Let's try empathy for a change

EMPATHY is an evolutionary necessity. 

It is the principle of self-preservation in practice because it enables us to understand and share the feelings of others. When we can place ourselves in someone else’s perspective — to walk in their shoes — we can respond appropriately to threats. 

That is why empathy is vital for our survival as a species.

However, it is disheartening to see this human imperative eroding from our collective psyché. 

Many Kagay-anons and Misamisnons seemingly haven’t recovered from the hateful rhetoric that targeted the news media community during the 2016 campaign.

​It has been nearly a decade, yet politicians appear to be carrying on the vitriol-laden narrative patterned after former President Rodrigo Duterte, who now faces the looming shadow of the International Criminal Court.

​Spreading hate has become routine. 

As I warned in a column years ago, apathy is the most unfortunate byproduct of impunity. 

I submit that empathy can trump apathy, but only if we fight to survive the “post-truth era” we now inhabit. 

How can we endure if we continue down this path of unbridled hostility against the Fourth Estate?

​The governor vs. the news media

In a flagrant display of hostility earlier this week, Misamis Oriental Gov. Juliette Uy did not merely accuse the media of bias; she weaponized their economic reality.

​Addressing provincial employees, she questioned whether journalists could survive on their meager incomes and then dangled personal financial assistance. 

She crossed a clear line — a gesture media groups rightly slammed as a thinly veiled attempt to purchase the silence and independence of the press.

The incident has garnered a sobering response. 

The Cagayan de Oro Press Club stated that “legitimate criticisms of public officials have been met not with transparency, but with vitriol.”

​Meanwhile, the National Union of Journalists in the Philippines-Cagayan de Oro Chapter noted that while Uy clarified she was not referring to all journalists, her failure to name specific individuals “drags the entire community” of ethical reporters.

​As the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas (KBP) correctly noted, there is a mechanism for addressing media misconduct, and it isn't found in broadsides delivered from a podium. 

Even the Capitol's own press corps was taken abacked by the governor's sweeping statement.

By ignoring due process in favor of blanket accusations, Uy risks creating a chilling effect. 

This brand of rhetoric is an intimidation tactic — a dangerous signal to send when the public is demanding transparency.

​Politics and evolution

This political strategy relies on what Dr. Richard Dawkins famously referred to as the "selfish gene." 

The Governor’s tactic appeals to the basest instinct of survival: Take the money, forget the community, feed yourself.

​We could debate whether self-preservation requires such selfishness. But as Dawkins wrote: “Let us try to teach generosity and altruism because we are born selfish... we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs.”

​When leaders trade empathy for intimidation, and transparency for transactions, they are betting on our "selfish genes" winning. 

They are betting that we are too hungry or too afraid to care about the truth.

​Why don’t we prove them wrong? 

Haven’t we had enough of the free-flowing hate? 

If we are to survive as a community in this toxic environment, we must upset the design. We must find our way back and assert our humanity.

BREAKING NEWS: Government does its job; officials offended by lack of coverage

SITIO KURUKUNGHO — A rare and miraculous event was witnessed today that shook the entire nation: Elected government officials, without hesitation, actually did their jobs.

According to “unconfirmed reports” (because no one wants to believe it), several mayors, governors, and congressmen were spotted in their offices — not to film themselves on TikTok while dancing — but to sign documents and attend to the public service duties they swore to uphold before the Bible and the voters during the last election.

However, instead of rejoicing, the faces of our beloved and esteemed leaders turned gloomy.

Lack of ‘fanfare’

In an exclusive interview with Hon. Ronald B. Utalo, spokesperson for the “United Association of Sensitive Officials,” he expressed their deep resentment.

“Sakit kaayo sa among buot,” said Utalo, wiping his tears with a tissue purchased using confidential funds.

“Nag-approve mi og budget para sa kanal. Nag-on time mi sa flag ceremony. Pero hain ang media? Hain ang mga reporter? Nganong walay niabot aron himuon kining front page news? Unsa na lang ang pulos sa among pagtrabaho kung dili mi daygon sa Facebook,” Utalo asked.

The report adds that many officials are grumbling because, for the past few years, they believed that doing the “bare minimum” or simply following their job description should be met with a fireworks display, a brass band, and a “Thank You” tarpaulin on every corner of Sitio Kurukungho.

This image is created by Gemini Pro

Public reaction

While the officials are eagerly awaiting their standing ovation, the public remains “confused.”

“Ha?! Balita diay na,” asked Emilio K. Sahos, a taxpayer accustomed to government work being like a solar eclipse — rarely seen and blinding if you stare at it too long. 

“Abi nako trabaho man gud na nila? Nganong kinahanglan man ta mag-party kung buhaton nila ang ilang trabaho nga gisweldoan sa buhis sa katawhan,” added Sahos.

Official statement

To address this “Lack of Appreciation” crisis, the leadership has now issued a memorandum urging the public: if you see an official actually working, please, for goodness sake, stop, clap, and take a video with the caption: “Best Public Servant Ever #Blessed.”

As of press time, the investigation continues on how officials can cope with this new reality where working is... just work, and not an act of heroism.

_________

DISCLAIMER: This post is a work of SATIRE/PARODY and is intended for humor and entertainment only.

The events and “officials” mentioned are fictional. If they resemble an actual person in office, don’t blame me for your dirty mind. This is not a factual news report.

On bread, butter, and the myth of the envelope

THERE is a pervasive, cynical whisper that floats around political circles — and sadly, sometimes echoes even within our own ranks.

It goes something like this: these politicians wonder if media practitioners could even eat regularly if they didn’t receive anything from them.

It’s a statement dressed up as a noble critique of corruption, but let’s be real: it serves as a lazy, blanket insult to a profession and a convenient erasure of actual hard work.

This is disconcerting. It betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what the news media community actually is.

We are not a monolith.

We aren’t a hive mind where every worker drone operates on the same frequency of compromise.

We are a motley crew of workers with divergent beliefs, various political colors, and different economic realities.

To assume that a journalist cannot feed their family without the patronage of a politician is to assume that journalism itself has zero market value. It ignores the reality of honest-to-goodness hard work.

This editorial cartoon was created by Gemini Pro.

In my 28 years in this community — 10 of which were spent grinding as a freelance correspondent for international news wires — I have a newsflash for the cynics: Nakapakaon pud baya ko sa akong banay gikan sa akong hinaguan.

International wire work is not for the faint of heart. It is paid in sweat, strict deadlines, and blood pressure spikes. It does not pay in favors; it pays in output. And believe it or not, that output puts food on the table.

More importantly, it paid for tuition. To date, I have sent my children through school on this income alone. I have seen them graduate, one by one. Isa na lang kulang.

That is the ultimate receipt.

When you raise a family on honest money, the food tastes different. It tastes like dignity — with a side of clear conscience.

To suggest that we need a politician’s “blessing” just to survive is to discount the thousands of column inches written, the photos filed, and the deadlines met by honest workers in this industry.

We are not all the same. And for those of us who have ground it out for decades, we don’t need the handout. We have the receipt.

The news media has a social contract with the citizens of the republic. Our role is to hold the powerful to account. That is why we are called the Fourth Estate — we are the check and balance to the other three.

Here’s a wild idea for the onion-skinned politicos: How about you do your job, and we’ll stick to ours?

The emperor’s new ‘crisis communications’

ATTACKING local media with your “crisis comms,” composed of supposed ideologues of media past, is not how you tackle the questions of Kagay-anons.

It is, to put it mildly, a strategic and tactical error of the highest order.

Questions of accountability, transparency, and governance are not mosquitoes to be swatted away by your brigade of known spin doctors, paid hacks, and trolls; they are the bedrock of the office you hold. 

Threatening broadcasters to shut up because they are not cowing to the narrative you are selling is a tactic that belongs in a black-and-white newsreel from the 1970s, not in a modern, aspirational metropolis. 

This is not how a democratic city is supposed to function, nong.

You seem to be operating under the delusion that if you muzzle the weatherman, it will stop raining. 

But the rain — and the traffic — remains.

Let us speak of the traffic woes of the city. 

While the City Engineer’s office proudly releases lists of “233 completed infrastructure projects,” the daily reality for the commuter suggests otherwise. 

We are told of P97 million allocated for flood control projects extending into 2026 to prevent another Sendong, yet the streets of the highway remain a parking lot at the slightest drizzle. 

The disconnect between the press release and the pavement is jarring. 

One has ample time to contemplate the existential void while idling near the stalled drainage projects that seem to serve as monuments to bureaucratic inertia rather than engineering solutions.

And then, the matter of the “Task Force Basura.”

It is a branding triumph, certainly — giving a military-sounding name to the basic parochial function of picking up trash. But why did it require a “Task Force” and an “ultimatum” to solve a problem that should never have existed? 

While the administration now trumpets the arrival of a new contractor to clear the backlog, the stench of the previous months lingers. It raises the question: if the system was working, why the sudden need for emergency measures?

You’re protesting the allegations with the vigor of a man trying to convince a mirror he is handsome.

“The gentleman doth protest too much,” Shakespeare might have noted. 

Lest we forget the water crisis that forced you to declare a State of Emergency earlier this year. When the dispute between the COWD and the bulk water supplier threatens to turn the taps dry, it is not an “act of God” or “force majeure” — it is a failure of foresight and contract management.

It is failed act of a micro-managing, overly-sensitive, political ignoramus.

Governance is not about winning the morning news cycle.

It is about ensuring the garbage truck arrives without a press conference, the traffic flows without a police escort, and a weekly social welfare service that doesn’t need to be named after you — an elected official.

You cannot PR your way out of a traffic jam. 

You cannot spin a pile of uncollected trash into gold. 

And you certainly cannot bully a city into believing that competence is present when the evidence of its absence is parked, unpaid, and uncollected, right outside their door.

Pfft.

Why Gen X was built for this modern dystopia

THERE is a prevailing, somewhat patronising narrative circulating in the ether of social media commentary. It suggests that Gen X — the “forgotten middle child” sandwiched between the sheer demographic weight of the Boomers and the cultural dominance of Millennials — has been blindsided by the volatility of the 2020s.

The argument posits that analog-native Gen Xers, now moving into their 50s, are bewildered by the erosion of institutions, the rise of digital surveillance, and the collapse of the “normal” world.

Please, disabuse yourselves of this notion. 

To suggest Gen X didn’t see these changes coming is to fundamentally misunderstand the curriculum on which we were raised. We are not bewildered. We are vindicated.

If anything, Gen X is the only demographic that has been waiting for this exact scenario since we were dropped off at the movie theater in 1985. We didn’t sleepwalk into this dystopia; we have the original scifi paperback copies of the user manual.

The hybrid advantage

The primary reason Gen X wasn’t caught off guard is technical. We possess a unique anthropological distinction: we are the last generation to have a fully analog childhood and the first to have a fully digital young adulthood.

We recall a world where information was scarce and had to be physically retrieved from a library, yet we were also the ones who laid the fibre optic cables, dialed into the first BBS boards, and built the early architecture of the internet. 

We do not view technology as “magic,” as some older generations might, nor do we view it as an innate extension of our limbs, as Gen Z might. We view it as a tool — and often, a weapon.

We were the beta testers for the digital age. We saw the promise of connectivity, but we also grew up reading William Gibson and watching WarGames. 

We knew from the start that the machine could turn on you. When algorithms began radicalising populations and privacy evaporated, Gen X didn't gasp in shock. 

We simply nodded and thought, "Yes, this is exactly what the cyberpunk novels warned us about."

Raised on dystopia

Culturally, narratives of inevitable progress did not coddle us. While the Boomers had the optimism of the post-war boom and Millennials were promised that higher education guaranteed success, Gen X was fed a steady diet of skepticism.

Look at our pop culture touchstones. RoboCop wasn't just an action movie; it was a satire on the privatisation of public services and corporate overreach. 

They Live was a treatise on subliminal consumerist control. The music of the early 90s — grunge, industrial, alternative — was steeped in a rejection of the mainstream and a deep distrust of “selling out.”

We were raised on the idea that the “system” was inherently corrupt, that corporations were not your friends, and that the shiny veneer of society was likely hiding something rotting underneath. 

Consequently, the current global crisis of trust in institutions — media, government, finance — feels less like a catastrophe and more like a confirmation of our baseline hypothesis.

The latchkey resilience

Then there is the sociological aspect. We were the “Latchkey Kids.” We came home to empty houses, cooked our own meals, and solved our own problems because the adults were busy. This instilled a feral kind of self-reliance that is paying dividends today.

In a modern era defined by the gig economy, remote work, and the breakdown of social safety nets, the Gen X mentality of “no one is coming to save you” is a survival mechanism. 

We are accustomed to figuring it out on the fly. We are comfortable with solitude. We are used to navigating chaos without a chaperone.

When the pandemic hit and the structures of daily life dissolved, the panic was real. But for many Gen Xers, the isolation and the need to improvise felt oddly familiar. It was just a Tuesday afternoon in 1988, writ large.

The cynical realists

The mistake pundits make is confusing Gen X’s silence for ignorance. 

We aren’t shouting on TikTok or writing manifestos on Facebook because we generally don’t believe that shouting changes much. We are the cynical realists in the room.

We watched the Challenger explode live on TV. We watched the Berlin Wall come down and then watched the “End of History” morph into new, endless conflicts. 

We saw the Dot-Com bubble burst. We know that stability is an illusion and that change is usually violent and disruptive.

So, when you see a Gen Xer observing the current AI revolution, the political polarization, or the climate crisis with a look of grim detachment, do not mistake it for confusion or ignorance.

It is the look of someone who read the warning label on the package forty years ago, while everyone else was just excited about the new toy and you were just in your daddy’s ball sac.

We knew this was coming. We’ve just been waiting for the rest of you to catch up.

Oh, if you’re wondering what the gibberish at the beginning of this article — that was the sound of success, the sound of connection to the future that we saw coming. 

A tale of two Uys

IN the political theater in this particular corner of Northern Mindanao, one surname looms large with an almost gravitational pull toward centralized authority: Uy. Specifically, we speak of two distinct, yet strangely mirrored, figures: Cagayan de Oro City Mayor Rolando ‘Klarex’ Uy and Misamis Oriental Governor Juliette T. Uy. They are not related by blood, but they are bound by a shared political DNA marked by a distinct brand of micromanagement and a fascination with control. The uncanny parallels begin with their respective bureaucracies. It’s a running gag — or perhaps a grim, perpetual reality — that government workers under both administrations have experienced the peculiar stress of delayed salaries. One might imagine this isn’t due to poor budgeting, but rather a final, meticulous check by the top, ensuring every single peso aligns perfectly with the executive vision. After all, if the Mayor or Governor hasn’t personally approved the decimal point, is the salary truly earned? This penchant for control extends effortlessly to the information highway. Both Uys have nurtured their own in-house “news media” outlets — a perfectly normal exercise, of course, for public servants who wish to ensure their good deeds are reported with maximum, unfiltered clarity. The city has its “Barkadahan,” and the province, the more formal “Capitol Press Corps.” It’s an efficient system: why bother with the messy objectivity of independent journalism when you can have a dedicated channel broadcasting the official narrative, complete with complimentary photo ops? Ultimately, the tale of the two Uys is a definitive study in control issues. From the specifics of delayed paychecks to the macro-level of media messaging, their shared approach suggests that governing is less about strategic delegation and more about being the sole conductor of the orchestra, the lead actor, and the script supervisor. One can only hope that, for the sake of efficient public service, their commitment to control doesn’t accidentally extend to controlling the release of the next batch of employee paychecks.

Garbage in, garbage out

IF irony had a landfill, Cagayan de Oro’s new garbage contractor, Standard Systems, would have just dumped the first load.

On its grand debut as the city’s newest waste management savior, Standard Systems managed to prove that trash collection is, indeed, an art — an abstract one. 

Within 24 hours, its shiny new fleet was already making headlines: one truck crashed, another couldn’t fit through the city’s narrow streets, and a third — the star of the show — reportedly lacked an OR-CR. Because what better way to haul garbage than with an unregistered vehicle?

This, of course, from the same administration that promised a “qualified service provider to collect, haul, and dispose of municipal solid waste and perform street sweeping across all 80 barangays,” as the Bids and Awards Committee proudly stated. 

The City Local Environment and Natural Resources Office even assured us that “this contract seeks to maintain the city’s cleanliness, safeguard public health, and minimize environmental hazards.”

Maybe they meant emotional hazards, because residents are certainly feeling trash trauma now.

The Terms of Reference (TOR) also required that “all trucks must have LTO registration, GPS, warning devices, sound systems, and proper markings.” 

It’s hard to miss the poetry there — a registered truck requirement for a contractor whose truck can’t even pass an LTO checkpoint. 

Perhaps the missing registration is part of a “minimalist” compliance strategy.

Then there’s the matter of those 10-wheeler dump trucks. According to the TOR, Standard Systems must field “20 units of 10-wheeler dump trucks (22 cubic meters)” to serve the city. 

A noble idea, if Kagay-an’s inner barangays weren’t built like a maze for matchbox cars. Watching a 10-wheeler attempt a U-turn in Macasandig or Lapasan is like watching a whale try to swim in a kiddie pool — majestic, but tragic.

And the pièce de résistance? The accidents. Multiple, on day one. Because nothing says “operational readiness” like trash trucks colliding with parked cars before they even reach the dump. You can almost hear the city’s P90-million project budget whisper, “I told you so.”

Still, let’s be fair. Maybe it’s all part of the plan — a high-stakes performance art piece titled “The Hauling of Accountability.” 

After all, the TOR warns that “violations such as missed collection schedules, uncovered trucks, or unclean vehicles incur P5,000 per day per violation.” 

By that measure, the city might finally earn something back from this contract — in penalties.

Meanwhile, Kagay-anons, who were promised “daily garbage collection and street sweeping citywide” and a minimum of “315 tons per day” of trash cleared, now find themselves tiptoeing around plastic mountains, wondering if they should just rent their own tricabs to finish the job.

Kagay-an didn’t want much — just clean streets and working trucks. What it got instead was a crash course in how not to run a waste management system. 

But hey, at least the garbage isn’t lonely. 

It’s got plenty of company now — bureaucracy, incompetence, and a few dented parked cars.

Because here in the City of Golden Friendship, even the trash gets a warm welcome.

Goodbye, George

“In the fear and alarm, you did not desert me, my brother in arms.” ― Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms [1985]

 I LOST a dear friend. George Bagsic, one of the popular folksingers in the city died of cardiac arrest on Friday night.

 He told me his family was into folk music in Olongapo. His partner, who had since become his intimate partner, is a resident here. He relocated here in Cagayan de Oro after a contracted gig in South Korea.

 We first met under competitive circumstances. There was an acoustic playing contest in Butuan City and I enlisted as a contestant. He wasn’t but I was determined to outplay him — in musician’s lingo — lagyan. But he rose to the challenge. He also played his best piece.

 Weeks later, I saw him fetching water in our neighborhood communal faucet. We were both surprised that we were neighbors. From then on our friendship flourished. He became my brother from another mother.

 I remember that time when we broke in my brand new component. We used an LCD projector and enjoyed a concert like we were there by sitting on the floor, with a picnic like banig with a bottle of rum, ice, and two glasses.

 The skill he taught me with the guitar will his legacy to me. I remember he taught me one particularly difficult A chord structure — A major 9th dominant +13. He also taught me the creative phraseology of certain melodies.

 His last text message to me was on March 16. It was a memo for the performers at a resto-bar he was playing at.

 “Please be advised that our acoustic (performances) will be suspended…starting tomorrow March 17, 2020. Wait for further notice (when) to resume,” the memo reads.

 He was anxious because he lived from gig to gig. He had no day job like I had when I used to “lagare” the local bars with him before. Music was literally his bread and butter.

BURGOS STREET MUSIC COLLECTIVE

 With the bars in Cagayan de Oro closing as part of the preventive measures in containing the contagion, he was clearly in dire straits. He was at his wit’s end as to where to get the money to buy their next meal. His heart gave out.

 When I replied with a sad emoticon to his text message, he replied with a smiling emoticon with a halo. Rest easy, my dear friend. You will be missed.

Flygate Kagay-anons

CAGAYAN de Oro has lately found itself riding a wave of stomach-related illnesses sloshing through urban neighborhoods.

🎶 Whoo…hoy! Ayaw pagbalod. 🎶

A mass movement unlike the one the city saw last Sunday — this time of the bowel variety.

In other words, business as usual in a country where diarrhea is still treated less like a public health failure and more like a natural disaster.

The fascinating bit isn’t the outbreak itself, but the collective yawn outside Northern Mindanao. Even social media — that great amplifier of idiotic outrage — has barely burped.

If this were happening in NCR or Baguio, you’d expect hourly updates, DOH briefings with infographics, maybe even a temporary water-rationing scandal. At the very least, a “WALANG PASOK” banner on Facebook daily.

But because it’s “just” Cagayan de Oro…

🎶 Krik…krik…krik 🎶

Same old story: disasters in Mindanao are tragedies only to Mindanaoans. 

A cholera scare in BGC would be a national emergency; in Kagay-an it’s a quirky footnote, filed between #sanaolCarmen and a multi-million boulevard closed to traffic.

That shrug should worry everyone. 

Waterborne diseases don’t check plane or bus tickets before traveling. Today it’s Kagay-an; tomorrow, your city’s tap.

Still, as long as the problem stays “down south,” the rest of the archipelago acts immune.

Enough self-pity. We are, after all, the e-gateway to Northern Mindanao [pun intended]. We are the new ‘flygates.’

Here’s a modern civic trick: people get sick, officials point at “contaminated water,” and then perform the ritual dance — tests, press releases, reassurances.

Right now, the City Health Office has sent samples to DOH-10, restaurants have quietly stopped serving free water and ice, and everyone is waiting to see what’s what.

But if you want to know why your stomach is playing percussion, just step outside: look at the sidewalks, the Cagayan River, and the perennially flooded highway in the ironically named Barangay Kauswagan.

For months, residents have posted photos of uncollected garbage while officials wrestle with a contractor that can’t (or won’t) collect on schedule. The city council is even mulling giving every barangay its own garbage truck because the current system is collapsing.

And here’s why that matters: garbage isn’t just ugly, it’s a five-star hotel for bacteria, flies, and rats. It clogs drains. It floats. It seeps into shallow wells and roof tanks.

Then the rains come — during the “ber months” — and all that trash turns into a mobile contamination unit, delivered by floodwater straight into where we keep our drinking water.

That’s not speculation; that’s human behavior plus government neglect.

We’ve already seen flash floods this year that stranded people and swept away cars. Combine that with months of festering trash and you’ve got a recipe: pathogens hitch a ride on floodwater into homes and cisterns.

People drink, get sick. The Cagayan de Oro Water District insists its supply is safe. Restaurants stop serving tap. The health office wipes its hands.

Yes, COWD says its pipelines tested negative. But that doesn’t answer the tank-in-your-yard question, nor does it stop restaurants and households from treating tap water like poison.

That’s the uncomfortable theater: a clean central supply can still be sabotaged by roof tanks caked with bird poop or by streets so jammed with garbage they turn into septic rivers with every downpour.

Complaints about garbage aren’t just about bad selfies — they’re the city’s early warning system for the next health crisis.

So what should happen, besides the obligatory press conferences and “we’re investigating” FB posts?

Start with the obvious and unsexy: enforce collection schedules. Audit and, if necessary, fire useless contractors.

Oh wait — we didn’t even bid out a new contract until the old one expired. Only then did the city scramble for a new schmuck.

Meanwhile, inspect restaurants and building tanks. If they’re testing positive, fix them — instead of wedding old couples in the hinterlands.

Yes, people will bitch and moan about budget lines and tender processes. But the alternative is getting used to waves of gastrointestinal misery.

So to the water district, city hall, and contractor: congratulations! #wootwoot 

You’ve cleared stage one of this civic drama — denial and testing. 

The hard part is stage two: accountability and action.

If Cagayan de Oro really wants to live up to its “City of Golden Friendship” brand, maybe start by making sure visitors aren’t greeted by floating trash.

And if you’re a resident with a roof tank: for the love of chlorine, clean it. 

Kagay-an can’t save you if you’re swimming in last month’s garbage and calling it “communal compost.”

The ber months are coming. They don’t care who’s in charge. Pfft