Goodbye, Free WiFi

I have a confession to make: I am a WiFi leech. I’m not proud of it, but as they say, admission is the first step to recovery.

It’s a compulsion of sorts. Whenever I find myself with some spare moments outdoors, I whip out my phone and check if there’s some open WiFi signal that I can latch on to. If I do get one, I load up Twitter or Google News. Nasty habit, that.

There was a time some two years ago when it was great to be a leech. DSL was getting affordable and people were installing wireless routers almost indiscriminately. Convenience, not security, was top of mind, so most just left their WiFi open with any passwords. That was the case for homes and business establishments.

So I’d walk around, in the neighborhood or around the malls, building up a personal map of WiFi signals. There’s actually a term for that, too: “wardriving.”

At some point, the business establishments began to wise up. Maybe too many people were hanging around the vicinity with open laptops. I wasn’t the only WiFi leech, after all. Restaurants and coffee shops were particular susceptible. They started putting passwords on their WiFi connections.

That only made the game that much more interesting. Once set, few establishments bothered to change their passwords. So I’d buy a coffee, ask the waiter for the secret, and save it to my database for later use. Ha!

But really, passwords were only the beginning of the end. The death knell for free wifi came with the explosion of cheap Android phones and tablets. Suddenly everyone had a WiFi-capable gizmo, and everyone was connecting! (I also have Android, so....)

Thing is: there’s a limit to how many active connections a wireless access point can have at any one time. Even a decent wireless router, under the default settings, only has room for around 250.

So now if you can find an open WiFi signal, even one that actually encourages you to use it as part of their add-on service (as in a mall), you can end up waiting forever for a connection. Even if you do manage to latch onto one, there’s no guarantee it has an active Internet connection. Being a WiFi leech just isn’t fun anymore!

It’s just as well that things have developed this way. Looking at it now, being a WiFi leech isn’t healthy, what with the compulsions involved. Because I’ve been thwarted so many times, either through passwords or congestion, I’ve found myself checking on the Internet less and less. That leaves me more time to enjoy the scenery around me.

Why All the Hate for Cebu Pacific?

Our university president Fr. Joel Tabora, S.J., has been at the forefront of the storm of criticism against Cebu Pacific. The word of the head of a major school must carry a lot of weight because his angry letter to the airline made news. It doesn’t help Cebu Pacific, either, that Fr. Tabora is Twitter-savvy.

Before you accuse Fr. Tabora of over-reacting, consider this: one of the two Ateneo teachers in that ill-fated flight is still in the hospital. Up to now, no one from Cebu Pacific has bothered to check in on her.

No one is really blaming Cebu Pacific for the accident itself. (Not yet, anyway, but the stories and suspicions are heading in that direction.) If anything, it was a miracle that no one died in the crash. The immediate cause for anger at Cebu Pacific comes from the airline’s inept and insensitive response.

Much has been made of the crew’s inaction following the crash so it doesn’t bear repeating here. But the pattern of ineptitude and insensitivity persisted long after the crash itself. Every action, every word from Cebu Pacific bespoke of attempts to disclaim responsibility, or at the very least, a lack of transparency.

Lance Gokongwei said that the crew acted heroically and “followed the book” in handling the crash. It took two days for the airline to remove the plane from its crash site. Up till now, the pilot and first officer remain anonymous entities.

These are the immediate causes for anger at Cebu Pacific; but I think that anger at Cebu Pacific has been brewing a long time. This is just the proverbial straw that finally broke the camel’s back.

I can still remember when Cebu Pacific was an upstart airline. It was a refreshing change from the stiff and oft-times arrogant treatment we got from Philippine Airlines. The competition they brought helped bring down airfare costs. Even when their plane crashed in Misamis Oriental in 1998, Cebu Pacific had enough public good will to bounce back.

But that was the Cebu Pacific of old. Nowadays, flying Cebu Pacific is an infuriating experience. It’s almost bait-and-switch, in a way. They draw you in with the promise of cheap fares, but every little thing on top of that, from the baggage allowance to in-flight amenities, has an attached price tag. If you decide you did want the baggage allowance after all, you have to pay 50% more than if you would have gotten it with your tick

Cebu Pacific ground staff are often grumpy at the times that I’ve had to deal with them. Perhaps I’ve just lucked out on their bad days, but maybe I shouldn’t complain. Persons with disabilities have it much worse with Cebu Pacific, like the ten deaf students who were denied boarding, and the wheelchair-bound woman in a Singapore flight who had to crawl into the plane.

And yet we still patronize Cebu Pacific because, well, Piso Fare, right?

I don’t know about you, but I stopped playing that game a long time ago. It used to be fun, and once, I managed to snag cheap fares to Singapore and Hong Kong. But after a while it really felt like I was being played, that Cebu Pacific was preying on my compulsions. And really, after the taxes and surcharges, the fares aren’t really that cheap anymore.

There are only two reasons I’ve still been flying Cebu Pacific. Because it was, until recently, the sole airline of Ateneo de Davao; and because it was the only one flying the Dumaguete-Cebu leg. Fr. Tabora has just gotten invalidated the first, and now I’m just looking to another airline to fly Dumaguete-Cebu to drop my business with Cebu Pacific altogether.

How to Make a Davao Writer

Merlie Alunan is now a Davao writer.

It’s not an empty boast. She said so herself, or, rather, she agreed when I told her she was. So just how did we snag an esteemed poet of the Visayas into our fold? Ah, now there’s a tale.

Not long after the Taboan Writers Festival in Dumaguete last February, Rosario “Chari” Cruz-Lucero of UP Diliman sent me an email with a proposition: would Ateneo de Davao be willing to hold the book launch for Merlie’s “Ang Pagdakop sa Bulalakaw”?

We had hosted a launch for Chari back in September of last year for two of her books, “La Isla” and “The Nation Outside Manila”. She was very pleased with the response from the Davao community, and now she was asking if we could do the same for Merlie.

Merlie Alunan, for those who don’t know her, is a teacher and poet. She studied under the Tiempos, and then taught for some years at Silliman University, and then for many more years UP Visayas in Tacloban up until her retirement. Along the way, she mentored many young writers and earned the respect and admiration of many in the Philippine literary community.

“Ang Pagdakop sa Bulalakaw” was Merlie’s fourth book of poetry but the first she wrote in entirely Visayan -- not merely Cebuano but Hiligaynon and Waray as well. It was a project ten years in the making, and perhaps the work most dear to her.

And so I said yes. Apparently, I have some clout now as Ateneo has placed me in charge of its University Publication Office. (If only they knew....)

But first there was the question of the timing. February was too close, and March, being the end of the school year, was too packed with activities. April and May would be lean months because of summer break, but June was too far away. In the end, I bit the bullet and decided on May, timing it with the Ateneo de Davao Writers Workshop.

On one hand, holding a book launch is easy: you reserve the venue, draw up the posters, write press releases, lasso reviewers (usually friends of the writer), and arrange for intermission numbers. On the other hand, it’s a nail-biting experience: what if very few people show up? In a society where literature isn’t among the top pursuits, that’s a very real and very embarrassing possibility.

In the weeks leading up to the launch, I exchanged emails with Merlie about her travel arrangements and with Ateneo de Manila Press for shipment of the books. All the while, my anxiety about the audience was mounting. If nothing else, I would have my workshop fellows but would that be enough?

And yet, at the end, the pieces just started falling into place. Since the book launch would take place around the same time as the writers workshop, Merlie offered to give the keynote address at that Monday’s opening. Merlie spoke on poetry, imagination, and the sense of country, giving all of us present something to think about. After the keynote, we squeezed in a radio interview and on-air poetry reading.

All my anxieties about audience finally disappeared during the book launch on Wednesday. No, it wasn’t a huge crowd, but it was a meaningful one.

There were, first of all, the members of the Davao Writers Guild, including our grand dames Tita Ayala and Aida Rivera Ford. The guild is a tight community, very supportive and very encouraging, and for this I’m proud to be a member.

And then there was the Humanities Cluster of Ateneo de Davao. The department chairpersons provided the staff and food. Our theater group, Teatro Humanidades, prepared the intermission numbers.

And then there were the fellows of the writers workshop, partaking in their very first book launch, immersing in the new experience.

And, finally, there was the drawing power of the guest of honor herself. There were her relatives and friends and former students come to show their affection and support; but there were also unexpected guests. Writer Lina Sagaral-Reyes came in from Zamboanga, and doctor-writer Noel Pingoy from General Santos.

And quite a few more. By the time we started, our small venue was packed. But just for good measure, I blackmailed and bribed a few of my IT students to join in, too.

The program was short and simple. Our Literature Department chair gave the welcome remarks. Jhoanna Cruz of UP Mindanao introduced our guest. Mac Tiu, now of Philippine Women’s College, and Nino de Veyra of UP Mindanao gave their reviews of the book. In between, Teatro Humanidades interpreted Merlie’s poems in chant and dance.

Merlie Alunan usually comes across as a very serious figure, a bearing, I think, that’s borne from a long life as a teacher. But the Merlie Alunan we had that day was aglow with smiles, laughing at a reviewer’s clever turn of phrase, or tapping in rhythm and mouthing the words of her poems along with the Teatro actors.

While the program was short, but the book launch took longer to finish than we expected. We sold a fair number of books and the fans lined up to have them signed. Merlie chatted with each one, sometimes at length. When we finally wrapped up, it was close to six. And to think we had started at three!

We ended the day with a small fellowship dinner with the Davao Writers Guild. Merlie was much taken with Davao food, and also with the company. She asked for one of the tarpaulin posters to take with her as a souvenir, and we all signed it for remembrance.

Merlie gave me a very warm hug as I bade her goodbye at her hotel. She’d be staying at Davao a few days more, but now with her cousin in Calinan. It was around then that I realized:

“Hey, you’re a Davao writer now!”

“Oh, that’s right,” she said. We both laughed, but we knew it was true.

Merlie Alunan is now a Davao writer.