This morning, I have 2000 pesos in my wallet. By this evening, I only have 1200 pesos. In less than 12 hours, the amount of cash I have in hand was reduced to almost half. I spent it on only two things, food and water.
Our money is so amazing. It is so easy to spend. I am so impressed at how easy my 500 peso bill was reduced to coins. I bought food stuff for lunch and some bananas, it was down to just 350 pesos. The house help told me that we had to buy rice. I told her to get 5 kilos so it will last until the weekend, the remaining amount went down to 150 pesos. We also had to restock our drinking water and the money left in my hand amounted to 30 pesos, in 10 peso coins.
This whole scenario happened in less than an hour. That means, in less than an hour I spent 470 pesos for my upkeep.
The story of the amazing peso does not end here. By afternoon, we had to buy food for dinner and breakfast tomorrow. Total cost for everything: 300 pesos.
If you think that I buy expensive foodstuff, you're wrong. Most of the food I asked the house helper to buy were vegetables and fish. The only fruits I bought were the bananas I mentioned earlier on.
My friends and I would sometimes joke among ourselves that the 100 peso bill is the new 10 pesos. One could hardly buy anything substantial for 100 pesos. I use to spend less than 50 pesos per day for my lunch. Now I pay more than 100 pesos per day. I still eat the same kind of food, nothing fancy just the regular food we Filipinos eat.
Our 100 pesos is not enough for even the value meals of fastfood chains. It used to be enough for two persons, but now it is only enough for one value meal.
What's even more amazing with our money is that it is so easy to disappear but very hard to find and earn. Right now the average minimum wage is 275 pesos. So imagine how a minimum wage earner can balance his pay with his expenses. Go figure!
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Showing posts with label rice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rice. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Rice Problems Even for the Global Pinoys
I must blog this.
I just saw on local TV a news story about Filipinos in California panic buying rice! This is due to the steep increase in the price of imported rice in the US. The news showed Fil-Ams buying sacks of rice at US$42 per sack. An elderly couple in Union City even bought 2 sacks just to be sure.
One Piinoy told the reporter that even if bread were readily available in Union City, he still wants to have rice on the table. Rice is more filling than bread, he said.
There was also an interview with a CostCo employee who said that they will limit the amount of rice that could be bought by one family. Hey, that sounds familiar already!
The only difference is that Fil-Ams do not need to fall in line for hours to get their rice unlike their poor kababayans here who need to line-up for hours under the sun. Oh and also, while they in the US are limited to just 1 sack per family, the people here are limited to just 3 kilos per day.
I just saw on local TV a news story about Filipinos in California panic buying rice! This is due to the steep increase in the price of imported rice in the US. The news showed Fil-Ams buying sacks of rice at US$42 per sack. An elderly couple in Union City even bought 2 sacks just to be sure.
One Piinoy told the reporter that even if bread were readily available in Union City, he still wants to have rice on the table. Rice is more filling than bread, he said.
There was also an interview with a CostCo employee who said that they will limit the amount of rice that could be bought by one family. Hey, that sounds familiar already!
The only difference is that Fil-Ams do not need to fall in line for hours to get their rice unlike their poor kababayans here who need to line-up for hours under the sun. Oh and also, while they in the US are limited to just 1 sack per family, the people here are limited to just 3 kilos per day.
Saturday, April 19, 2008
It's the People Again Who Should Make Sacrifices
The TV newscasts are filled with it. People lining in the streets, wet markets and other places to buy rice. Rice that are within their means. It all happened after the country's agriculture secretary announced that we better cut down on our rice consumption or we will end up with out rice! All hell broke loose as soon as after he said those words.
I thought at that time how stupid it was that instead of government doing something about the impending rice shortage, the secretary himself would ask the people to eat less rice. What's even weird is that he even asked food centers to offer half cup of rice instead of one cup per meal (we serve rice by cups). It's almost as if he's asking Filipinos to go on a force diet!!!
It was almost a joke until I saw the news stories and find my countrymen falling in line for hours on end just to get three kilos of rice a day at a price they could afford. Of course there were available rice but these were priced at no less than 30 pesos per kg. for the cheaper kind and 45 pesos for the more fancy kind such as Jasmine rice.
Why not buy the 30 pesos kind, you ask them? Well, minimum daily wage in the country is 300 pesos something or some 7 US dollars. That is, if the company one is in gives the minimum wage. But most companies in the country are small and medium enterprises so they end up exempted from paying the minimum wage.
With so many filipinos classified by the World Bank as earning less than a dollar a day, buying those readily available rice is out of the question. So they endure the heat (it's summer here) and the lack of a proper system of distribution by the food authority just to get rice that they could afford and don't go hungry for the day. So bad was the situation that at one time, those who were not able to get rice started weeping and begging like we were back in the dark ages!
Speaking of hunger, a few months ago there was report that some 70 percent of Filipinos go to sleep hungry because they don't have the means to buy food. And what did our president say about this? Well, she said that sometimes when she's too busy at work she forgets to eat too and stay hungry. I think that there's a vast difference between being hungry because you don't have money to buy food and forgetting to eat because you're busy making money.
Now here's even worse. A report came out saying that we do not have enough rice because there's so many of us! So we must all make sacrifices and stop making children who will compete for food in the future.
It's always the people who are the source of our woes!
Can't we stop and look if distribution of our resources as well as governance have in any way contributed to this problem and not just too many Filipinos?
I thought at that time how stupid it was that instead of government doing something about the impending rice shortage, the secretary himself would ask the people to eat less rice. What's even weird is that he even asked food centers to offer half cup of rice instead of one cup per meal (we serve rice by cups). It's almost as if he's asking Filipinos to go on a force diet!!!
It was almost a joke until I saw the news stories and find my countrymen falling in line for hours on end just to get three kilos of rice a day at a price they could afford. Of course there were available rice but these were priced at no less than 30 pesos per kg. for the cheaper kind and 45 pesos for the more fancy kind such as Jasmine rice.
Why not buy the 30 pesos kind, you ask them? Well, minimum daily wage in the country is 300 pesos something or some 7 US dollars. That is, if the company one is in gives the minimum wage. But most companies in the country are small and medium enterprises so they end up exempted from paying the minimum wage.
With so many filipinos classified by the World Bank as earning less than a dollar a day, buying those readily available rice is out of the question. So they endure the heat (it's summer here) and the lack of a proper system of distribution by the food authority just to get rice that they could afford and don't go hungry for the day. So bad was the situation that at one time, those who were not able to get rice started weeping and begging like we were back in the dark ages!
Speaking of hunger, a few months ago there was report that some 70 percent of Filipinos go to sleep hungry because they don't have the means to buy food. And what did our president say about this? Well, she said that sometimes when she's too busy at work she forgets to eat too and stay hungry. I think that there's a vast difference between being hungry because you don't have money to buy food and forgetting to eat because you're busy making money.
Now here's even worse. A report came out saying that we do not have enough rice because there's so many of us! So we must all make sacrifices and stop making children who will compete for food in the future.
It's always the people who are the source of our woes!
Can't we stop and look if distribution of our resources as well as governance have in any way contributed to this problem and not just too many Filipinos?
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