Locked Doors

Lack of trust. That is at the core behind almost every situation one might find strange in the Philippines. From barbed wire fences around every house to dark tint on all the car windows it is lack of trust and a fear of robbery or murder which motivates the actions of Filipinos.  It is why there are security guards with shotguns at grocery stores and malls.  It is also why the there is only one way in and out to said grocery stores and malls.

Take this picture from SM as a prime example.

Here to serve? No comment!  But take a look at the doors.  There are four doors and only one is open. Two of them are blocked by tables because management decided to set up an eating area in the front of the store. If you zoom in you can see that these doors are not just locked, they are padlocked.  Or rope locked. 

Can you say fire hazard? It is bad enough that the doors are inaccessible but in an emergency when everyone is panicking and time is of the essence these rope locked doors will turn out to be a very bad idea.

And it's all because there is no trust in the Philippines. Look at this entrance to Ayala Mall.

Everyone enters through one door and then they divide by sex to be searched by either a male or female guard. All the while a drug sniffing dog looks on. Why is there a drug sniffing dog at the mall?  This is not the first drug dog I have seen at the mall. Is the mall territory for drug dealers now?  Upstairs in this same mall is a fire door which has been taped shut.

Why is an emergency exit door taped shut? Don't ask me! How about another mall? This time Robinsons. Just like every other business this mall has one way in and one way out!

How has Robinsons Mall passed the fire inspectors examination when they lock their doors? If there was an emergency it would turn into a disaster because everyone would have to squeeze through one door.  The only reason the reason there is one entrance and exit on this side of the mall is because lack of trust. Gotta have a security guard at each door watching who goes in and out.

Check out the two entrances to this brand new hospital.

One of them is wide open with no gate and a security hut to watch over all comers. The second is barred shut with metal garbage. They couldn't even bother to install a proper gate. No doubt they boarded up this entrance because there is no security guard booth. So why not build one? Why must every entrance have an armed guard in the first place?  Because in the Philippines you can't trust anyone.

Lazy, Stupid Guard Blames Man He Wronged

One recent afternoon I took a taxi to visit a friend. The driver had to fork over his license to the guard in order to enter and was given a numbered card in return.

The driver waited while I was inside. Half an hour almost passed before we all left together. At the guardhouse the guard returned the license but it was not the right one. Turns out he had given it away to some other driver.

"What'd you do that for?", said the taxi driver.

"Well it's your fault. You stayed too long," was the actual reply from the guard. Unbelievable. This lazy guard, not paying attention to what he is doing, blames his mistake on the very man he has wronged! 

How stupid do you have to be to mess this up? You take the ID, put it a number slot, give the driver a numbered card for the slot it's in, the driver returns and you exchange the cards. Pretty simple. Oh and don't forget to visibly check the license with the driver to see if the face matches.

And this is not even an upscale gated neighbourhood. It's more like midlevel. The houses are all conjoined and who knows but it probably smells like burning trash often enough to make you hack and choke.

So now this driver is without a license.  I saw the back of the license he was mistakenly given as he was holding it and it was a Grab driver's ID. How many gated communities will the Grab driver be in and out of surrendering his ID before he realises it's not his? By then he will have forgotten where he lost his ID. This taxi driver's licence is gone and all because of some stupid, lazy guard who thinks he is doing a big important job protecting the gate.

Don't worry though. The poor guy got his license back the next day.

The ASEAN delegates are coming! Quick, hide the garbage!

ASEAN is hosting one of it's meetings in town.  I had no idea but I should have known something was up what with crews posting flags around town and there being a larger than normal police presence. Closer to the event location I saw a large PNP group with riot shields.  What for?  Do they really think someone is going to disturb the ASEAN meeting? And who would do such a thing?  I think they better stamp out the terrorists and quickly.

I was walking to the mall when I saw all those cops with riot shields and then I saw this:

They put up a new banner on the bridge.  They did this previously when the president visited.  I was dying laughing because it's such an obvious way to simply hide the garbage while the delegates are in town.  

Let's take a look behind the banner:

Mhmm....

Just awful.  Look at all that garbage.  And the stink!  That area always smells rotten. How can anyone live there? Why don't the residents stop tossing their trash in the river?  Why don't they try and clean it up?  Why doesn't the city clean it up?  

They also covered up the market across the street from the mall:

Dressing up a squalid area with Globe advertisements is not going to solve a thing.  Perhaps the city should invest in the area and clean it up?

Security at the mall was tighter than usual.  Both inside and out.  Besides the normal frisk and metal detector scan at the entrance they added a second one inside at the hallways that connect each side of the mall:

Wow looks like they are pretty serious about security, right? But at the end of the other hallway across the mall the metal detectors were unmanned!

Now look and see how they beefed up security outside:

Now that's real security!  That's real safety measures!  Instead of using a stick with a mirror to search the undercarriage of cars for bombs they place a camera on the road and now the PNP can watch the monitor as the car passes over it and make sure there really are no bombs. 

But it's all going to go back to normal when the conference is over.  The security guards will go back to the mirror stick and the same tired body frisk at the mall entrance and the whole security charade will continue unabated.  Meanwhile the banner blocking the view of garbage creek will come down bit by bit as the weather wears it away only to become a part of and reveal all that trash once again.

And what's the point of that?