The New Mile High Club

George Francis, the baby left in a Gulf Air toilet.

There is a new mile high club in the skies these days. And no, I'm not talking about couples doing funny and explicit stuff in airplane toilets.

I went to the barber this afternoon to get my long overdue haircut. As I watched my hair being trimmed by skillful hands, my eyes caught glimpse of the TV screen behind me through the mirror. What was on the news this evening didn't surprise me anymore: a 5-6 month old male fetus found in the trash bin of an airplane toilet. Airport officials at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) said that airline cleaners found the fetus in the waste bin of an Etihad Airways flight from Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. It was likely that the mother of the fetus had an unwanted pregnancy while working in the Gulf countries and had the child aborted and disposed of in midair to avoid relatives in the Philippines from finding out. You can read more of this news here.

The Great Leap Upward

SM Sea Residences in Pasay City

Walking along the brightly-lit alleys of SM Mall of Asia with my girlfriend, I noticed the construction going on in the other side of the street -- the SEA Residences. It is a really big real estate property composed of three huge buildings, each around 12 to 15 stories I guess. Because of its size, I found myself asking, where will SM get the tenants for this huge property?

I asked my girlfriend if she wants to live in a condominium. She said that she wanted a house and lot better since you can have it remodeled and hand it down to you descendants. We started discussing about how we plan to raise money to buy our future house, either we really save up for it or we get a housing loan from Pag-Ibig or SSS. It is from this incident last night that I decided to write an article about land and its value to us Filipinos.