Today is Friday, August 20, 2010 and it is now 1218 PM here in the South Bronx, New York City, USA.
Recap: I was talking about how some Filipinas scam sad white men online.
This entry: I am sitting at a table in the Mott Haven Branch of the New York City Public Library, reveling in all the printed materiel. As small as this library is it is almost heaven after the last couple of months in the Philippines. Even the most isolated part of that country has fluent English speakers but apart from a couple of tiny 1 person stalls in malls, and only then in the biggest of cities can one find English books. For that matter, there aren't that many book stores in native languages either.
I am reading a travelogue about the Mid East. I love seeing the region through the eyes of foreigners but only those who truly immerse themselves in the disparate cultures and Peoples. I have a habit of reading several books at the same time, switching as the fancy strikes me. Today I am only reading 2 books, the other being a huge compendium on Liberation Theology.
For those unaware, Liberation Theology is a distinctly left wing ideology where religious Catholics use their Catholicism to support (usually) violent liberation movements (easiest way to describe it).
If anyone used to read my BL Journal they might recall a time I took my (then) 8 year old sister-in-law Marian to a show at the Mt.Carmel Catholic Church, the village church in San Franz (San Francisco), our town in Mindanao. A Carmelite institution, usually staffed with foreigners, it also runs Mt.Carmel College, Rizza's alma mater, a K through 12th grade school (as well as the rest of the family)...though "12th Grade" is a bit of a misnomer since the Philippine School System is a 10 year system ( that is how I was able to marry Rizza when she was 15,and still have married her after she entered university). They are considering a change, but I doubt that will ever happen.
The show was by the Philippine celebrity Che Che Guitterez. As we entered the sanctuary, where the show was taking place, I couldn't help but notice how empty the pews were. Like most churches in the rural areas there, the outer walls were painted cinder blocks with circular arpertures,as much for decoration as for utility since they allow air to circulate freely.
All along the walls were brown faces pressing themselves into those openings as hard as they possibly could. Tickets had cost 600 Pesos, roughly 13 US Dollars, half a weeks pay for most... and most don't work.
I expected the priest, in this case a Filipino, to allow these poor and desperate people to enter once the show began. After all, once the show started they wouldn't be able to make any more money, right?
The slide show began, cheesy music and spoken word in Tagalog, a language not really understood in the south, even though it is basically the national language and a mandated subject in every school.
The doors stayed shut. I felt as if I wanted to beat that priest, to beat him bloody and shove his face through those openings, make him see what I was seeing. He was blind to his surroundings, most are but sometimes, very rarely a priest or Church Lay Worker comes, and they are touched. More than a couple have run off into the bush and joined the rebels. The most famous was Father Navarro, "The Barefoot Priest." He was especially noteworthy for coming from one of the island's richest families, the Navarro Clan of Surigao de Norte Province.
In my last entry, in Comments, Mariposa asked me why I hate Americans. I could answer any number of ways but my particular reason THEN related to something I sadly discovered about 3 weeks ago, in Quezon City, the part of Metro Manila where Jackie lives.
I had sought out a doctor to "write" for me. I have enough morphine, fentanyl and oxycodone to last maybe 3 years. Being the addict that I am, it is not enough. I can never feel secure unless I have an open conduit in obtaining these substances.
I finally found a doctor with the neccessary S2 Liscence, which allows him to write prescriptions for "Dangerous Drugs," in this case opiates/opioids. He was most obliging, to the point where he looked as if he was going to start crying. Why was he sad? He was ready and willing to write for me BUT was UNABLE. In late 2009 some fucken dickhead from Boston, 28 years old (I will leave his name alone, he has enough problems) decided he was going to do the same thing, only he didn't give a shit about anyone but himself.
He fucked the 2 doctors who obliged him, the pharmacy where he filled it, and 3 staff members of that pharmacy. He was getting massive amounts of Oxycontin (we have a French brand, Mundipharma, in the country). He had the doctors who were very naive, give him a bunch of scripts. He had them put the same date on all of the scripts, then filled them all on the same day at the same pharmacy!
Fast forward 4 months and the renewal of the pharmacy's Liscence. An auditor went over the books and of course notices this huge aberration. Then, he discovered that after that date the guy continued going to the pharmacy but didn't worry about prescriptions, getting the tabs over the counter.
All the people involved caught indictments including this dickhead American, but of course he happened to have left the country. It doesn't take much creativity OR effort to go to 8 or 9 pharmacies, or to stagger scripts, datewise.
Quezon City is tight as a drum now though I have yet to find about other parts of the Metro area. I have a gnawing feeling that other areas will have heard about this, especially pharmacies since only 1 retail chain carries opiates/opioids in the entire nation! Hospital Pharmacies charge twice as much, but hey, better than an American street corner, right?
Recap: I was talking about how some Filipinas scam sad white men online.
This entry: I am sitting at a table in the Mott Haven Branch of the New York City Public Library, reveling in all the printed materiel. As small as this library is it is almost heaven after the last couple of months in the Philippines. Even the most isolated part of that country has fluent English speakers but apart from a couple of tiny 1 person stalls in malls, and only then in the biggest of cities can one find English books. For that matter, there aren't that many book stores in native languages either.
I am reading a travelogue about the Mid East. I love seeing the region through the eyes of foreigners but only those who truly immerse themselves in the disparate cultures and Peoples. I have a habit of reading several books at the same time, switching as the fancy strikes me. Today I am only reading 2 books, the other being a huge compendium on Liberation Theology.
For those unaware, Liberation Theology is a distinctly left wing ideology where religious Catholics use their Catholicism to support (usually) violent liberation movements (easiest way to describe it).
If anyone used to read my BL Journal they might recall a time I took my (then) 8 year old sister-in-law Marian to a show at the Mt.Carmel Catholic Church, the village church in San Franz (San Francisco), our town in Mindanao. A Carmelite institution, usually staffed with foreigners, it also runs Mt.Carmel College, Rizza's alma mater, a K through 12th grade school (as well as the rest of the family)...though "12th Grade" is a bit of a misnomer since the Philippine School System is a 10 year system ( that is how I was able to marry Rizza when she was 15,and still have married her after she entered university). They are considering a change, but I doubt that will ever happen.
The show was by the Philippine celebrity Che Che Guitterez. As we entered the sanctuary, where the show was taking place, I couldn't help but notice how empty the pews were. Like most churches in the rural areas there, the outer walls were painted cinder blocks with circular arpertures,as much for decoration as for utility since they allow air to circulate freely.
All along the walls were brown faces pressing themselves into those openings as hard as they possibly could. Tickets had cost 600 Pesos, roughly 13 US Dollars, half a weeks pay for most... and most don't work.
I expected the priest, in this case a Filipino, to allow these poor and desperate people to enter once the show began. After all, once the show started they wouldn't be able to make any more money, right?
The slide show began, cheesy music and spoken word in Tagalog, a language not really understood in the south, even though it is basically the national language and a mandated subject in every school.
The doors stayed shut. I felt as if I wanted to beat that priest, to beat him bloody and shove his face through those openings, make him see what I was seeing. He was blind to his surroundings, most are but sometimes, very rarely a priest or Church Lay Worker comes, and they are touched. More than a couple have run off into the bush and joined the rebels. The most famous was Father Navarro, "The Barefoot Priest." He was especially noteworthy for coming from one of the island's richest families, the Navarro Clan of Surigao de Norte Province.
In my last entry, in Comments, Mariposa asked me why I hate Americans. I could answer any number of ways but my particular reason THEN related to something I sadly discovered about 3 weeks ago, in Quezon City, the part of Metro Manila where Jackie lives.
I had sought out a doctor to "write" for me. I have enough morphine, fentanyl and oxycodone to last maybe 3 years. Being the addict that I am, it is not enough. I can never feel secure unless I have an open conduit in obtaining these substances.
I finally found a doctor with the neccessary S2 Liscence, which allows him to write prescriptions for "Dangerous Drugs," in this case opiates/opioids. He was most obliging, to the point where he looked as if he was going to start crying. Why was he sad? He was ready and willing to write for me BUT was UNABLE. In late 2009 some fucken dickhead from Boston, 28 years old (I will leave his name alone, he has enough problems) decided he was going to do the same thing, only he didn't give a shit about anyone but himself.
He fucked the 2 doctors who obliged him, the pharmacy where he filled it, and 3 staff members of that pharmacy. He was getting massive amounts of Oxycontin (we have a French brand, Mundipharma, in the country). He had the doctors who were very naive, give him a bunch of scripts. He had them put the same date on all of the scripts, then filled them all on the same day at the same pharmacy!
Fast forward 4 months and the renewal of the pharmacy's Liscence. An auditor went over the books and of course notices this huge aberration. Then, he discovered that after that date the guy continued going to the pharmacy but didn't worry about prescriptions, getting the tabs over the counter.
All the people involved caught indictments including this dickhead American, but of course he happened to have left the country. It doesn't take much creativity OR effort to go to 8 or 9 pharmacies, or to stagger scripts, datewise.
Quezon City is tight as a drum now though I have yet to find about other parts of the Metro area. I have a gnawing feeling that other areas will have heard about this, especially pharmacies since only 1 retail chain carries opiates/opioids in the entire nation! Hospital Pharmacies charge twice as much, but hey, better than an American street corner, right?