1. Izzy has survived jet lag, having finally slept from 6:30 to 5. We’ll try to keep her up later. (It was brutal the day before — she was up from 1 to 4 in the morning, with me crashed on the sofa while she watched a vintage Scooby-Doo episode, and was cranky all day.)

2. (We were, alas, dealt a bad blow yesterday during our 65-kilometer journey from Makati to Los Banos when a fuel truck fell off a bridge and onto a house below. We left around 5 and arrived at home after 9:30 with stop-and-go traffic all the way. Izzy, alas, only sleeps in her crib, or in her car seat when the traffic is smooth — many tensions arose around that car seat, which people don’t use in the Philippines — and it was way past her bedtime.)

3. It’s a little strange posting when I really have no time to surf and read anyone else’s entries — my folks have only one phone line and a 33.6 modem — so I’m going through Eileen Tabios-withdrawal right now. =)

4. I’ve decided that Lyn Hejinian’s My Life is just about the perfect thing to read, a poem at a time, before going to sleep. (I think dream work is necessary to process this kind of poetry anyhow; the half-remembered images slowly unfold like a flower that blooms only at night.) My wish: to take a class that walks me through a close reading of this book, one step at a time.

5. I’ve also started picking a fight with my 7-year old niece, Issa (she speaks flawless English, better than I ever could):

Me: Don’t show any violent cartoons to Izzy; it’s not good for her.

Issa: But these aren’t violent.

Me [looking at the TV while Wolverine slashes some villain]: You don’t call that violent?

Issa: But those were bad guys.

Me: So it’s not violent if it’s done to bad guys? What about the civilian population of Iraq, did you think that wasn’t violent?

Issa: Huh?

6. My good friend Mike — who I knew as “that kano who walked around Los Banos with a pick mattock on his shoulder” — is asking me for updates on what LB looks like now.

a. Well, that store that sold fresh milk from DTRI at the corner of Lopez Avenue and Demarses Subdivision — I’m sure the women there flirted mercilessly with Mike — has been gone for well over a decade now. The main drag is now a long strip of internet cafes and restaurants, quite unimaginable in the ’80s. A few years ago the Vega Arcade expanded across the street into a three-story building with McDonald’s, Goldilocks, etc., and is still going strong.

b. There’s also a Robinson’s department store / supermarket / mall right before Crossing, just before you get to Jollibee. Huge, but it doesn’t have the nice provincial feel that Olivares Mall does.

c. What this all means, of course, is a decline in sari-sari stores — I certainly don’t see very many anymore, especially since a South Supermarket also opened up between Maahas and Bay.

d. LB is more congested than ever, even without the students. Haven’t driven around the campus yet, though — Mike, did I tell you about the jeepney waiting shed that the Thai grad student alumni set up next to the Auditorium? I have to send you a photo, and you’ll have to write about it sometime.

e. My folks took us out to lunch to this restaurant near Bay called Kainan sa Palaisdaan (Eatery at the Fishery, or something like that). About a dozen huts on bamboo rafts, circled around a pond with fish, the wind rustling the bamboo leaves. And the meal: grilled spareribs, sisig, pancit canton, kangkong, and other greasy Filipino fare. Excellent.

f. More on LB later. The heat and humidity is still the same; it’s still raining every day, almost all day, since Typhoon Chedeng left.

7. No other fruit in the world can compare to a mango from the Philippines. Mmm.

[Up next: video piracy, more child-rearing tension, wedding preparations and more in "Scenes from Los Banos, Part 2." (I'm going to have to work tomorrow, so all you constant readers won't see it for another few days.)]

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My friend Mike, who sent me the guest list to the Gloria and George dinner, weighs in on the subject. As he writes:

For all its glitter and buzz, Monday’s White House state dinner in honor of Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo could not conceal the tired, misconceived nature of America’s approach to Southeast Asia. Now, just as for most of the past half-century, Washington views the region’s problems merely as local variations on its own global preoccupations. Its distorted understanding has led to a long series of bad choices — bad both for Southeast Asia and for the United States.

(My previous take on the proceedings was that it very much lacking in glitter, and simply seemed like an elaborate sop thrown to the Philippines for supporting Bush’s “war on terror.”)

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We’re all heading off today — except for Shelby, alas — to Los Banos for my brother’s wedding and my conference and some quality time with Lolo and Lola. (And we’re steeling ourselves for the 15-hour plane flight as well.) So I’ll be blogging more infrequently for the next few weeks, as my folks have only one phone line.

Till then, I leave you constant readers with an image of Madeline and Shelby at Fort Funston, walking off into the distance:

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The U.S. is gleefully strong-arming its way around the world again — this time via genetically-modified crops, the rejection of which from the EU would mean the loss of a huge market for U.S. companies.

The Philippines is one of the battlegrounds as well. After the Philippine government allowed the distribution of Monsanto’s Bt corn in the country, members of the Philippine Greens and SEARICE, among others, went on a hunger strike to protest. (It ended 21 days later; by then, the Bt corn seeds had been “quietly distributed to corn plantation owners, which have started planting them in North Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat.”)

There are two major facets to the conflict over GMOs in the Philippines. The first is simply about questions regarding their safety. Faster evolution of antibiotic-resistant microbes, insecticide-resistant bugs, new allergies — it all seems like an awfully big chance to take.

But no — it’s because anti-GMO people are backward, and against progress, and paranoid, and “anti-science” (the latter epithet from Dean Jorge Bocobo). (It all sounds suspiciously like modernization-theory rhetoric to me (and yeah, like similar discourse about the Philippines a century ago) — but I can see some of you rolling your eyes already, so I’ll drop it.) Much of this proceeds from the common belief that science, as objective and value-free as it is, is good for you. It sounds so — dare I say it? — benevolent.

Pro-GMO folks also love citing the statistic that “genetically modified crops account for 75 percent of U.S. soybeans and 34 percent of American corn.” This is hardly reason to jump on the bandwagon just yet; obviously not everything good for the U.S. can be good for the rest of the world, as Monsanto’s P.R. people learned from angry European farmers. (You can read more (eloquently written, but objectionable to me) pro-GMO screeds at Belmont Club and at Bocobo’s blog Philippine Commentary — the links are probably screwed, as with a whole bunch of blogspot blogs, so I didn’t post the entry links, but they’re in the archives.)

Meanwhile, Jeanne d’Arc drops this little bomb, which brings me to the second facet of contention: the fact that a dependence on genetically modified crops — almost all of which are produced in the United States — would almost certainly foster a dependence on foreign capital as well. Now, I’m no economist, but I think it’s clear who’s lining whose pockets here. Even USAID, which has been actively pushing for higher integration of biotechnology into the Third World, says so on their website:

The principal beneficiary of America’s foreign assistance programs has always been the United States. Close to 80 percent of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) contracts and grants go directly to American firms.

I’m not one of those people who rail against multinational companies per se — a strategy sometimes carelessly deployed by activists of my youth, who saw every MNC as threatening national economic sovereignty, whatever that meant — but there is something troubling about the eager embrace of a product that seems so inherently risky and seems so clearly meant to reap profits for American biotechnology companies. Science or pseudo-science aside — and yes, unhelpful scare tactics are used by the anti-GMO camp as well — there is a very clear economic and political agenda all wrapped up here, encapsulated in a few grains of corn. If the crops will actually save Filipinos from starvation, then they should benefit from it, by all means. But let’s not pretend that lots of money will be made in what will obviously be a monopoly — and at whose expense?

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Some links for you:

- Ron Silliman on doubt and certainty (the link may be blogged up, but it’s May 23).
- Valis on Bush, Hitler, and The Matrix Reloaded.
- Katie D (to me, one of the stellar representatives of the New York school of bloggers) on living designer handbags.
- The no-nonsense jk has updated the no-nonsense Tarot FAQ (seriously recommended).
- I’m appalled at the results of a poll run on TristanCafe, where Toper asks, “If these women run for senator, who would you vote for?” — only 9% of the votes have gone to Jessica Zafra? And that horrible Imee Marcos is leading??
- Lysley Tenorio’s latest short story (“Monstress”) in The Atlantic Monthly.
- The schedule for the Sangandaan 2003 conference in Diliman is now out. (I’m speaking at the “Filipinos on Exhibit” session.) (Fellow blogger Erna Hernandez is also presenting — kita-kits tayo, Erna!)

And a hearty blogroll welcome to the beautifully-designed HeyMarvin.com.

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