'www.inquirer.net'

This article appeared in the Youngblood section of Inquirer when taongbato was still twenty-something.

Living alone far from home with can sometimes be very lonely.

Fortunately, in this push button age of easy living, when high tech gadgets have turned the world into one big neighborhood and people no longer throw letters in cork-sealed bottles in oceans, I can always have an access to the news at home- from the loss of my promdi presidential bet to how Erap, with his comic antics, is turning the exalted office of the president into one giant cinema that amuses us no end, although nervously, and keeping us in suspense if we would still be laughing when the screen signals the end of the movie. Thanks to the wonder technology of our times, the Internet, home is just a click away.

Every early morning, before every one else tinkers at workstations in the laboratory where I’m working, I click on the Netscape and type www.inquirer.net. Ah, life is cool. Everything I want to know back home is just at the tip of my finger. If I miss the earliest subway ride in the morning and can’t be more punctual than the rest, then I choose to stay a bit longer in the evening so I won’t go home having an incomplete day.

Yesterday morning, I visited again Inquirer’s webpage. The banner story was about a presidential godchild being linked to the book scam. I yawned. This never-ending saga of book scandal involving Cabinet members, presidential relatives and mistresses was becoming boring and was getting nowhere.

Reading all these hysteria about senate inquiries, charges of white wash and squid tactics to divert attention, a former celluloid star crying foul and threatening a libel suit, a president calling his detractors names (that stopped short of being funny and started being phony) and Cabinet officials insisting on their innocence were totally sickening. In Japan and South Korea, once public officials are implicated in any anomaly, even if it has yet to be proven, people involved are sensible enough to hand over their resignation papers.

But in this wretched country called Philippines, where mutineers and kleptomaniacs become honorable senators, congressmen and Cabinet members and nincompoops, with distorted sense of values, making it to the ruling elite, everyone holds to his position like a leech holding onto his dear life. And like all other senate investigations, after the initial grandstanding and drum beating, this would all be forgotten and be left to rot in the dustbins.

I decided to skip the story and look for other encouraging pieces of news somewhere else on the computer screen. I dragged down the mouse to see the other events written on that day.

Just below the banner story was the news about our Philippine ambassador to the United States asking for a clemency for a Fil-American killer who was sentenced to die by lethal injection in Nevada. There are some shades of irony here, I said to myself. Back home, we were roaring wild in asking for the death of the child rapist Leo Echegeray and the pleas from various civic organizations including the Amnesty International and the European Community to reduce the death sentence into life imprisonment fell on deaf ears. This despite hard statistics proving that in some states in the U.S. where death penalty is imposed, crime incidence is just as the same as in the states where death penalty is not imposed. Either Erap was too busy attending weddings to check these facts or that the pleas from various civic organizations just passed easily through his other ear canal.

Scrolling still farther down, I read another news about a big foreign company closing shop and about 2,800 workers who are likely to loss their jobs. A prelude to a massive exodus of foreign companies that is yet to come?

On the right side of the computer screen, some of the stories from the weekly Inquirer magazine were listed down. I caught glimpse on some stories including Erap’s family tree and Siquijor’s secrets of sorcery. I dragged the mouse and clicked on the former.

There appeared on the computer screen was a cartoon illustration of our mighty Erap leaning on a giant tree a la James Dean, with the names of his highly extended family written over the branches and a heart and arrow etched at the center of its trunk. The drawing was accompanied by an article aptly titled “Father of the Country” . Bring in Madame Imelda who insisted of being called the “Mother of all Filipinos” and we got one big, happy and highly functional family.

I figured it would take me plenty of time to read the article if all the names of Erap's women and children were all listed down. So decided to let it pass and clicked back to the home page.

Siquijor’s sorcery secrets didn't interest me at all. I remembered that a few years back, a public official from this island was extremely bothered about this label attached to his place. He told the media that he would rather have Siquijor known for its white stretch of sand beaches rather than being associated with some dark world of voodoos and witches. I recalled reading another story printed in another magazine about a sorcerer, coming from the same region, who concocted his magic potions during Black Saturday. He believed that since Christ was still dead on this day, his esoteric potions would be more potent and thus would be highly effective. Talking about bad theology.

Just above the news headline on our mighty president skipping his visit to China, was a picture of a penitent in San Fernando, Pampanga, his back all bloody as he engaged in self-flagellation, a religious practice unique only in our country. This man believed that by doing what Christ had already done for us before, he would cleanse his sins and assure his place in heaven. Making a mental calculation of the number of people who engaged in self-flagellation every year and the amount of precious red substance that was shed, a significant liters of it could have been saved and donated to the Red Cross. I thought of those sick individuals who were in dire need of blood but cannot afford to buy some at commercial blood banks.

Earning a place in heaven involved more than self-flagellation and other religious pomposities. We could flog our physical bodies until we became black and blue but if we couldn’t flog our hearts and change the way we think, then our efforts of inflicting pain on ourselves would amount to nothing. Madame Imelda could walk on the church aisle on her knees until it would get bruised but if she remained unrepentant on the monstrosity of the crimes her family had done to the Filipinos, then her efforts of looking religious would remain a farce.

If self-flagellation was all we need to become better individuals, we could have required all our politicians and government leaders to undergo flogging before they could hold public office -and spare the rest of us all the miseries.

I sighed as I turned off the computer. I missed my homeland.