Is PAL famous and influential all around?

Australian Air Line Grounded by PAL employees, er… Qantas Management

Bangkok transport workers’ unions that ousted their government (Prime Minister of Thailand Premier Samak Sundaravej resigned during the unions’ general strike) have been upstaged by PAL and Qantas, the more recent destabilizers of air and other form of transport. Unfortunately for Qantas’ three big unions, their own Prime Minister in Australia H.E. Julia Eileen Gillard did not resign like Sundaravej! Maybe she really didn’t feel she need to, hmmm?

The Philippine Air Lines, er… Qantas Air Ways Unions struck around the eve of Halloween in Sydney, Australia forcing the airline to lock out its employees and shut down international and domestic operations.

Management militancy caused PAL, er… Qantas to lose revenues and expenses to the tune of 68 million Australian dollars or 72.5 million in U.S. dollars.

In the Philippines, when the PAL airline union went on protest, their employer, the Philippine Air Lines, suffered an involuntary or forced grounding of all its aircraft.  Unlike Qantas however, it was Qantas that grounded its own aircraft and operations. But it makes me ask the question whether PAL employees are able to influence and sway foreign unions to protest. So far, it says a lot that the PAL strike did not make President Benigno Aquino resign as well! Just kidding.

I really have to find out if the PAL employees and Qantas labor unions are talking to each other. If so, have they agreed that the Qantas unions should cause the shutting down or lockout of all Qantas operations?

Very intriguing.

The Longing

(Ode to the dumb)

What is there for humans
To yearn for a meaning
In the act made
The thought contemplated
The taste savored
The sense enthused
Orgasm had
Deportment shown
Savvy advertised
Etiquette displayed
Superiority paraded,
Flaunted,
Or as it were, inferiority
For that matter
Peeled of its wrappings…
How complex a human is
To comprehend
That all at once, the creature
Defines, satisfies the want
For awe and weaves
The concept : God
Yet at a flash,
Mulls destruction of peers
Fellow species
Or worse, younglings
Barely able to
Declare their plaint…
In each of us
Lies a Tempest
Storms of emotions
Burning passions
Sentiments, dreams
That refuse to lay
Dead and forgotten.
Hopes and Demons
Offsprings of our own
Imaginations
Impressions created
By wanton desires
Simple or warped
Discernment
Sheer folly
Of what?
Shangrilas
Nirvanas
Hades
Or hell
Is not even known…
Or clutching
Shackles
Lashes to
Worthless baggage.
And so the question :
Can’t a human
Be not
Machine,
Epitome of obeisance?
But even robots
Shall someday stake
Claim to their
Inroboticity
Even technological
Devices
Shall one day process their
Untechnoticity
Meanwhile,
Humans,
Til one day they
Are sentient
Shall never feel sated
Deep in the dark
Recesses of mind,
Devoid of inspiration
Absent of Love
And true empathy,
There shall always be
Longing
Born of Loneliness
Shorn of the pure
Wish for the good,
Of the other.
And There shall always be
Longing,
A silent, thundering
Yearning
Impatient, bursting with power
As hopelessness drives
A buff
Of deadly substances
Into that object of
Peculiar craving for
Water tainted
With techniolor
A gas,
A kindred spirit,
Then
Just the
Crazed
Chronic
Searching
For a piece of
Colored paper or
A piece of metal
Or mock of glass
Perchance a defined sheen
Or edge roughened
Unknowably.
At the end of it,
Only one that
Can no longer covet
Is blessed.
And such is the autistic
And idiot savant
Forever beyond
Silly humans’ aspirations…
Such pureness of heart
Devoid of
An abject form of ache
That,
Even
God
Never pondered on
Certainly not to
Meander about
To find
And neither
To create.

A tribute to Anwar Ibrahim

How do days go by? Know not I…
Jammed Khalil,  the friend of Joel

So how do days go by? Were I to know I’ll tell you
Best that I keep the question, close to my chest,
Though it nags at my head all the time
I feel and I know, it’s getting late, it’s getting late.

I don’t know how days come by without ever leaving
Not a creak of stairs, not a sound on windows
Not a rustle of fabric, nor a tap on roofs
Not a crack of doors, nor the kettle’s whistle

Like imagined steam, I don’t see days clearly
It is a seamless existence, inside this prison cell.
It will be late, it will be, if the sun doesn’t shine
If nighttime never comes; when all that flourishes

Is the shameless gleam, in little men’s eyes
And the bitter taste of greed in their hearts.
How do days go by? Know not I, who am aggrieved
How do days go by? Know will I one day when I shall fly.

On the Mindanao Conflict: Let Greatness Spring

Let greatness spring not from small, but from
Things large and spirit bloating; great men
May both be born, and made, but never
To spring from tiny elfin fledglings.

Let greatness not bestow itself upon small
Men, grating teeth and crazed mien, sowing
Discomfort and poison upon the order.
Nature disavows small that pricks the eye.

Let no one great dare touch the means of the
Small men, neither wage small wars nor cover
Small debts, tainted with dishonor. Let greatness
ennoble even the simple ways. And let greatness

Pour generous value to credit; honor being the
Measure of that. But the small will cheat and
Lie and fiddle, for a measly crack of grain.
Steal, burgle and rob, even tainted air.

To the last of his breath, let the great man only
Gamble, with rectitude to save the realm and
Savaged preys, from abject distress. The small will
Always be wont to kill, merely to gamble all the
hearth’s fortunes away.

Caveat and admonition

Write not for me, nor with me
If the pain in your heart
Is not enough to cause the
World to spin.

Sing not for me if your soul
Knows not, the meaning
Of the whine and fury
Of the storm.

But cry, cry for me
Because each day does not
Pass, that the devil not taketh
Time and all our loves.