i  went to city hall earlier for an audience with the mayor. i saw one street there was closed to accommodate  the queue of people hoping to  avail of the free rice the mayor’s office was  giving out. men, women, oldies, teens– different kinds of people were there. i saw some with white plastic bags with what seemed to be 2 kilos of rice and a few canned sardines. maybe a day’s worth of food.

i liked the drama in how some of those people hold the shoulder of the person preceding them in the line. a gentle shove maybe implying ” let’s move this line forward”..

in other regions, the national food authority also distributes free  or low-priced rice. reports say that lines there start at dawn and snaking through sidewalks. i see those faces on tv and the thought of a looming rice crisis disturbs me. my family, like other Filipinos, are so used to eating rice that the perspective of substituting it with other carbo-rich staples seems hard to adapt to.

what could possibly avert a rice crisis? a food crisis?. it’s global now.

i think we should eliminate the use of money as purchasing tool. let’s go back to barter. then utilize lands more for planting food crops not artificial things. in short, we should go back to basic… i know, it’s a tall order. very tall… but i wish.###