Opinion

Filipino motorists appreciate the freedom to leave the house on a given morning without checking the last digit of the license plate. In Metro Manila, this can be worth a surprising amount of money. A day without number coding means another day of using the car, another day without arranging a ride, another day without pondering why a perfectly serviceable vehicle has to stay in the garage. So when a salesperson mentions that a particular electrified vehicle can be driven even on its coding day, a prospective buyer has incentive to sit up a little straighter.

Filipinos have a curious relationship with the medal table. We like to see our flag climbing it, preferably past countries with larger populations, bigger budgets, and considerably more athletes. We count golds, compare totals, calculate rankings, and wonder whether we could have done better. A silver medal is celebrated, of course, but not before someone observes that it could have been a gold.

Forensic accounting is where spreadsheets lose their innocence, receipts acquire personalities, and money is asked to explain where it has been hiding.

Where I live, Thursday mornings are dedicated to the ritualistic pilgrimage to the local talipapa, a humble expedition to secure a week’s worth of sustenance for the household. Our modest needs are dictated less by appetite and more by the pragmatic demands of advancing age. Reaching for a favorite, I inquired about the price of a kilo of pompano—a fish that, not so long ago, went for a respectable ₱440.

Cars have become remarkably good at worrying about us. They can warn when we are drifting out of a lane, tell us when another vehicle has entered our blind spot, apply the brakes when we fail to notice something ahead, and, in some cases, even keep themselves pointed in the right direction while traffic crawls along. It is an extraordinary development, particularly in a country where driving is akin to participating in a live-action negotiation with several hundred strangers. The problem is that the smarter the car becomes, the greater the temptation for us to become slightly less smart ourselves.