VISITORS to Dagupan City in the province of Pangasinan located in the Northern Luzon region of the Philippines often ask the first question to themselves or to their hosts: “Where’s a good place to eat?”

These questions should be easy to answer for the native Dagupeno who knows nooks and crannies in this big,little city. But what if the visitors are asking each other and have no native resource person to ask around? Somehow, one among them should be able to provide the answer. And that’s probably him (or her) who has read this blog.

Pedrito’s Bakeshop and Restaurant, Matutina’s Seafoods Restaurant and Siapno’s Seafoods Restaurant still lord it over in terms of general clientele hereabouts. That is, ever since Dagupena Restaurant,the crown business of the couple Alex Castro and wife, Emma Bernal, relocated to nearby Calasiao town and left its primus inter pares position in restaurant row to the others.

Pedrito’s, managed by the Tordesillas; Matutina’s, by the Balingits of Mekeni country (Pampanga) roots and, not to forget, presidential intimates too and Siapno’s by the big Siapno clan, who else but, have conquered the fertile gourmet and gourmand sector, across class levels with their excellent cuisine and superb service they practically need no advertising. The name, not the fancy blurbs. Read more

TWO guys wandered into my office which I opened on a Sunday with a distraught expression on their faces.They asked where they could find the Bureau of Food and Drugs Administration(BFAD) office which was (I learned only belatedly) in the same building we were.

I told them it was a Sunday and it was unlikely that they’d find someone holding office at the BFAD even if it were located anywhere near my office.

One of the guys told me they were from barangay (village) Mermer in Manaoag town and (looking quite both disappointed and desperate) were going to report a seeming food poisoning incident to the BFAD so it can send representatives over and check the source or provider of the food. My newsman’s instinct aroused, I tried to pry the duo Read more

THANKS to the Reformed Value Added Tax, fashionably called R-VAT, the inventive mind of Filipinos, particularly the manufacturers, are again hard at work
Just a day following the coming of this Darth Vader of a revenue-shoring measure unleashed upon us by the Taxman, what do you hear but the Department of Energy getting into the ‘por kilo’ game by urging liquefied petroleum gas suppliers to offer cooking gas at a much more affordable 1 kilogram-tanks, a virtual retail scheme.
Conventional tanks, as you know, are bulky 11-kg cylinders that fetch for P520 to P540 per kilo at present.

Yesterday’s papers said two firms seem ready to bite the idea, according to the DOE, and may sell the mini-cylinders with 1-kilogram capacities at more or less P60 each. How about that, Misis? Methinks that news has the total effect on the harasse d housewife as being told she’d been picked to join Willie’s Wowowee on ABS-CBN! Read more

OH, but there just has to be somebody to hear complaints. Everybody but everybody loves to nitpick, to wail about being shortchanged – man, woman, boy, girl, even the animal in whose honor 2006 has been declared – the dog – whose manner of complaining can take the unnerving form of either a whine or a big, bad bite.
I know. My own wagging, loving canine, Gracia (a female, but of course!) has this habit of baying  followed by a little whining when nasty me would be stoning and shooing away the neighbor’s fluffy big dog I often find in the yard  when coming home. You guessed it, the carajo hairy one  is a male, a darn good-lookin’ one—and my unwelcome arrival gets protested by my own  Gracia who must feel I had no right to drive away her pleasure.
 
So everybody, every animal capable of feeling aggrieved, will complain, that’s a fact of life.
 
On that premise, here in Las Islas Filipinas, they drew up on July 15,1992 Republic Act No. 7394, otherwise known as the Consumer Act of the Philippines that guides the destinies of buyers and sellers.
 
Its objectives?

WHO remembers the consumer? And I don’t mean only during the officially-declared Consumer Month of October in Las Islas Filipinas.

Last we looked, no one was looking after his welfare. He was looking out for himself, trying to survive in an entire jungle of business product mislabeling, if not actual sale of fake goods; grappling  with questionable service practices as repair of cars, appliances, office machines and yes, that oh-so-familiar, “excessive repair charges,” if not fighting drawn-out battles to press a promo company to award raffle prizes he won fair and square or sue for outright breach of contract or warranty.

Never mind those unending violations of the Price Tag Law that has the Trade and Industry guys of  Peter Favila scratching their heads at being outsmarted every inch of the way – on market inspection, the price tags are there in all their glory and almost immediately after, they’re gone—because over here it’s become a fact of life, er, business.
You might say, all these are typical Third World problems – and you are right. But just admitting it is so won’t make it go away. There’s a very thin line separating sellers from swindlers  And these smart-alecky characters, believe us, hardly fear the law and do everything to beat it at every turn, with or without their highly-paid lawyers. The equalizer for this, to our blogging mind, is nothing less than public exposure, indeed, worldwide public exposure. Nothing beats the bar of public opinion.   

In the Philippines, where food, or the consumption of it, is a national pastime (ever wonder why we have all those fatsos and fatsies walking around in supermarkets and malls?) what the pocket can afford – value for money — is a big thing for the average citizen. The league of fad dieters and health tonic drinkers may be growing but the Big Bulge is still there on the whole, proof positive that you may outgrow your toys but you don’t outgrow (or at least easily cast aside) your sweet tooth.

It is therefore a ripe area for the cause of consumerism to thrive.

Sadly though, it isn’t. At least. parochially speaking, not in Pangasinan province, my neck of the woods, here in the Philippines.

More on my next post.