our beloved mannag gamay. (note to self: must kill manang gamay for this). not only that but i was forced to eat breakfast in the state where my head wants so badly to throw itself back to the comforts of my two very vey comfortable pillows. it's just hard enough not squish under pressure but soft enough to give comfort. but once i lazily made my way to the looooong dining table where my mom, my lola and my brother only occupy the other end, i was awaken by the site of the delicious longganisa. the sight of it was not enough for my already awake stomach so i took one bite of it and the steamy rice and the angels all sung. this is life--(along with all the cholosterol i intook from that breakfast). next stop was grocery at Gaisano's (the nearest thing they have to Mall of Asia) and then we had to fetch Tita Ganda. in the afternoon we had lunch at home-it was that delish tinolang isda . i asked for patis. the dish sadly, they don't have it here in my lola's house. apparently, patis is not used here as much as it is in the luzon region. it's very weird though. patis is internationally known as fish sauce. hence, needless to say that it is made of fish. the process is somewhat simlar to making bagoong na isda. visayas is richer in seafood than luzon, so how come it is not used their when the most basic raw material is available at hand?

which brings me to so much questions.

imagine this. we are an agricultural country. rice is the staple food of the country. 70A% of our lands are rice fields.how come we import rice? mango is our national fruit. philippines is internationally known with our great dried mangoes. but, how come mangoes are very expensive in the philippines, so expensive in fact, that even an average income family on a daily basis considers it a luxury to buy a kilo of mangoes?

this is the irony of the philippines. the irony of the country we live in. we do not use what we have. if we do use what we have, we use it improperly. we do not patronize what we have. we'd rather make use of improted good and branded items for the sake of status symbol. more than half of the filipino youth's dream is to work outside the country and earn more.

it easily happens that we point our fingers to9 the government. after all, it's them who are i the news 24/7. but when one looks around closely, he will find even inside your own home, there would be a very simple answer as to why the philippines is STILL a third world country, surpassed by so many nations in Southeast Asia.