Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA)

[marites4]

I know it seems to average pinoy it's maarte but you know if we are trying to attract foreign tourists, maaarte yung mga yon ayaw makakita ng mga "eyesores" hindi sanay mata nila.

[dudz]

maybe this is also one way of educating the people of the benefits of a clean, organized, disciplined community. thank you marites

[bagel]

But I wonder how they can manage these things better without infringing on someone's right to have dry laundry in small spaces. When I went to Hong Kong, I remember seeing laundry hanging to dry out of windows in highrise government projects. But I found them quite artful to look at, rather than as eyesores. I guess zoning rules dictate that they should be in the backyard... things are more noticeable on the ground than from afar like those highrises in Hong Kong with the laundry hanging.

[normandb]

Originally Posted by Lili

Eh kasi yung ibang lalaki dyan, ang laki-laki ng in-ooccupy na space. Nakabukaka ng sobra. Puede naman ng partial lang. Yung mga ladies, ipit na ipit na tuloy. Dapat katulad sa trains and subways. Kung ano lang ang allocated space mo, yung lang ang i-occupy mo.

Dito sa NY subways, ayaw nila ng dumidikit ang tao. Mas may distance and 'personal space' dito. Puede kaya to sa Pinas? Ewan lang.

Pwedeng pwede yan. Try mo lang wag maligo at mag toothbrush ng dalawang lingo at wala rin pabango tapos sumaky ka ng jeep or LRT/MRT sinisigurado ko sayo makukuha mo ang allocated space na para sayo pati na rin yong sa ibang pasahero.

[bagel]

Utot lang ng utot sa punong LRT.

[normandb]

Originally Posted by boybaha

Utot lang ng utot sa punong LRT.

sa tingin mo ba aamin ka na ikaw ang umutot sa punong LRT. Gusto mo bang mabugbog o di na makarating ng buhay sa estasyon na patutunguhan mo, sinisigurado ko ang baba mo non sa Pedro Gil para malapit sa Philippine General Hospital ?

[Lili]

Originally Posted by ncbmandy

Pwedeng pwede yan. Try mo lang wag maligo at mag toothbrush ng dalawang lingo at wala rin pabango tapos sumaky ka ng jeep or LRT/MRT sinisigurado ko sayo makukuha mo ang allocated space na para sayo pati na rin yong sa ibang pasahero.

Baka lalo lang lumakas ang alindog ko nyan. Kasi yung natural hormones (pheromones) ko ang lakas ng dating. lol.

[bagel]

^ Di... umutot ka na lang.

[Lili]

^ Di puede. Mahiyain ako eh.

[Dvorak]

naku mas mabaho yan pag pinipigil.. lol

[Lili]

Di mo alam ang secret.

(Actually I find this kind of humor unsavory so hopefully this will be the last entry on that.)

[mysaong03]

Originally Posted by marites4

I know it seems to average pinoy it's maarte but you know if we are trying to attract foreign tourists, maaarte yung mga yon ayaw makakita ng mga "eyesores" hindi sanay mata nila.

but i dont find this maarte at all, sinampay mo sa harap?? hello!!!

and frankly, mag-inarte man ako sa jeep, ala ko magagawa, jologs talaga mga pasajero dun, as in mababaho!!!

[amigo32]

This foul smelling gas takes only a few seconds, eh yung mga korean and japanese tourist eh may body odor. Kailangan mo lumayo sa kanila. Aware naman yung isang korean engineer sa trabaho, lumalayo pag kakain na kami nasa kabilang dulo ng lamesa naupo lumalayo sa mga Pinoy.

[marites4]

HIndi naman mabaho mga korean baka kimchi lang yon. mabaho mga arabo he he

[Lili]

Originally Posted by amigo32

This foul smelling gas takes only a few seconds, eh yung mga korean and japanese tourist eh may body odor. Kailangan mo lumayo sa kanila. Aware naman yung isang korean engineer sa trabaho, lumalayo pag kakain na kami nasa kabilang dulo ng lamesa naupo lumalayo sa mga Pinoy.

Baka sila ang nababahuan sa food natin.

[dancethingy]

Wow, this conversation has digressed far from the original intention

[Lili]

I'm cross-posting this article originally posted by Kiretoce in the Tourism thread to bring the discussion back to the pertinent topic.

Originally Posted by kiretoce

Pinoy Kasi : Naked sabotage
By Michael Tan Inquirer News Service Nov 23, 2005

Back in the days of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship, Imelda Marcos "beautified" her City of Man (Metro Manila) by building perimeter walls around squatter colonies.

Life's become more complicated since then. The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) is pouring in P100 million to "beautify" what they call an "investor's route," improving and cleaning up roads leading to and from the Ninoy Aquino International Airport, in an attempt to impress foreign visitors.

And for us the natives, we get billboards with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo smiling sternly and warning: "Pook na Bulok, Negosyo di Papasok" [Business won't go into rotten places].


Economic sabotage

The signs have been up a few months now, and I've wondered what government's definition is of "rotten." Now we have the answer in the form of an MMDA directive, banning the public display of laundry, shirtless men and public drinking sprees. "Sabotage," MMDA Chair Bayani Fernando is quoted as describing these forms of rotten behavior.

Hmmm ... that's a really new take on economic sabotage, this business of naked drinking men and dirty laundry.

Let's look first at this business of drinking in public. A few weeks back, I wrote about a Chinese regional magazine (the Chinese Asiaweek) featuring Filipinos as the happiest people on earth. One "proof" they presented? There was a photograph accompanying that story showing a bunch of men drinking ... yes, out in the street, while floodwaters swirled around reaching almost up to their knees.

The Asiaweek photographer and writer, presumably Chinese, probably saw this as quaint. The MMDA recoils, calling it economic sabotage. I see it as the result, rather than a cause of economic sabotage: a country that can't generate enough jobs for its people, with the result the women have to slave away with all kinds of informal jobs, while the men toast their woes away.

The laundry out in the streets? I see that, too, as the result of economic sabotage. All around Asia I see governments pouring in money to low-cost housing. Just last week, I was in Malaysia where people earning less than 1,500 ringgit (P22,500) a month can avail themselves of government housing units at the equivalent of P3,000 a month.

Yes, that would make many professors of the University of the Philippines (UP) eligible, but that's another story. My point is that in the Philippines, government money for housing has been pilfered, so people have to live in shanties. When there's hardly enough living space in the first place, where do you think people are going to hang out their laundry?


"Bastos"

We go now to the shirtless machos. The MMDA ordinance is directed against men who are not just strutting around in the streets but even in construction sites, presumably offending the sensibilities of would-be investors.

All over the world, you see shirtless men out in the streets. In cold countries, the slightest hint of a sunny day brings out men who will bask, shirtless, on park benches. As for construction workers, many countries have safety regulations requiring a whole bunch of protective gear, which means the workers will keep their shirts on while working, but during breaks, especially on a summer day, the shirts will come off.

Offensive? I know my slip's showing, but I think the shirtless men can be quite delightful, even a tourist attraction. Brazil's a notorious example, where women and men, young and old, have no qualms about standing around in public half-naked. The foreigners stare, but for the Brazilians -- well, it's all as normal as having a shirt on.

It's all in the eye of the beholder, whether we interpret these scenes as "bastos" [obscene] or not, as I wrote in a column a few months back. In many parts of Asia, we allow different degrees of nakedness. In Tagalog, we even distinguish between "hubo" and "hubad," the former referring to the Oblation statues on UP campuses, and the latter to being exposed from the waist up.

Obscenity isn't related so much to the square inches of skin that's exposed than the context of exposure. A shirtless man out in the streets, often someone scratching away at his beer belly, is about as sensuous as "hubad na lumpia" (a spring roll with vegetables "exposed"), but in a dimly lit bedroom -- now, that's another matter.

A few years ago, there was a Hong Kong woman who went to court over the matter of shirtless construction workers, claiming she found them offensive. The court ruled against her. Freudian psychologists will probably speculate about the sexually repressed feelings behind the woman's lawsuit, as well as the beautification campaigns of Imelda Marcos and the MMDA.


Eyes and Heart

Conscious about the eyes of the beholder, let's review that MMDA ordinance on naked economic sabotage.

The dirty laundry in public? I'd worry more about potential investors seeing the long queues of urban poor women and children trying to get water for their laundry and other household needs.

The half-naked men? I had an American woman visitor recently, and she was, to say the least, awed by Bench's larger-than-life billboard ads for men's underwear, the models precariously teasing the boundaries between "hubad" and "hubo."

Potential investors will marvel at the market for underwear, but will also look for signs of economic activity in construction sites and infrastructure projects. And as they catch glimpses of the workers, it won't matter whether they have shirts on or not. I worry more about the visitors seeing workers -- often completely clothed -- just sitting by chatting or ogling women passersby, a billboard behind them proclaiming the site as a government project, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo beaming away and promising the project completion date -- sometime back in 2004.

The drinking sessions? What matters isn't whether it's done in private or public, with shirts on or off. What's obscene is when the men are jobless and perpetually idle, using their wives' or mothers' hard-earned money and the government having nothing to offer them, except promises of more overseas jobs.

All said, shouldn't we be asking why government is cracking down on the shirtless drinking men while busing in tourists to the bars of Pasay City and Angeles City where they can go on drinking sprees while gawking at our women as they strip -- and more?

Nothing, too, can be more obscene, more symptomatic of our social rot, than the droves of children sent out to the streets to sell sampaguita at midnight and, these days, knocking on car windows with a "Meri Krismas," an ill-disguised way of begging even as their President claims, in a speech before the UN General Assembly, that we don't need family planning, that development will eventually eradicate poverty.

We worry too much about what's public, what's visible to the eye. Let's worry a bit more, as a nation, about what's in our heart -- if we still have it.

[marites4]

thankyou^

[bulakenyo]

Bakit Pink ang Urinals at karamihan sa mga structures na itinatayo ng MMDA?
Anyone who knows why? Kasi hindi seryosong kulay ang pink. Why not blue or...blue na lang. wala ako maisip na iba eh.

[Æsahættr]

Well, Bench's billboards actually feature HOT shirtless men in them...