Cock Fighting is Easy Money

Seriously take a look at all the money you could win all for doing nothing but pitting one chicken against another:

Now let's say you win all ten spots. That would be sweet and you'd be getting 65,000 pesos. Pretty good right?

http://www.sabong.net.ph/forum/showthread.php?75457-Cost-in-raising-Gamefarm-in-PI

This guy estimates that it costs 47,500 pesos per month to raise 250 roosters.  That's 570,000 pesos per year.  Which is $11,400 at todays exchange rate.  This estimate is four years old so the cost has probably risen.  Also the less cocks you raise the less money it will cost.

570,000 per year with a one time win of 65,000 pesos is hardly a profit. In fact it's still a loss.  But if you keep at it who knows?  Your cocks will probably become better fighters and you can enter more profitable tournaments.  

You might even make it to the BIG TIME!

World Slasher Cup is also known as the "Olympics of Cockfighting"

The cup is the high end of global cockfighting. To enter a single bird in the competition costs $1,750, more than half a year’s salary for the average Filipino.Wealthy owners often have more than just the money; they have dedicated farms and full-time trainers caring for hundreds of fowl that could sell for well over $1,000 apiece. Vaccines, antibiotics, vitamins, and supplements are all part of the modern game fowl’s life. Traditional methods of revving up your bird for a fight, like slipping cayenne up its anus, have given way to pricey steroids and other powerful drugs.  

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/12/cockfighting_and_chicken_history_the_world_slasher_cup_in_the_philippines.html

With all that potentially easy money no wonder there is a rooster in every yard and tied to every pole. Who would want to miss out on the chance of being able to tell the story of how you rose up through the ranks and won a whole lot of money at the "Olympics of Cockfighting?" 

There are, of course, other stories. There is the young villager who spent all his hard-earned money saved from an overseas job, and the children who suffer from malnutrition while their father’s roosters live a well-fed life. For the millions packed into Manila’s sprawling slums, cockfighting offers a fast way up the socioeconomic ladder or a quick tumble into indigence. And while the birds are famously pampered outside the ring, most end up dead inside it.

Of course, like the Highlander, there can be only one and that one will probably not be you.  So that is 570,000 pesos (or less depending on how many birds you raise) that could feed your family, buy medicine, procure dental care, buy clothes and slippers, pay for schooling, and pay the bills all flushed right down the toilet. 

Or rather, stuffed down some cock's throat.

Flip-Flops on the Job Site

What's up with Filipinos wearing flip-flops or slippers on the job site?  It's just not safe at all.  

These are all mundane everyday examples of disregarding safety on the job site in the Philippines.  But the guy below really takes the cake in terms of stupidity and being unsafe.

So they decided to demolish a building and they have an excavator digging up the rubble and depositing it in a truck.  

On top of the truck is this guy. I guess his job is to make sure all the rubble is evenly sorted so the excavator can deposit the maximum amount. But what is he wearing?  Shorts and a t-shirt. No hard hat.  No pants.  No gloves.  No long-sleeved shirt.  No eye protection.  And......

No boots!  He is wearing slippers! Does he not realise he could step on a sharp rock or piece of metal or some other piece of rubble and puncture his foot?  

How is he even allowed on the site dressed like that?

This guy is a tragedy just waiting to happen.  At any moment the excavator could drop a load and the rubble fall right on top of him rendering instant death or serious injury. This is not like in the above pictures where the worker is in a relatively safe spot.  This is a demolition zone.  If you look carefully at the first picture you will see a "Men At Work" sign acknowledging this is a construction site and you will see a man walking around towards the far right.

Who is he?  The foreman?  He is not dressed right either.  He's not wearing a hardhat and it looks like he's not wearing steel-toe boots.

To be completely honest this is not always how it is.  There are several construction sites around town right now where the workers are dressed appropriately in hard hats, boots, eye protection, and all the rest.  I think the difference is that those sites are high profile projects where the city is making a huge investment and therefore there are a lot of eyes watching.

These workers are wearing the appropriate PPE

But those sites are the exception and not the rule.  The rule is "get it done no matter what." Workers dressed inappropriately for the job is too common a sight. The Philippines needs an office like OSHA to make sure working conditions are safe.

Oh wait, they already have an OSHA office.  

http://www.oshc.dole.gov.ph

The problem, like many problems in the Philippines, is enforcement.  No one enforces the laws.

And that puts everyone at risk.

Coroner's office ignores basic safety protocols

So they found the headless body of the German who was executed by Abu Sayyaf on February 26. Now the coroner has to do an inquest.  It's all standard procedure of course.

Standard procedure?  To wear shorts and slippers in the examination room?

Obviously the guy pointing to the dead body is the lead man.  The head honcho.  The man in charge. Why is he not wearing the proper safety equipment?  Everyone else is.

Were there not enough gowns to go around?  Did he get a 3am phone call and have to rush over? Is he too important to have to put on a gown? Did he figure, "I'm not going to be doing the actual examination so it doesn't matter?"

Seems doubtful.  

Why is following safety protocols such a difficult matter in the Philippines?

Too many questions.  Never a satisfactory answer.  

A Damaged Culture

"A Damaged Culture" is an article published in The Atlantic in 1987. It is a must read for anyone interested in delineating the reasons for the economic and political failure of the Philippines. It is a an "essay on how a culture of dependence and corruption should be held responsible for the despairing conditions of America’s (former and sole) Asian colony, the Philippines."  An article from 2013 titled "Why the Philippines Failed" references the Atlantic article thereby accepting the fact that nothing has changed and the Philippines remains a failed nation.

Below I have posted a paragraph that sums up a lot of what is in the article.  The author discusses the ousting of Marcos and the newly elected Corazon Aquino as well as Smoky Mountain and what it says about the Filipino spirit. He also touches on the sharp divide between rich and poor.  His main thesis is "a failure of nationalism," a real nationalism that embraces all your countrymen not just those within the family circle and then boasts emptily of a love for country, is to blame for the problems in the Philippines. Read the whole article for yourself and reflect on how little has really and fundamentally changed in thirty years.  

"For more than a hundred years certain traits have turned up in domestic descriptions and foreign observations of Philippine society. The tradition of political corruption and cronyism, the extremes of wealth and poverty, the tribal fragmentation, the local elite’s willingness to make a separate profitable peace with colonial powers—all reflect a feeble sense of nationalism and a contempt for the public good. Practically everything that is public in the Philippines seems neglected or abused. On many street corners in downtown Manila an unwary step can mean a broken leg. Holes two feet square and five feet deep lurk just beyond the curb; they are supposed to be covered by metal grates, but scavengers have taken the grates to sell for scrap. Manila has a potentially beautiful setting, divided by the Pasig River and fronting on Manila Bay. But three-fourths of the city’s sewage flows raw into the Pasig, which in turns empties into the bay; the smell of Smoky Mountain is not so different from the smell of some of the prettiest public vistas. The Philippine telephone system is worse than its counterparts anywhere else in non-communist Asia—which bogs down the country’s business and inconveniences its people—but the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company has a long history of high (and not reinvested) profits. In the first-class dining room aboard the steamer to Cebu, a Filipino at the table next to mine picked through his plate of fish. Whenever he found a piece he didn’t like, he pushed it off the edge of his plate, onto the floor. One case of bad manners? Maybe, but I’ve never seen its like in any other country. Outsiders feel they have understood something small but significant about Japan’s success when they watch a bar man carefully wipe the condensation off a bottle of beer and twirl it on the table until the label faces the customer exactly. I felt I had a glimpse into the failures of the Philippines when I saw prosperous-looking matrons buying cakes and donuts in a bakery, eating them in a department store, and dropping the box and wrappers around them as they shopped."

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1987/11/a-damaged-culture/505178/ 

WARNING: Filipinos at Work!

Some guys from PLDT came by the neighbourhood to install a cable:

Why do Filipino linemen never have a bucket truck? Is PLDT really hurting that much for funds? Why are there three guys just standing around? Why is safety never number one? 

It's amazing how safety here always takes a backseat to getting the job done.  Something tells me that if one were to really study workplace accident statistics for the Philippines the numbers would be quite high.

Overseas Filipino Workers aka OFWs

Working conditions in the Philippines are horrid.  The hours are long, the pay is niggardly, and on some occasions one must actually live at their job usually sleeping upstairs or in the back in the living area. Requirements for even the most menial jobs require a college degree and no one wants to higher an ugly person or anyone over 25. The worker must pay for countless background checks and proofs of identity and if he is lucky enough to land a job he must pay even more for uniforms and training. And after paying thousands of pesos just to earn a few hundred a day he is at the whim of the employee who is under no obligation to keep him on.  He could be let go anytime for any reason.

One of the more popular professions in the Philippines is nursing.  There are many nursing students and many unemployed nurses in this country.  It seems like there is a real surplus of nurses.  Nurses are treated no better than slaves.  When they start working at a hospital they must work an entire year for free.  There are no paid internships here.  There is simply slave labor.

So many problems working here and trying to live on stingy pay.  That is why the biggest goal of many Filipinos is to leave the country for a job with better pay.

It's not always roses out there though.  Many Filipinas are sent out to Hong Kong or Dubai as maids.  Many of them are treated well but plenty more are abused by their employers. 

There is not a house in the Philippines that does not have a family member wether distant to near who is an OFW.  These workers dutifully send their pay back home while their family sits on their lees reaping the fruit of another's labor.  

OFW's account for 13.5% of the GDP with $20 billion coming in to the country each year.  The Philippines is not a self-sustaining country.  Without these remittances the Philippines would be in worse trouble than they are now.  

This is a situation that should not be.  A strong nation is one that is self-sustaining with a strong industrial base. The Philippines weakens itself by giving every incentive for its citizens to leave the country.  

Just more fail from the land of the Failipino.

Typical Filipino Linemen

In the Philippines the power often goes out. In my city the power company regularly schedules brown outs that last from 8-12 hours. The alleged reason is the need to work on the lines. They don't advertise this on their webpage.  They advertise it in the notes section of their Facebook page.  Why does the local power company have a Facebook account? Because everyone has their nose buried in their phone  browsing Facebook.  It's as if that's the only website they know here. But that's material for another post. Suffice it to say if you want to get information to Filipinos you have to do it through Facebook. But even so who thinks to look on Facebook for information that should be on the electric company's main site?  And they don't even publish it there.  It's Facebook only.

But back to the electrical situation here. Power lines are strung all across the city in a horrid mishmash and tangle of black lines.  Some lines even dangle precariously into the street.  Are they live?  Dead?  Who knows!  It's certainly dangerous to have power lines dangling in the street. Many of the wooden poles  hoisting these lines are rotted and toppling over which further heightens the danger of electrical fire or brownouts as well as death to passersby.  It's simply not a good situation in any way.

Here's a picture of a typical Filipino lineman.  No bucket truck.  No safety harness.  Just a ladder resting against a thick nest of power lines. Workers standing idly by not even attempting to secure the ladder. Working in the middle of the street on a busy day.  I have seen this exact type of hazardous work situation many times in the city. This is not atypical. In fact it's a very typical carryover of the DIY fix-it attitude that is prevalent here.  That's great if you are repairing your own electronic devices but not when you are repairing the power lines which give life to an entire city.

With such unsafe, unprofessional, hazardous, and potentially deadly workmanship is it any wonder the electricity fails so often here?