Are we there yet? Pour wheel drive
CEBU, Philippines - First off, it is not a typo as I am going to be talk about the frequency and amount of rain that has been pouring over the past couple of weeks. We have been, for some time now, been forced to wait out, wade through and, for the geniuses who thought they were driving waterproof vehicles, get stuck in badly-flooded roads. The social network has been, pardon the pun, flooded with images of and criticisms about the worsening flooding problems in our metropolis.
Many are quick to point out that the main city has flooding issues because the current city chief and his tribal council do not see eye to eye. According to reports, the chief wants to spend a large sum of money to rehabilitate the drainage system but his council, allegedly, sees nothing good coming out of that project. I, for one, am on the fence on this. While it is true that rehabilitating the city’s drainage system could help alleviate the flooding problem, it has also been proven by the Kapitolyo city to be an exercise in futility. As I recall, didn’t this wannabe-Kapitolyo spend a ton of the city’s money claiming that it would be spent to do the exact same thing? And aren’t their streets still flooded?
Unless the main city’s chief can claim that their engineers are a lot smarter than that of the component city, rehabilitating the drainage system won’t do squat. They can spend millions upon millions of taxpayers’ money and we’ll still end up with underwater roadways half the year. You know why? Because the powers that be decided to place myopic people on the urban planning team. They were so busy looking for ways to entice businesses to setup shop in the metropolis that they did not have contingency measures in place.
If you’re on the urban planning team and you’d care to claim otherwise, answer these simple questions: 1. Why are our roads getting badly congested? 2. Why can’t the city’s drainage cope with the amount of rainfall? 3. Shouldn’t this have been something your group anticipated to save the voting populace from this inconvenience? Last I checked, planning is defined as the process of thinking about and organizing the activities required to achieve a desired goal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning). Interestingly, that same article further states that, an important, albeit often ignored aspect of planning, is the relationship it holds with forecasting. Forecasting can be described as predicting what the future will look like, whereas planning predicts what the future should look like.
While there is no quick fix to the flooding problem, there is no solution to be had if these issues persist within the halls of the powers that be. I really don’t mind if they all end up being diagnosed hypertensive after a long bout of progressive solutions, rather than bickering over political allegiance and whose turn it is on the karaoke machine. Dig if you have to dig. Widen if you have to widen. But please, spare us the over-bloated budgets and undercut workmanship. After all, no one, including the powers that be, has a daily drive amphibian motor vehicle. But as long as they still do what they do, selling amphibious vehicles wouldn’t be a bad business venture.
But the only good thing I could say about the rainy season and the flooded streets, it keeps these zigzagging, counterflowing, reckless scooters and mopeds off the streets.
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