A Meralco Stratagem To Remind You To Pay Your Doggone Bills.
Filed under: Bullshit Meister, True History, Strategy
I currently live with my family in perhaps the sloppiest municipality in the province of Laguna (no thanks to an inutile mayor every concerned citizen should assassinate for the sake of a healthy and safe society). And last night, while we were watching primetime news, the power went off for about two seconds (OK, it wasn’t the mayor’s fault – but he still sucks).
Curses of disbelief, frustration, disappointment, anger, frothed forth from our surprised selves, especially since my wife and I wouldn’t be too happy and relieved leaving our kids behind with their nanny without electricity that night.
But mercifully, it went back immediately.
Such short brownouts brought memories of countless other seconds-long brownouts I’ve encountered in my lifetime.
What causes them?
I started imagining a couple of electricity guys from a power facility whose responsibility is to stand up in a file holding out fat electric wires with both hands for hours –immobile– during their shift, so that the flux of power supply moves normally. All of a sudden, one of the workers’ arms got numb due to weariness and sleepiness, and the wire which supplies electricity to our town accidentally fell from his arms – and that minor incident created a huge domino effect all over our municipality, killing off the lights. But he was quick to act, swooping down on the wire to continue his statue-like state, and bringing back electricity in the process…
My crazed imaginings were disrupted when my wife said that Meralco must be warning the public of settling their unpaid accounts the next day. She said that short brownouts are but foreboding reminders of dark days ahead if you don’t pay your bills. Which is, of course, fair enough.
But if only Apo Marcos’ Bataán nuclear power plant came into fruition a few decades ago, you wouldn’t even think that Meralco’s top brass are capable of being fair (and practicing true public service — heck, private business ain’t public service, anyway). Darn, if it only came into being, the Filipino people wouldn’t have to trouble themselves of paying an atrocious electricity bill — reputed to be the highest in Southeast Asia.
Hmmm. Lighting quick brownouts reminding people to settle their accounts promptly? Posible. It sure did remind us to pay for ours the next day. But it just occured to me that each Meralco account holder has different due dates — it’s unlikely that Meralco “warns” its account holders belonging to a specific due date. Otherwise, there would be short-lived brownouts everyday. But there really are brownouts everyday. Well, not in the “glorious” town of San Pedro…
Tsk. That wife of mine. And her theories. She’s beginning to sound like me.
But what if she’s correct?
Anyway, whatever major loser, Meralco still sucks.
PS: Watch out for ALAS FILIPINAS (Philippine Wings) on New Year’s Day, 1 de enero de 2007. Stay tuned… 
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December 15th, 2006 at 6:17 pm
we came to visit the municipal hall of sanpedro to propose a charitable project and quite frankly sp mayor does suck. it’s like asking our team “what’s in it for me?” when it was meant for the less fortunate comes along a dyna-sour to end it all. im not surprised to see an article which includes ‘his’ perfidy to the people of s.p. laguna
people are quite friendly in your place except for ‘ehem-eHIM’, he needs to look into not only the electricity issues but the rubbish & ‘estero’-flooding as well.
wake me up when it’s time to kick some crony’s a$$
December 16th, 2006 at 3:29 am
Amigo
Me and my family moved to San Pedro, Laguna on 10 May 2004, exactly on the day that Gloria Macapal “Aray ko!” was screwing the votes of the legenday Pinoy hero Fernando Poe, Jr.
Being an urban kid my whole life, I was so excited moving in to a nearby province (my female cousin’s husband, a native of San Pedro, was the one who looked for a place for us). We moved there for a variety of reasons: first, houses for rent there are cheap and just fine for a beginning family; secondly, its proximity to Metro Manila, our place of work.
Another reason was my passion for history. Everything provincial to me speaks something about Philippine history.
When my cousin and her husband (¿bayáw din ba ang tauag sa asaua ng pinsan?) toured me in their car, I was expecting to find a provincial setting, much like what Manila folks perceive of Calambâ and Los Baños (Laguna’s two most popular towns).
But what I found in San Pedro, the gateway to Laguna, was disappointing.
Laguna is supposed to be one of the leading provinces in the Philippines in terms of tourism (and even ecotourism). What met us on the way there was a smaller replica of Pásig River, a mini-Tondo slum, Sogo Hotel, potholes, dilapidated monuments, garbage everywhere, etc.
Now, for about a year, the streetlights in the main street of the barangáy where we live has had no electricity! Literally, our lives are in danger whenever we go outside at night for our work (me and my wife both work in call centers, night shift) because the streets of San Pedro are full of hooligans and rugby-sniffing kids and toothless pimps with their smelly hos.
And one evening, when I wasn’t wearing my glasses, I literally fell into a…
Wait just a second here… hmmm. I think I’ll have to write a separate blog about the sad plight of the people of San Pedro de Tunasán, Laguna.
Stay tuned.
Felicísimo Vierneza, ¡tú alcaldía no vale nada, pendejo!
May 12th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
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