Newsworthy

Clark Kent and I have been frequenting a restaurant set up at the World Food Programme – it was one of our best finds – nice food with generous servings and the ambience was homey enough we spend at least an hour there just soaking up the opportunity of eating comfortably outdoors. We’ve been going there so frequently the cooks already know us – greeting us or saying thank you in Filipino. It’s also the one place where we get to read newspaper.

We’ve been very impressed with the Jakarta Post – which is the English daily made available at the WFP restaurant. We would take our time to read through the pages and exchange articles, because we sometimes read different sections of the newspaper or different issues. Lively discussions would sometimes follow an article we’ve shared reading. We’d look for articles about the Philippines, and often we would see some picture and caption featured or some other item in the business section.

It was nasi goreng seafood dinner at WFP yesterday (Wednesday), and as our ritual we dug into the newspapers. A Filipino writer was in the opinion section – Neal Cruz of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. He wrote of caregiver openings for Filipinos that GMA was able to facilitate on her visit to Spain. Clark Kent read the article first and said “Ang pangit naman ng article na ‘to (This article sucks!)” after the first few paragraphs. I uttered the same comment when I got my turn to read.

In his attempt to criticize GMA, Neal Cruz in his article ended up degrading the thousands of caregivers that are working overseas sending precious dollars to our wobbling economy. He had successfully expressed how, to him, the caregiving profession was without dignity.
I’m sorry I don’t have the article with me now to quote some lines, or to give the exact title and date. His point, really, was to challenge GMA to create jobs for Filipinos in the Philippines, and not to gloat on finding “humiliating” jobs for Filipinos abroad. It was a good point – but he sort of bungled with how he said it, he ended up hurting countless OFWs instead of jolting GMA and her administration. At least that was how I felt, and I am not even a care giver.