METROPOST NIKKA CORNELIO-BAKER


SAVING FOR BOTOX


sweet little bird of a woman. I had somehow imagined that the best-selling author of The Life- Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing was a Michiko Kakutani of sorts. I expected her to look stringy, rigid, and exacting, not be a tiny slip of a girl with a smile that stretches from ear to ear, who wears prim, feminine outfits, and seems to be the human embodiment of the sunshine emoji.


M arie Kondo is


She is the celebrity of tidying, hired to make sense of one’s life by helping one weed out, sort, and organize the detritus that can accumulate simply through existing.


She currently has a TV show on Netflix, where she helps people decide what to keep, and what to throw out, and teaches them how to arrange the things they have decided to keep to spark the maximum amount of joy. Joy is her raison d’etre. The gist of her method, called KonMari, is to keep only the things that give you joy, and to honour the things that no longer do, before casting them aside and donating them to charity.


method special is that Marie Kondo believes each item that you have in your home should bring you joy.


What makes the KonMari


She also believes that every sentimental item has a sort of life, one that needs to be respected. It sounds ridiculous, and I suppose on the surface, it is. Inanimate


Twitter: @nikkajow a


objects are just that, objects. Because I subscribe to the notion that my things turn into the cast of Toy Story whenever I’m not looking (which is why one moment they’re missing, and the next, they’re lying under my nose waiting to be picked up), the KonMari method, and the philosophy behind it doesn’t strike me as particularly outlandish. I like her philosophy on tidying up. The control freak in me loves the idea of organization, of knowing what goes where, the empowerment of knowing where everything and anything is at any given time. The method may seem


simple, but it is devilishly tricky, and in some cases,


unrealistic.


Book lovers in particular, myself included, bristle at the notion of only keeping books that are likely to be re-read (she recommends having no more than 30), and giving the rest – the unread ones, or ones that’ll never be read again – away, as the KonMari method says to do.


willy-nilly in the pursuit of carving out a space in which to breathe. If anything, I see the KonMari method as a good way to re-evaluate the reasons we have for buying the things we do.


When it comes to acquiring media - movies, TV shows, and books - I like to make sure the ones I get are ones I really enjoy. Either I’ve seen it something in the theatre and loved it, or I’ve borrowed the digital version of a book from the library, and have decided it deserves a spot on my bookshelf.


This way, I know I’m almost never going to get rid of what I get, and it will never go unwatched or unread. It’s helpful to have


A less wasteful kind of joy


Please keep your happy, well-meaning paws off my books, Marie Kondo. All of them bring me joy. Everything else, just not the books! It’s impossible to only keep the things that spark joy. Not everything I own does. Not everything has to, and that’s okay. I may not have that meaningful a relationship with my spatula, but it’s not getting thrown out anytime soon. To be fair, I don’t believe she means for people to start throwing everything out


ORLANDO RONCESVALLES


LETTER FROM DUMAGUETE


oroncesval4@gmail.com


have been asked several times how students of economics should view the discipline. Let me first examine the actual views of the students I’ve taught in more than 15 years at Silliman University.


I


majority take a class in economics because it is required (this is the case for many students, such as those taking up accountancy, mass communications, even nursing). Just about all in this category didn’t really like economics, and just saw it as another chore in the path to a bachelor’s degree. A few, including those who majored in economics, enjoyed the subject, probably


The overwhelming


because they could easily grasp it. However, I’ve seen very little interest among economics majors in doing graduate studies in economics. They see economics as useful for law school, or for finding employment in places that need to deal with economic matters, such as banks, certain government agencies, or businesses who would hire them for eventual entry into managerial positions. I conclude from this survey that economics is at least a “useful” major in the mind of its students, and those who see more in it are brave enough to major in economics.


How to see economics Is this utilitarian view of economics the best? My (biased) personal answer is in the negative. I think


economics should be seen as in the same league as art and philosophy, instead of as a social science that prides itself in being “scientific.” One of the greats in economics gave it its widest definition. Economics, he said, is “the study of human choice.” It isn’t just the study of man “in the ordinary course of business,” and it is much more than “the study of the allocation of limited resources to satisfy unlimited wants.” Okay, if human desire is unlimited, how can we crunch that down to the tractable? We can’t, so we pretend that we can. There is more to this


pretense. Sometime in the 1950s and 1960s, the idea took


hold that with economics as science, economists should be able to predict. This was mainly an idea of followers of Keynes (among them was Paul Samuelson of textbook fame who made economics look a lot like physics). If physicists can tell beforehand the trajectory of a cannonball, economists should be able to forecast economic events like recessions and stock market booms.


“If we can predict them, we can control them” became the mantra of Keynesians who thought that they could keep economies at full employment.


the strategy of candidates for public office. But somehow, it ain’t so.


The Great Financial Crisis of 2008 brought on a concurrent crisis, today still unresolved, in the economics profession. No economist with stature called 2008, but after it happened, they had good explanations.


The explanations boiled down into “bad banks” and inept regulators. The latter did not lack the weapons of what we call Modern Macroeconomics. Their main prognosticator, in the fashion of Newtonian mechanics, was a Rube Goldberg contraption called the Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model. It didn’t work.


The good and bad in economics


Reportedly, it is back at the drawing board.


Today, scared people wonder if 2019 will repeat 2008. The honest answer is that we don’t know because forecasting and economics don’t mix. The somewhat lame answer is that the DSGE model is the best there is, but that it’s under repair.


There is, however, one area where economics, from Adam Smith to today, has shined. That area is in showing us humans as victims of our own proclivities, as well as beneficiaries of our weaknesses.


Politicians loved such economists because of the temptation to see well-fed voters voting like robots. “It’s the economy, stupid,” was


So we want to help the poor laborer, and we then enact minimum wages; for this, we get the greater misery of unemployment.


So we let our petit TO PAGE 10


perspective when buying things, something that, in our mad dash to accrue, very often gets muddled. Sometimes we find ourselves buying things for the sake of buying things, stripping them of their meaning in the process, and the cycle of going out to buy things simply because it feels good to buy things becomes a vicious one that’s hard to break. Before you know it, you’re surrounded by things that have no meaning beyond the initial impulse you had to buy them in the first place.


Be selective. Aside from asking if something you already own brings you joy, it’s also a good idea to ask if something you want to own will bring you joy. It’ll help you ensure you’ll never have to throw anything out.


he unexpected and random drug tests conducted recently by the incumbent city administration ins ide City Hall are commendable. It should have been done earlier, nonetheless, congratulations to those who spearheaded the campaign. Empowering youth The campaign on curbing drug abuse and eliminating addiction in our midst should not stop at City Hall though. It must include a variety


T


of activities designed to demonstrate to the youth that drug-free living is enjoyable and satisfying. I believe that young people


are gifted with a very positive and creative view of the world. They are capable of envisioning a drug-free city. I believe that when they get the idea that they can do something to make it happen; they will see the world and their role in it in a different light.


Basically, young people who turn to drugs are


WILLIAM E. ABLONG EYE OPENER wea_129@yahoo.com


uninterested, despondent, or estranged from life or living. They don’t find their lives inspiring or satisfying enough, and when they start getting hooked, they don’t actually understand the consequences of their actions on their own future and on others.


We should allow children and teenagers to face the realities of drug use in their environment, so that they take an active part in turning


it around for the better or for the common good.


Common sense options In recent decades, the trend in drug education has shifted away from prevention, into “harm reduction” and “safety” issues—such as advising how to use drugs so as to reduce AIDS, hepatitis and deaths. These strategies are bordered with fatalistic and despairing messages increasingly found in media from drug policy “reformers” that not only is the drug war


IAN ROSALES CASOCOT


TEMPEST IN A COFFEEMUG


ian.casocot@gmail.com


outlines you could see of it from the vantage point of Santa Catalina St., which traverses the place apart from the M.L. Quezon Park, suggested a small but elaborately-styled building of some Spanish import although only a shadow of it was obvious to the undiscerning eye.


B


efore 2018, the Dumaguete City Hall had been a conundrum: the rough


elaboration—we didn’t even know then who had designed the building—had been lost or hidden over the years, all in the increments of expansion and done in the name of horror vacui, that tendency for people to occupy and build upon every available space.


Most of that original


the grime that had accumulated over the years, or the courtyard that had become a giant parking lot, or the inexplicable presence of an elementary school embracing a government center.


public education—but did other cities have public schools operating in the midst of their city halls? We thought this, but who were we to say something? Could we even do anything about it?


Not to begrudge space for


“lost” but that it can never be won.


we must deal with health and other consequences of drugs, it should not include defeatism which comes from a desire to justify failures. While initiatives must continue to hold back abuse, addiction and its effects on society, bigger effort must go into prevention.


The only lasting cure


make a dent in the problem of drug abuse no matter what policy or laws we try. Once well-informed, then they will avoid drugs out of common sense and because they think they should.


The church has a massive role to play, the schools too, and most important of all, the parents, in educating our children about drugs, no matter what policy or legislation is currently in vogue because I believe, prevention is the only lasting cure.


Without meaningful education about drugs on a massive scale, we won’t


While being realistic means


JAN. 20 - JAN. 26, 2019 OPINION 5


You could say the devolution of the City Hall


over the decades sprung from pure bureaucracy—a complete takeover of function over form. A turret defaced. A narrow walkway filled in to provide more office space. A veranda also vanished, again to make way for more office space. It was, in other words, an


And then sometime in 2017: a great discovery. Upon the retrieval of the original plans from the Department of Public Works & Highways central archives, it was confirmed that the City Hal l—then the Presidencia—was in fact, designed in 1936 by Juan M. Arellano, perhaps the greatest


of all Filipino architects, done in the elegant, if scaled-down, S pa n is h - A merican- Filipino “Mission Style” architecture. (


construction was finished in 1937.)


T h e


ugly affair: a building that had become a Frankenstein monster of mindless renovation and expansion.


For many decades, most of us in Dumaguete could not even think of declaring Pride of Place over this unfortunate state of affairs. We saw other places and their City Halls— our sister Negrense city of Bacolod easily sprung to mind as having a government center that by design also throbbed with local pride—and so we demurred about comparing our own, thinking: What else can we do? Can we even do anything? When we visited City Hall then, it was to transact quickly with whatever city offices we had to deal with, in and out in a speedy manner, opting as we walked through the quadrangle and climbed the curving stairway and crossed the hallways, to be blind from


buildings in the country, and would have been declared a National Artist for Architecture had he not died at the age of 72 in 1960. (The Order of the National Artist was inaugurated in 1972, and part of its stipulation is that it cannot be given to artists who have died before that year.) Still, he had a dramatic career, which had seen him design such places as Manila’s Metropolitan Theater (1935), the Legislative Building (1926, which now houses the National Museum of Fine Arts), Jones Bridge (1921), the Bank of the Philippine Islands-Cebu Main Branch (1940), and the Manila Central Post Office (1926). Beyond the national capital, he was much sought after to design various provincial capitols and city halls, and out of such commissions would include the old Jaro Municipal Hall (1934), the old Iloilo


Arellano, of course, was the brilliant genius behind some of the most iconic heritage


City Hall (1935), the Negros Occidental Provincial Capitol (1936), the Cebu Provincial Capitol (1937), Misamis Occidental Provincial Capitol (1935), and the old Cotabato Municipal Hall (1940)—most of them done in the classical Greek


In the light of Arellano


style, save for the last one, which incorporated the neo- vernacular architectural style and featuring Muslim motifs, and Dumaguete’s, which drew on the town’s mélange of Spanish and American influences. That he had taken the commission to do the presidencia of a small (but burgeoning) town perhaps attested to the appeal of Dumaguete even then.


Arellano designed faced Quezon Park, which was in place since 1916—but his friend, the Italian sculptor Francesco Riccardo Monti, added to the park a sculpture and fountain of three women bearing a basin


The Presidencia that


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