I was watching the proclamation of Noy-Bi yesterday and a hair-raising experience (or whatever's left) happened to me. It was the first, in 9 years, that I saw people full of expectations, full of hope. Of course I know in my heart of hearts that there will be problems along the way. Even Noynoy said, "ang dami po nating minanang problema." With the high spirits, not of those cheering and chanting the President- and Vice-President-elects' names in Congress, but those who were peering into cariderias glimpsing the proclamation, we have something to look forward to.
There's still hope. Amid the complains and criticisms of those who left this country, of how they think this country is going down to the dogs, of how helpless the Filipinos are from corrupt leaders, there's still hope. No. This hope I'm talking about is beyond melodrama. I think we're all way past that. If you want drama, just try remembering PGMA and her ala-telenovela performance. Hmmm... On second thought, maybe it's not good advice.
The event was not Noy-Bi's. The hope is not theirs alone (okay, I keep talking about Hope. This is not Noynoy's brand. I think it's Phillip Morris if I can remember correctly during our smoking session in Ilo-ilo,. He coughed at my face non-stop). It's a hope of a people who are dung-heap tired and exhausted of politicians behaving like soap opera actors and actresses. It's hope for the takatak boys, the hawkers, the vendors, and the like whose only weapon against misery and poverty is a sense of decency. They can't afford to fine-dine like we do (heck! I can't afford it anymore, too!), they can't go to places, or travel to Bangkok, or fly to Vietnam and waste precious money to meander in some silly tunnels. But they can at least have a decent life.
If our institutions our corrected, as what Noy promised, the poor can access cheaper medicine. They can have regular check-ups. They can send their children to schools without getting frustrated where to get their youngs' allowance. And the money they can save because of efficient social welfare spending can be used to, say, some form of decent leisure to keep them sane.
I'm very excited about Noy's plans of hooking up TESDA and DECS. He said there are those who can't make it to college and they should have enough skills to find work even if they're just high school graduates. It's ABOUT TIME!!!! Not everyone is cut for university. And not all those with degrees are educated. Some of them are even far worse than those without formal education.
Hope. It sounds good. I hope it doesn't end here.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Poking for life
This is a re-print. This, I think, is the first among the few things I've written about poker. You can see how naive the thoughts are.
“You don’t gamble. You grind it out.”
-- Matt Damon
Rounders, 1998
I know the title sounds kinda kinky. What I meant was playing poker professionally. Having smoothened the rough edges of your green minds, let me ask you this: would you give up your day job when you’re earning between PhP1,000.00 and PhP5,000.00 per night playing poker?
If you have a good streak (in poker parlance it’s called card rush) and win PhP5,000.00 for thirty days straight, that amounts to PhP 150,000.00 per month (that’s $3,061.22 per month on a $1.00 = PhP49.00 exchange rate). Paradise on earth, don't you think?
Enticing? No doubt.
Working in an insecure environment, facing the hazards of late night shifts going to and from the office, and a huge chunk of your salary going straight into the pockets of corrupt bureaucrats disguised as taxation , poker seems to be a good alternative to the mechanical and boring nine hour desk job. Are you getting the picture?
There’s only one problem. You better be good at it.
I’ve been lured to such an idea of winning it big a few months ago. I have to admit it’s very tempting. I’ve been playing poker for several months now and I’m a regular at the Master’s Poker Club at Bocobo Street, in Malate, Manila. I usually play tournaments with a very affordable buy-in (Php200.00 with a PhP1,000.00 cash pool. If I have extra cash, I play the 500 buy-in with a cash pool of PhP50,000.00) and sometimes at the PhP25-Php50 blinds cash game. If I’m not at my regular club, I play home games with my buddies.
And I totally suck!
Poker, though it looks simple on the surface, is a very complex game. You can learn its rules in minutes, but as the legends of the game say, “it takes a lifetime to master.” There’s a lot of math and psychology involved in the “sport” and it’s a brain-wrecking activity.
The word “sport” is in quotation marks because it’s still a gray area. Many people still consider it gambling because there are cards and cash involved. Although there are players, both local and international, who are now living “the great life,” many players are sucked into the game, lose thousands (even millions) of cash and get stuck for life. It’s a dangerous sport.
But when you really think about it, poker is no different from our everyday affairs. Business transactions have risks, relationships sometimes need a little bit of aggression and sometimes they need to be folded. Our actions no matter how quaint the idea, should be calculated for us to reach our goals.
Of course we cannot perfectly equate poker with real life. Although imperfect information is present in both, poker’s payoff structure is fixed while life’s much more dynamic.
In poker, assuming you have a bad hand and the pot’s not large, you can easily fold. You’re not supposed to do that in real life. Sometimes life is a pain and just because it sucks doesn’t mean you have to fold whatever life has dealt you with and call it quits.
But there are things we can learn from poker about real life. Poker gives its players an opportunity to take control of their game regardless of the hand they’re dealt with. You could check or fold, bet or raise. You could also sweeten the pot by re-raising or to isolate other players from winning what’s being fought for.
The same thing goes with life. If you want to hit it big, there are instances in which you need to play it really “tight,” while there are situations when you know you need to be loose. There are moments, say in a partnership, that you need to be aggressive, and there are times when you just have to fold your hand and give it up. In other words, poker is about the person and how he controls the situation.
I think that’s what makes poker very interesting. It gives the player some degree of control that he doesn’t normally get in real life. If he loses a hand or makes the wrong play, the culprit could either be him or that horrible thing called “bad beat.” It’s the same thing with life but the consequences are not as damaging as poker’s.
So, will I play poker professionally? I would love to but I have to think it through. I’m enjoying every bit of it but I have to admit, it’s “hard work.”
“You don’t gamble. You grind it out.”
-- Matt Damon
Rounders, 1998
I know the title sounds kinda kinky. What I meant was playing poker professionally. Having smoothened the rough edges of your green minds, let me ask you this: would you give up your day job when you’re earning between PhP1,000.00 and PhP5,000.00 per night playing poker?
If you have a good streak (in poker parlance it’s called card rush) and win PhP5,000.00 for thirty days straight, that amounts to PhP 150,000.00 per month (that’s $3,061.22 per month on a $1.00 = PhP49.00 exchange rate). Paradise on earth, don't you think?
Enticing? No doubt.
Working in an insecure environment, facing the hazards of late night shifts going to and from the office, and a huge chunk of your salary going straight into the pockets of corrupt bureaucrats disguised as taxation , poker seems to be a good alternative to the mechanical and boring nine hour desk job. Are you getting the picture?
There’s only one problem. You better be good at it.
I’ve been lured to such an idea of winning it big a few months ago. I have to admit it’s very tempting. I’ve been playing poker for several months now and I’m a regular at the Master’s Poker Club at Bocobo Street, in Malate, Manila. I usually play tournaments with a very affordable buy-in (Php200.00 with a PhP1,000.00 cash pool. If I have extra cash, I play the 500 buy-in with a cash pool of PhP50,000.00) and sometimes at the PhP25-Php50 blinds cash game. If I’m not at my regular club, I play home games with my buddies.
And I totally suck!
Poker, though it looks simple on the surface, is a very complex game. You can learn its rules in minutes, but as the legends of the game say, “it takes a lifetime to master.” There’s a lot of math and psychology involved in the “sport” and it’s a brain-wrecking activity.
The word “sport” is in quotation marks because it’s still a gray area. Many people still consider it gambling because there are cards and cash involved. Although there are players, both local and international, who are now living “the great life,” many players are sucked into the game, lose thousands (even millions) of cash and get stuck for life. It’s a dangerous sport.
But when you really think about it, poker is no different from our everyday affairs. Business transactions have risks, relationships sometimes need a little bit of aggression and sometimes they need to be folded. Our actions no matter how quaint the idea, should be calculated for us to reach our goals.
Of course we cannot perfectly equate poker with real life. Although imperfect information is present in both, poker’s payoff structure is fixed while life’s much more dynamic.
In poker, assuming you have a bad hand and the pot’s not large, you can easily fold. You’re not supposed to do that in real life. Sometimes life is a pain and just because it sucks doesn’t mean you have to fold whatever life has dealt you with and call it quits.
But there are things we can learn from poker about real life. Poker gives its players an opportunity to take control of their game regardless of the hand they’re dealt with. You could check or fold, bet or raise. You could also sweeten the pot by re-raising or to isolate other players from winning what’s being fought for.
The same thing goes with life. If you want to hit it big, there are instances in which you need to play it really “tight,” while there are situations when you know you need to be loose. There are moments, say in a partnership, that you need to be aggressive, and there are times when you just have to fold your hand and give it up. In other words, poker is about the person and how he controls the situation.
I think that’s what makes poker very interesting. It gives the player some degree of control that he doesn’t normally get in real life. If he loses a hand or makes the wrong play, the culprit could either be him or that horrible thing called “bad beat.” It’s the same thing with life but the consequences are not as damaging as poker’s.
So, will I play poker professionally? I would love to but I have to think it through. I’m enjoying every bit of it but I have to admit, it’s “hard work.”
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Welcome to Noynoy country
A new phase for a not so new face. We know him because of his famous parents. We know him because of his actress sister. In fact, she makes more waves than he does in the public's eyes.
Now that he's president (or a few weeks short of proclamation), more is to be expected from Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III. It's no small feat what he promised to accomplish during his campaign. He said he will curb graft and corruption, that he will probe on the actions of the previous administration president, and that he would trek the straight, but road less-traveled. He promised all this to inspire people and give them hope.
It's the kind of hope people opt to have but never voice out. They don't want to be labeled dreamers and idealists in a nation disdained by too much politicking and nonexisting economic benefits.
Two of his villains promised material prosperity. They said "iaahon tayo sa hirap" [we will be lifted from our poverty]. Others offered brainy solutions to our economic plight with bragging rights from reputable foreign universities and sweet platitudes and twangs.
But the Filipino people have spoken and we have one thing in our minds. We want a new kind of politics. We want a politics that is moral that can decently pave paths towards economic recovery. It's the kind that slowly addresses why we are so naturally gifted as a people endowed with rich resources, yet still lagging behind our neighbors.
At the family level, we want our children to grow up with integrity. We are tired of being suspicious of everybody as if all of them will rig us. And we are tired of worrying how much we can take home and how much food we can serve on our dinner table.
It doesn't have to be a choice between integrity and material necessity. It has to be both. We are sick and tired of hearing the Philippines "should be like Singapore," oozingly rich economically but with limited political and civil rights. We are sick and tired of dreaming of having leaders like Mahathir Mohammad and Lee Kwan Yu, strong leaders with iron hand. Leaders who can discipline hard-headed constituents. We had a leader like that and we know what happened.
We want economic prosperity without taking advantage of others. No small feat, but we can do it. Noynoy can't do it alone. We all know that. But we can help by being vigilant, by being actively involve, by becoming the best of who we are in all the things that we do.
So, Noy, we voted for you. And we will be watching, not because we are suspicious, but we want to put an end to the things that have been hurting us. We have the same hurting faces. Now we are ready for a new phase.
Now that he's president (or a few weeks short of proclamation), more is to be expected from Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III. It's no small feat what he promised to accomplish during his campaign. He said he will curb graft and corruption, that he will probe on the actions of the previous administration president, and that he would trek the straight, but road less-traveled. He promised all this to inspire people and give them hope.
It's the kind of hope people opt to have but never voice out. They don't want to be labeled dreamers and idealists in a nation disdained by too much politicking and nonexisting economic benefits.
Two of his villains promised material prosperity. They said "iaahon tayo sa hirap" [we will be lifted from our poverty]. Others offered brainy solutions to our economic plight with bragging rights from reputable foreign universities and sweet platitudes and twangs.
But the Filipino people have spoken and we have one thing in our minds. We want a new kind of politics. We want a politics that is moral that can decently pave paths towards economic recovery. It's the kind that slowly addresses why we are so naturally gifted as a people endowed with rich resources, yet still lagging behind our neighbors.
At the family level, we want our children to grow up with integrity. We are tired of being suspicious of everybody as if all of them will rig us. And we are tired of worrying how much we can take home and how much food we can serve on our dinner table.
It doesn't have to be a choice between integrity and material necessity. It has to be both. We are sick and tired of hearing the Philippines "should be like Singapore," oozingly rich economically but with limited political and civil rights. We are sick and tired of dreaming of having leaders like Mahathir Mohammad and Lee Kwan Yu, strong leaders with iron hand. Leaders who can discipline hard-headed constituents. We had a leader like that and we know what happened.
We want economic prosperity without taking advantage of others. No small feat, but we can do it. Noynoy can't do it alone. We all know that. But we can help by being vigilant, by being actively involve, by becoming the best of who we are in all the things that we do.
So, Noy, we voted for you. And we will be watching, not because we are suspicious, but we want to put an end to the things that have been hurting us. We have the same hurting faces. Now we are ready for a new phase.
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