Just another Weekend Getaway at the Iloilo-Dumangas Coastal Road

We all know that the Iloilo-Dumangas Coastal Road – unofficially known as the Monfort-Vigilar Highway – is lined with seafood restaurants along its length in the Dumangas area. Although Joy-joy’s Kalan-an is the most notable among these seafood restaurants, there are numerous other eating places deserving of attention, maybe even of regular patronage. One such eating place is Elizabeth Restaurant, just a kilometer or so down the road from Joy-joy’s.

While Joy-joy’s is situated along the bank of an estuary – romantically perched on stilts above tidal waters and flanked by mangroves – Elizabeth is located along the beaches of Dumangas, which even though are not your and my idea of what beaches should be, still attract quite a number of swimmers, young and old alike. Travelers along the Iloilo-Dumangas Coastal Road, the Dumangas stretch of which is now in a state of utter disrepair, would not miss Elizabeth’s façade. Like the road along its frontage, it is also quite shabby, although admittedly, it exudes a quaint appeal that makes it enticing to travelers.

Elizabeth Restaurant façade: quaintly charming.

Elizabeth is a rather quiet place that offers a better view of surrounding sceneries than Joy’joy’s. From its nipa-thatched balconies cum eating areas along the brown-black sand beach, one could see the Siete Pecados (a group of seven islands owned by the eminent Lopez family) – with the mansion and the lighthouse on the biggest island barely visible from the distance – and the brown sand beaches of Navalas in Buenavista, Guimaras to the southeast, the Naluoyan RORO Port in Dumangas to the northeast, and the Iloilo City skyline to the southwest.

Nipa-thatched balconies and beautiful sceneries.

The food though, is just a bit not that delicious compared to Joy-joy’s. Although the menu and food prices are comparable to that of Joy-joy’s, the cooking at Elizabeth is just so-so. My benchmark for delicious cuisine along the Coastal Road area is the adobado – catfish cooked in coconut milk and chili peppers – and Elizabeth failed in this regard.

Food at Elizabeth Seafood Restaurant: so-so.

So the next time you find your way to the seafood restaurants along the Iloilo-Dumangas Coastal Road, decide what you really wanted at the outset. Do you want delicious food along an estuary and amid the mangroves, or do you want a relatively quiet and scenic place where you could spend a few hours with your paramour, while downing a couple of beers? Then, you would know where to go.

Note: This is neither an endorsement nor a food review – just my impression of places.

We Could Have Cheaper Medicines by Now

Right, we could have cheaper medicines by now – if only Sen. Manuel Araneta Roxas “MAR” II did not revise the most important provision in the original House Bill authored by Iloilo Representative Ferjenel Biron. Biron’s bill “sought to create a price regulatory council that would control medicine prices”, but according to Herbert Vego, MAR had other things in mind:

“Roxas should also blame himself. The original author of the bill, Cong. Ferj Biron, had sought to create a price regulatory council that would control medicine prices but Roxas amended it to give the President power to regulate prices.

Mar was waxing far-sighted, probably thinking he would wield the same power if and when be (sic) becomes President.”

If we follow Vego’s claim, it would appear that Roxas tied the Filipinos’ right to have cheaper medicines into his presidential ambitions. Ostensibly, MAR seemed confident that he would win in May 2010 and hopes to be known as the President who brought medicine prices down.

But that argument would not hold water in the event Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo signs the executive order (EO) that would establish the maximum retail prices (MRP) of 22 most vital medicines. In order for Vego’s assumption to play out, Roxas must be 100% sure that the current President would not exercise the power to control medicine prices. How sure Roxas was, that Arroyo would not use that power? And did he really expect it to be? Although it would seem that Arroyo is dilly-dallying in exercising that power by delaying the signing of the executive order – apparently due to the strong lobby of multinational drug companies – Roxas must have believed, and expected, that Arroyo would eventually sign that EO.

So what gains MAR was aiming for when he decided to put the responsibility of controlling medicine prices on the President, instead of on a price regulatory council? Roxas:

Why not a Drug Price Regulatory Board rather than relying on the Secretary of Health to regulate the price of drugs? “I want accountability to be placed in one person – the Secretary of Health, who will thus forward his recommendations to the President. To place the power of price regulation under a nameless, faceless board would serve only to diffuse accountability and perpetuate finger-pointing at the expense of the public.”

Yeah, right. But that “nameless, faceless board” could also be far less exposed to political pressures and lobbies, and could actually do a more resolute job than a politician whose main preoccupation, more often than not, is to please everybody. Apparently, the implementation of the Cheaper Medicines Law – otherwise known as Republic Act No. 9052 or the Universally Accessible Cheaper and Quality Medicine Act of 2008 – is a proverbial “hot potato”. By putting the responsibility of regulating medicine prices on the hands of Pres. Arroyo instead of on a price regulatory council, Roxas shrewdly passed the “hot potato” from the lap of a certainly non-political entity into the lap of a highly political office. By doing so, MAR could have additional fodder for his presidential campaign.

Isn’t that brilliant? From the man who, Cong. Biron said, “killed the law” himself, it certainly is.

“Sen. Roxas should not blame President Arroyo for the failure of the Cheaper Medicines Law. He should blame himself because he killed the law,” Biron stressed.

Biron, a physician by profession, said the provision on mandatory price regulation was being pushed by the House contingent during the bicameral conference committee deliberating on the proposed law then.

But due to the intense opposition of senators, particularly “presidentiable” Roxas, the Senate version which gave the power to regulate the prices of medicines to the President prevailed, he added.

As we already know, medicines in the Philippines are the most expensive in Asia, if not the world, with prices ranging from three times, and believe it or not, up to more than ten times of their equivalent costs in India, Pakistan and China. While the citizens of those countries have been enjoying cheap medicines for years on end now, multinational drug companies continue to bleed Filipinos dry with very high, almost prohibitive, prices of medicine. Our leaders would rather grandstand and play politics – in aid of their presidential ambitions.

Ilonggo-isms by Rom Sedona

As a proud Ilonggo, this bystander got amused with the following musings by the charming, albeit mystifying Romany Sedona. In this post – which I dared to take the liberty of reproducing here – Rom not only showed her sense of humor, but also her pride in being an Ilonggo.

Ilonggo-isms

A while back, me and two ilonggo friends were sitting around just shooting the breeze when an annoying fly landed on one friend’s nose. After swatting it away, he wondered aloud: “What’s the hiligaynon word for langaw?” Without batting an eye, my other friend replied, “Fly, pre.”

I almost fell over laughing.

Ever since, I’ve been on the look-out for ilonggoisms like this, and on a recent trip, logged the following:

Taxi driver: “Kaulugot a. Ma-dugayan ta di, inday. Traffic.”

Janitress: “Waay signal di ang globe no? Kaina pa ni, a. Nag-text na ko gani sa akon self.”

Security Guard, responding to Janitress: “Tuod ka? Testinga beh i- turn on and off?”

Another taxi driver: “Diri ka sa piyak sulod, ‘day. Guba ang door.”

Fisherman: “Pagkalampas mo da, waay ka na makit-an nga balas. Bato na di ya. Pero ang mga bato di ya, gwapo ang pagka-arrange.”

LOL.

It’s not so much the casual and seamless integration of english words that gets me, it’s the perfect pronunciation in every case. “Traffic” wasn’t pronounced “trapik;” “Turn on and off” was said with clear articulation of every word, not “tarn onenop;” and “Arrange” was pronounced without a rolling r.

I love it.

Must be one of the reasons why Iloilo is included in a list of the BPO industry’s “New Outsourcing Hot Spots” in the world.