We’re so used to bad service

Unsurprisingly, 53 percent of Filipinos polled by SWS would tolerate nurses from June 2006’s tainted board exam to care for them. Another 22 percent have no opinion, which in effect is the same as the first 53. Only 25 percent, one in four, would refuse. We all know why. Acculturated to bargain-sale but faulty pirated DVDs, rickety public rides and rutty streets, we Filipinos are so used to bad products, services and surroundings. We don’t see the need to change. We believe we can live a hundred years more with dynamited fish, shoddy schoolbooks and waterless toilets.

It matters not to us that majority of deans and veteran nurses doubt the fitness of the 17,000 or so test passers. Like Professional Regulation Commissioner Leonor Rosero, we insist on our wrongs and expect others to accept. Rosero was set to leave for the US yesterday to appeal the blacklist by the Commission on Graduates of Foreign Nursing Schools of passers seeking work in America. Yet, CGFNS head Barbara Nichols already told her to not waste time appealing because they want US job applicants to retake Tests 3 and 5 that were marred by leakage. We can’t get into our thick skulls that it’s only us who believe that all the passers, regardless of who cheated, can attain local as well as US licenses as birthright. The whole world is persecuting us, so we yell our voices hoarse for justice. Meantime, we dilly-dally in prosecuting the two examiners who leaked questionnaires and 11 deans and reviewers who coaxed them into it. We even let Rosero stay in office and junket to America, when she should be indicted as an accessory for attempting to whitewash the misdeed.

We have a puwede na ’yan (that’ll do) mentality that bad things will in due time turn good. And so our repairmen work slapdash, as if relishing the label siranico. Our finest restaurants have the foulest washrooms. Our tricycles cause air and noise pollution, and we don’t mind. We consider ourselves lucky to have intermittent phone, water or electricity connection — better than none.

Perhaps it’s all because we think only of the present and do not look beyond our nose tips. We value education as the family passport out of penury, yet condone unqualified teachers in elementary Science and Math who bury us deeper in ignorance. We detest remedial classes for our flunking children as these entail additional expenses for school snacks. Our poor woodcutters denude forests to feed their families, with no regard for choking them with dirty air. Our rich build and sell high-rise condos but with no provisions for car parks, like that much-publicized project in New Manila, Quezon City. We knowingly buy stolen cell phones, untroubled that we’re encouraging more violent, possibly deadly, thefts.

Our leaders set the worst examples of shortsightedness. The mayor of San Manuel, Tarlac, last Sunday let beauty contestants parade right on busy MacArthur Highway, ignoring the onrush of thousands of vehicles coming down from Baguio’s Flower Festival, thus jamming traffic a kilometer on each direction and poisoning his town with exhaust fumes. Headmen of Lubao, Pampanga, feeling privileged perhaps for having sent two town mates so far to Malacañang, are worse, with parades all year round on Olongapo-Gapan Highway. Follow the leader. We don’t feel ashamed to abuse our membership in the dominant religion as we similarly hold turtle-pace fiesta processions on national roads.

We’re so used to bad things that it shows in elections. Our senatorial candidates today are making us choose only between loyalists of a sitting President and a deposed one — and we’re not complaining. We think that if we vote the handsomest, glibbest or most famous of them, we miraculously would have a greater nation.

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Beware of this new carjacking modus operandi. You walk across the parking lot, hop into your car, start the engine and shift to reverse. When you glance at the rearview mirror backing up, you notice a piece of paper stuck to your rear windshield. So you shift back to park, unlock the doors and jump out to remove that pesky whatever it is that’s obstructing your view.

As you reach over the trunk, that’s when the carjacker jumps out of nowhere into your car and practically mows you down as he speeds off. And guess what, ladies? More likely, you’ve left your purse in the car. Along with your house keys; ID, credit and ATM cards; and photocopy of car registration with your address. Your home and identity are compromised.

So before jumping into your car, check you rear windshield. And if you forget and see that telltale piece of paper stuck there as you back up, honk your horn to alert security.

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