Tag: manila

The port of Manila

When I was here last year, The city fathers had to adjust traffic flow to relieve congestion at the port. The new regulations were disastrous, and traffic got worse. Containers full of stuff rotted on the docks.

This time, the city fathers have adjusted traffic rules to accommodate delegates to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC). The new regulations are, so far, disastrous…

Note to the learned and powerful economic planners at APEC: however beneficent your ideas may prove in the long run, in the short term you’ve lowered productivity by an appreciable margin.

Aside: The gray building on the water left foreground is the U.S. Embassy.

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This billboard was one of the first things I noticed on arriving in Manila. It’s late, you’ve been flying all day, and so you have to really ask yourself if you just saw an ad for Prettylooks™ with the slogan you thought you saw. Hooray for photographic evidence.

Do real men care that much about their eyebrows? I’m reminded of the line that for me cemented Daniel Craig as a worthy Bond…

“Vodka martini.”
“Yes sir, shaken or stirred?”
“Do I look like I give a damn?”

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Last time I stayed in this hotel, I worried about a typhoon veering into me. This time, Manila is safe while Japan gets pounded. We did get a spectacular thunderstorm, however, and on the 30th floor you really feel like you’re right in the middle of it.

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The sumptuously decorated lobby of the Sofitel Manila, where we went for after work drinks last evening to celebrate the end of our training session.

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There are many moving memorials to war and sacrifice in Manila, as there are in any big city.This monumental sculpture, however, honors a class of citizens perhaps less commonly venerated… The brave and far-sighted land developers who made the neighborhood into what it is today. May they rest in luxurious peace.

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Manila skyline from 33 floors up. That ominous haze is the outer edges of Typhoon Ruby Hagupit.

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With a typhoon bearing down, the hotel fire alarm test goes from pain-in-the-ass to oddly-reassuring.

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Guess what I’ll be thinking about this weekend from the relative safety of my high-rise hotel in Manila? I say safe because it’s a modern high-rise away from the water, and even safer because it’s several hundred miles away from the likely path of the storm. Still…

The places that are in harm’s way got hit hard last year by Hayan and their people must feel a Sisyphean despair as Ruby barrels in.

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