A Mere "Formality"

I've never heard of the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) until I had to attend a CFO seminar, which is a requirement for Filipinos who want to live abroad with their foreign partner. Apparently, this certificate helps you clear Philippine Immigration (among other required documents, a shitload really), so rather than risk being offloaded on the day of my flight, I decided to go to a seminar and get it over with.

If you were born in the Philippines, and then subsequently went to school and worked (but also drive a car or a motorbike in the Philippines, or vote or collect your retirement pension in the Philippines), most probably you're already well acquainted with the country's "love" of red tape. Applying for your driver's license, tax identification number, PRC ID, voter's ID, and NBI clearance (or that infamous PhilSys National ID), etc., will subject you to a painful experience akin to having your toenails ripped off -- okay, maybe I'm exaggerating, but not that much.

So on the day of my seminar, when I was seated in the large waiting area of the CFO office in Manila, I had to internalize the country's "love of red tape," something I had to unfortunately tick off the list, just to fight my growing impatience at being forced to waste my time AND money (to pay for the CFO fee -- after all, if there's anything that the Philippine government loves more than red tape, it's collecting taxpayers' money).

I also decided to find out what this government office was. A quick Google search on my phone told me that the agency "is responsible for promoting and upholding the interests of Filipino emigrants and Filipino permanent residents in countries other than the Philippines. It is also "responsible for preserving and strengthening ties with Filipino communities outside the Philippines." The CFO is distinct from the Overseas Workers Welfare Association (OWWA), which is tasked with taking care of OFWs.

I quickly learned, too, from the muffled conversations around me that the bulk of the seminar covers cases of domestic violence abroad, and what to do and who to contact in case of abuse suffered from a foreign spouse.

A group of around 20 people were herded from the waiting area by an usher into a small room furnished with plastic chairs, a water cooler with a stack of Styrofoam cups and small cartons of teabags and sachets of instant coffee, and a flat-screen TV. We were told to wait. As I sat in that room, I noticed that I was the only guy. And I realized: majority of the people in the larger waiting area had been women -- there were probably a maximum of fewer than 10 guys there, if that.

The women -- mostly young girls, really, in their late teens, but a few in their early 20s -- continued their muffled chatter, probably to ease a bit of the nervousness. A lot of the girls were headed to Europe, some to the US and Canada, quite a few to Japan and Korea. Majority of them met their partners online, through social media like Facebook or Instagram, or through dating apps. 

There was a nervousness in the air, sure, but you could also hear the excitement in the girls' voices. They were speaking in hushed tones, but they were also all smiles, cracking jokes about how hard it must be to learn another foreign language -- and deeming those who were bound for English-speaking countries lucky.

The nervousness stemmed, I found out (chismoso, lol) from a one-on-one interview immediately after the seminar, an interview that if you failed --  according to one of the girls -- could deny you the CFO certificate. The girls evidently did their homework, and I felt ashamed that up until that moment I only felt disdain at the entire process.

Finally, a woman in a Navy blue power suit and a CFO badge walked into the room and addressed everyone. She told us we'd have to stay for a little more than four hours, which was the entire duration of the seminar and interview. I was expecting groans from the girls, but they greeted the bad news -- at least it was bad news to me; Diana was waiting for me in the lobby, and I didn't want her to stay there for hours -- with nods and smiles. Again, they obviously did their homework.

I was expecting the woman in the power suit to turn on the TV so we could get on with the seminar (the room didn't have a door, and we'd already seen other rooms showing some pre-recorded presentation), when I heard my name called. "Mr. Mark Lorenzana," Power Suit said, and ushered me outside the room to a line of small cubicles with office chairs where other attendees were already being interviewed.

As we sat down to the interview, I realized that I wouldn't be needing the seminar anymore. The woman was friendly, and asked me how long Diana and I knew each other. I told her we met in 2007, as coworkers in a company in Cebu, and that I've already visited Mexico as a tourist several times before deciding to settle down there. She jotted down the information on a form, stood up and shook my hand, and told me to stop by the front desk on my way out of the office for instructions on how to print my certificate. 

She was already walking away when I asked her why I didn't need to join the seminar. "Oh, for you this is only a formality." 

"But why do the girls--"

"It's our job to protect them," she interrupted, and hurried off -- after all, she still had a roomful of people to attend to, or "protect."

I didn't know if the other men -- all 10 of them or fewer, in a government office of a few hundred women hoping to leave the country and meet their future husbands -- had to go through the seminar. I suspected, though, that like me, for them the whole exercise was "just a formality."

The only thing for me to do was to talk to the front-desk receptionist, collect Diana at the lobby, and then grab some food at the Shakey's pizza place across the street.

You Really Can't Do Shit When Chef Curry Is Cooking

The NBA season is almost upon us (preseason games are already happening as we speak), and I couldn't be more excited. Mostly because there hasn't been a back-to-back NBA champion since, well, the Golden State Warriors when they clinched their fifth and six titles in 2017 and 2018 (at that time, franchise player Stephen Curry's second and third rings), and that feeling of uncertainty certainly lends itself to more excitement. My gut tells me, though, that perhaps this is the first time since 2018 that a defending NBA champion might repeat (I'm looking at you, Oklahoma City).

Since 2019, here's what the championship picture has looked like:

2025 – Oklahoma City Thunder

2024 – Boston Celtics

2023 – Denver Nuggets

2022 – Golden State Warriors

2021 – Milwaukee Bucks

2020 – Los Angeles Lakers

2019 – Toronto Raptors

I'm sticking to my very early prediction of the OKC Thunder successfully defending their title this season, but I wouldn't mind being proven wrong. Thanks to some tweaks by NBA commissioner Adam Silver to the salary cap, which made it nearly impossible for teams to retain multiple stars, NBA dynasties have been virtually nonexistent the past several years (seven different champions in seven years — imagine that).

I'd like to go back to the last title that the most recent NBA dynasty (and [hopefully?] not the last), the Warriors, won — way back in 2022. Back then I was still working for an online newspaper here in Mexico City, mostly covering sports, and it was one of the few basketball stories I wrote (being in Mexico, I wrote more articles on boxing and football [soccer], as well as Formula 1 because of Checo Perez, than basketball).

I particularly loved writing this piece because I was, and still am, a huge Stephen Curry fan. He's at the twilight of his career, but he can still light it up from distance (as he showed in the 2024 Paris Olympics, when he bailed out the US Men's Basketball Team that, unsurprisingly, had a particularly hard time putting away a game French team in the finals).

Anyway, this introduction has gone far enough. 

Ladies and Gentlemen: Chef Curry.

*****

On the Mark: Warriors Are Champions Again Thanks to Curry

(June 20, 2022)

The game was essentially over. Over in the sense that the stunned and dejected Celtics fans that filled the TD Garden in Boston, Massachusetts, were only waiting for the final buzzer to sound so they could watch in agony as the visiting Golden State Warriors celebrated their sixth championship on the night of Thursday, June 16, at the Garden’s famed parquet floor.

The game, however, wasn’t actually over. There was a minute and change to go, and the ball was still in play, but the Warriors’ leader, Stephen Curry, couldn’t care less. He left the court and walked over to his father — former NBA player Dell Curry, a three-point sharpshooter in his own right — who was sitting among the crowd. The younger Curry then hugged his dad, and wept. He had led the Warriors to the promised land, scoring 34 big points that night.

Curry is a baby-faced assassin, and always seems to play with joy — flashing that boyish smile after every dagger three-pointer that feels like an arrow piercing the opponent’s heart. He knows no other way of playing, and it’s one of the reasons why he’s so loved by Warriors fans — both those from the bay area of San Francisco and worldwide, really. But on that night, Curry hugged his father, and wept. He let go of his dad, bent over and seemed to heave a sigh of relief with tears streaming down his face. The Warriors were champs again, and surely fans could cut Curry some slack in this rare moment of vulnerability.

“These last two months of the playoffs, these last three years, this last 48 hours — every bit of it has been an emotional roller coaster on and off the floor,” Curry said after the game. “You’re carrying all of that on a daily basis to try to realize a dream and a goal, like we did tonight. And you get goosebumps just thinking about, you know, all those snapshots and episodes that we went through to get back here, individually, collectively. And that’s why I said I think this championship hits different. That’s why I have so many emotions, and still will, just because of what it took to get back here.”

Curry carried his team in this year’s finals, there is no doubt about that: He has averaged an impressive 31.2 points, 6.0 rebounds and 5.0 assists in the series, which finally earned him the elusive Bill Russell NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Award. But make no mistake; he had help too.

Small forward Andrew Wiggins played well throughout the playoffs, not just offensively but also defensively — and made life a living hell in the finals for Celtics star Jason Tatum. Power forward Draymond Green, the motor of the team, finally found his stride in the series-clinching game. Center Kevon Looney — who has been a model of dependability and durability for the Warriors — did all the dirty work, as usual: grabbing rebounds, patrolling the paint and defending the rim. Guard Jordan Poole has been a revelation, Gary Payton II came back just in time from a fractured elbow to help ramp up the team’s defensive intensity and Klay Thompson averaged a solid 17 points per game in the finals series.

Yes, basketball is a team game, and everyone has to pitch in if a team is to reach the pinnacle of the sport. These Warriors have now won four rings together with their big three — Curry, Thompson and Green — which is no small feat. That the core of this team is still intact after winning its first title in 2015 is certainly impressive, but credit is also due to the Warriors’ front office for putting the necessary young pieces around their three superstars to keep on winning.

The Warriors’ success has also been a great example of growing a team organically, through the draft, and developing young players, amid the recent trend of other NBA teams trying to cobble together super teams by throwing money at established superstars and teaming them up together to bypass the time and patience needed to let a team develop chemistry naturally.

Curry, who has played his whole career for the Warriors since being drafted by Golden State in 2009, had been the driving force throughout his team’s success. He has bucked early injury problems, toiled in relative obscurity when the Warriors couldn’t seem to catch a break in his early years with the team, and soldiered on amid the disappointment of the last two years when they were out of the finals after an injury-ravaged version of Curry’s team lost the 2019 championship to the Kawhi Leonard-led Toronto Raptors.

After shedding tears on the Celtics’ parquet floor, Curry would be later seen in the locker room with a bottle of champagne, a cigar in hand and that now-familiar smile plastered on his face whenever he’d bury a dagger three-pointer – six triples that night, as he doused the Celtics’ championship hopes in a barrage of long-range shooting that has come to be expected of him.

He isn’t called the baby-faced assassin for nothing.

The DDS Are Killjoys

After the Philippines was battered by tropical cyclones and heavy southwest monsoon rains a couple of months ago, which resulted in predictable but deadly flash floods, Filipinos are now suddenly -- ironically -- hopeful.

And why wouldn't they be? When the water subsided, anger rose, and President Bongbong Marcos just had to douse the collective rage during his State of the Nation Address. (After spending most of his term thus far gallivanting abroad [a la Sara Duterte] in the name of "generating investments," but not much to show for it, Marcos didn't have a choice. He was already earning the ire of the eagle-eyed; it's easy nowadays to track the frequency of his foreign trips and the corresponding travel expenses.) 

"Mahiya naman kayo," Marcos intoned (an ironic choice of words, don't you think?), singling out those involved in anomalous flood-control projects.

Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto went a step further in a Facebook post, and zeroed in on Sarah and Curlee Discaya, whose myriad of "companies" helped them amass a fortune, two of which were included in Marcos's top 15 DPWH contractors. And it didn't help that the Discayas absolutely love flaunting their (ill-gotten?) wealth, in the form of luxury cars, with Sarah proudly telling Julius Babao that she specifically chose the Rolls Royce because she fancied the umbrella that came with it.  

The floodgates (pun intended) are wide open, and the ordinary folk are hoping that they don't close anytime soon -- hence, this wellspring of hope. (Some have audaciously begun comparing the protests in Indonesia and Nepal to the Arab Spring, a series of anti-government protests that spread across the Arab world in the early 2010s -- hoping that Filipinos will follow suit.) As it is, contractors, senators, congressmen, and corrupt DPWH officials are scrambling to put a finger in the dike, but with pillage of this scale, it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle.

Or is it?

After all, we're talking about the Philippines here. A day ago, Batangas 2nd District Representative Gerville Luistro called out Curlee Discaya during the House infra committee hearing for having "selective amnesia."

"Would you have us believe," Luistro said, "that there are people making kickback requests under the current administration but none did during the past one [under Rodrigo Duterte]?"

Luistro accused Discaya of having selective amnesia; I'd argue that the Filipino people as a whole have COLLECTIVE amnesia.

Exhibit A is Senator Jinggoy Estrada of course, and his involvement in Janet Lim-Napoles's pork barrel scam. But because we're Filipinos, he got away scot-free, even managing to win this current Senate term, and now he's once again facing accusations of pocketing flood-control money.

Filipinos are suddenly hopeful, after Indonesia managed to force a Cabinet shake-up, with Nepal following suit.

I, personally, am less hopeful. This isn't EDSA 1 and 2, where there was a collective goal that spurred collective action. In this case, the biggest hurdle for widespread change in the country are the Die-hard Duterte Supporters or DDS.

Even now, the DDS are attacking Vico Sotto, after he voiced his displeasure at the Discayas' alleged lies, chief among them the statement that they'd only earn 2 to 3 percent from a government project, 5 percent if they were -- in Curlee's own words -- "lucky." Sotto is advocating for complete transparency, as is anyone who has a stake in this, naturally the taxpaying public, but the DDS are advocating for complete opacity -- at least when it comes to the presidential term of their Po-on, their beloved and infallible Tatay Digong.

I saw someone's hilarious post recently here on Facebook: "Discaya-Duterte Supporters." Now the DDS are clamoring for the Discayas to be put on the Witness Protection Program (WPP), never mind that they are the least qualified to be state witnesses, for obvious reasons. This is like putting Napoles on the WPP for orchestrating that PDAF scam.

Like others, I'd like to believe that there's hope for this country yet. Heck, that sounds strange to me because we've gone through two EDSA Revolutions already. Who says we can't engineer (pun definitely intended) a third one?

The DDS, with their collective will to cover up for their Tatay -- that's who.

Breaking Bad Philippines

To break bad means to turn to immorality or crime.

Walter White in "Breaking Bad" turned to the illegal drug trade -- transitioning from chemistry teacher to meth cook and eventually drug lord -- out of necessity. He thought he was dying, and was worried for his family's future.

Walter broke bad. These contractors, politicians, and corrupt DSWD heads are just, well, naturally evil.

 

Still No to the Death Penalty

This knee-jerk clamor for bringing back the death penalty to punish plunderers and corrupt government officials is putting the cart before the horse.

FIRST, let's make sure that the guilty ones go to jail and not get away scot-free, especially the ones who can buy their freedom using not just money but also power and privilege -- the Eraps, the Jinggoys, the Arroyos, the Bong Revillas, the Imeldas.

ONLY THEN can we think about bringing back capital punishment.

(Better yet, make an example of that jet-setting daughter of the dirty old man in the Hague, who spent her confidential funds faster than the Discayas could amass a fleet of luxury cars.)

Otherwise, the only ones hanging from that noose are, again, the poor and the powerless -- regardless of whether they are guilty or not.

"Distractions"

The recent news of Royina Garma's decision to testify against Rodrigo Duterte at the ICC has been labeled an unnecessary distraction from the current Senate hearing on the substandard flood-control projects and the massive corruption behind them. 

A distraction? Not really. You can call something a distraction if the newer issue isn't of equal weight. "Distraction" here only depends whether you're a DDS or a Marcos loyalist. Not both, because, as well all know, Unity doesn't exist anymore. But that's another story. Or issue. Or "distraction."

For instance, when this DPWH-Discayas-congressmen thing exploded, people were quick to say that it was a distraction from the missing sabungeros case. 

And can someone refresh my memory please: what distracted us again from that Alice Guo issue? 

What's sadder to me is that all these "distractions" seem to come out of the blue, rapid-fire -- one after the other, leaving us with no breathing room. That they distract us, a captive audience, is what's wrong with our country in the first place.

They shouldn't be taken singularly as things that distract us from one issue or the other. They should be taken as a whole as in WTF, why are we allowing ALL THESE MOTHERFUCKERS to screw us, the country, our children, and their future children?

Massive corruption, extrajudicial killings, murder, illegal gambling, illegal aliens masquerading as Filipino politicians etc. etc. shouldn't be pitted against each other by being labeled as distractions. That minimizes the harm that has already been done.

That kind of thinking distracts us from the real issue: these aren't trivial spectacles. They are a matter of life and death.

Petty Is As Petty Does

Last night I called an Uber from my mother-in-law's house (my wife was staying the night with her) to take me home to our apartment, and I noticed that the car was driving away from me. The driver was already in the immediate vicinity, about two minutes away, but I noticed right away that he was driving in the opposite direction. (And no, he wasn't finishing a previous trip.)

I'm not new to the ride-hailing game, fuck no. And heck, I'm from the Philippines. A lot of Grab drivers use this tactic too, in the hopes that the passenger will cancel to avoid a penalty.

The problem is, I can be petty as fuck. There was no way in hell I would cancel the ride before that scumbag of a driver did, and so I was already preparing to spend the night sleeping on the couch at my mother-in-law's living room -- to, at first, my wife's amusement and then, later on, to her chagrin (she was pissed, all right: more at me than at the Uber driver. And I couldn't blame her. Lol).

And so there I was, comfortable on the couch, actually beginning to doze off and fighting off sleep, while the driver continued driving home and hoping that I'd cancel (it was already late, close to 11:00 p.m., which was why I didn't take a bus or the subway, which I prefer). I even saw on the map that he was already more than 30 minutes away from me, and he finally parked his car in what I assumed was his garage, while he waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Oh you chose to fuck with the wrong guy, my friend.

And then, finally, he cancelled and Uber assigned me a new driver, who arrived in less than five minutes. 

(To be clear: I wouldn't mind if he sent me a message asking me to cancel, especially if it's an emergency; believe me, I understand. I'm not some heartless bastard. But I know when someone's trying to screw me up.)

I've heard some tourists here in Mexico complaining about Uber drivers and taxi drivers, that they can be scumbags (the colloquial term is "pendejo.") And sure, yeah, they have a point.

But obviously, they haven't met NAIA taxi drivers. (There are scumbags, and there are SCUMBAGS.)

And then, there are petty passengers who won't let scumbags be scumbags.