H-A-Z-E

H A Z E 

I was half-way through my column for the week, my writing mode at it’s sharpest focus when no thanks to a brownout – my thoughts gone kaput!  Files can be retrieved they say.  But lucky me, there was practically none left when we got the power back.  It does not really help that I was not saving the file in between paragraphs (then again who does that?)             Technology has been putting me down of late.  For starters my laptop has been in coma for two weeks.  I am hoping against hope that it can still be given a longer lease of life.  For two more months max or until Santa realizes that I’ve been a good girl for the year 2006.  Good girls (despite missing two consecutive weeks of MaryaMaria) deserve good laptops.   

I digress, back to the topic.  Even my usb stick is in trouble.  My editors have heard me use the usb excuse at least once.  Typing my column using typewriters unfortunately is not an option.  I don’t even have one. If not for those glitches, I would have made it last week and the other week.  But fate must have its reasons for intervening.  Or else my blue heart and its aches after Ateneo’s lost in UAAP basketball finals who have been in print.  I can write a better piece on that, an epilogue when the feeling is gone.   

The other half of what I started writing on prior to the brownout is more disturbing despite the distance.  I started my column on how eerie it was to land in an international airport with very poor visibility.   H – A – Z – E.  It is a regular problem in
Southeast Asia.  It is caused by land and forest fires in Indonesia, especially Sumatra and
Kalimantan.  Those fires mainly affect Brunei, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, and occasionally Guam and
Saipan  The economic losses of the fires in 1997 have been estimated at US$9.3 billion. This includes damages in agriculture production, destruction of forest lands, health, transportation, tourism, and other economic endeavours. Not included are social, environmental, and psychological problems and long-term health effects.  

I got a first hand doze of it from the latest bout of haze in Malaysia, Singapore and theMalacca
Straits.    The haze is caused by smoke from fires in
Indonesia being blown across the Straits of Malacca by south-westerly winds.        

As I write the haze problem persists.  I have friends in Singapore and
Malaysia who have been forced to stay in doors or they run the risks for complicating acquired respiratory diseases.  Hazy conditions are expected to continue.  Indonesian airports are even closed at times because of blinding haze. Indonesian authorities despite the efforts to contain can only urge their Asian brothers to pray for rain.  For now, policies in place or the lack of it and inaction – continue to cloud many in haze. 

    I was half-way through my column for the week, my writing mode at it’s sharpest focus when no thanks to a brownout – my thoughts gone kaput!  Files can be retrieved they say.  But lucky me, there was practically none left when we got the power back.  It does not really help that I was not saving the file in between paragraphs (then again who does that?)

            Technology has been putting me down of late.  For starters my laptop has been in coma for two weeks.  I am hoping against hope that it can still be given a longer lease of life.  For two more months max or until Santa realizes that I’ve been a good girl for the year 2006.  Good girls (despite missing two consecutive weeks of MaryaMaria) deserve good laptops.   

I digress, back to the topic.  Even my usb stick is in trouble.  My editors have heard me use the usb excuse at least once.  Typing my column using typewriters unfortunately is not an option.  I don’t even have one. If not for those glitches, I would have made it last week and the other week.  But fate must have its reasons for intervening.  Or else my blue heart and its aches after Ateneo’s lost in UAAP basketball finals who have been in print.  I can write a better piece on that, an epilogue when the feeling is gone.   

The other half of what I started writing on prior to the brownout is more disturbing despite the distance.  I started my column on how eerie it was to land in an international airport with very poor visibility.   H – A – Z – E.  It is a regular problem in
Southeast Asia.  It is caused by land and forest fires in Indonesia, especially Sumatra and
Kalimantan.  Those fires mainly affect Brunei, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, and occasionally Guam and
Saipan  The economic losses of the fires in 1997 have been estimated at US$9.3 billion. This includes damages in agriculture production, destruction of forest lands, health, transportation, tourism, and other economic endeavours. Not included are social, environmental, and psychological problems and long-term health effects.  

I got a first hand doze of it from the latest bout of haze in Malaysia, Singapore and theMalacca
Straits.    The haze is caused by smoke from fires in
Indonesia being blown across the Straits of Malacca by south-westerly winds.        

As I write the haze problem persists.  I have friends in Singapore and
Malaysia who have been forced to stay in doors or they run the risks for complicating acquired respiratory diseases.  Hazy conditions are expected to continue.  Indonesian airports are even closed at times because of blinding haze. Indonesian authorities despite the efforts to contain can only urge their Asian brothers to pray for rain.  For now, policies in place or the lack of it and inaction – continue to cloud many in haze.