BUSINESSMAN RENE Romero is a one baggage the prolific columnist Ashley Manabat carries in all his travels.
Out of Singapore’s Changi Budget Terminal in the Hyundai Sonata taxi to Furama City Centre, Ashley spat out an epithet upon beholding acacia and other trees and myriad bushes lining the sides and center island of the broad eight-lane avenue.
“Good they have no Rene Romero here, else those wonderful trees would be marked for cutting, if not altogether already felled,” Ashley prejudged.
Obviously – duh! – the columnist of six newspapers has not forgotten a bit Romero’s express advocacy to cut all trees along MacArthur Highway in the City of San Fernando, nay, throughout the Pampanga stretch of the national road, if taken in his capacity as president of the Pampanga Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Right, that was the appellation attached to Romero’s name in the media stories on the tree-cutting issue.
Walking the wide sidewalks of tree-lined and –canopied Orchard Road, Ashley again was livid: “I am sure Rene Romero has walked this same street a lot of times, what with his money. I just wonder what he felt…”
That’s a no-brainer. Romero felt good of course, as he would be in his element: Cartier and Gucci, Prada and Ferragamo, Armani and Hermes, Versace and Rolex, the very lifestyle of his class in a single street.
“Of course, he would be home in those salons exclusive to the rich and famous. But what could he have felt about those trees abutting on the very road, knowing his aversion to any tree standing even a meter off the road?” The sarcasm not lost in Ashley’s voice there.
So why don’t you ask him once we get home?
It was again Romero in Ashley’s mind as we bus-toured Georgetown, capital of Penang, Malaysia.
“As you can see, trees line our roads here,” the Malaysian Chinese tour guide named May says in her sing-song voice. “The British colonials found this place too hot for them. To make it cooler, and the air fresher, they planted thousands of trees. It is a legacy we continue to practice to this day.”
Ashley automatically: “Penang is fortunate. It doesn’t have Rene Romero for president of its chamber of commerce and industry, or else the British legacy here would have been totally lost.”
Out of a shop for native products on a channelized intersection named Persiaran Gurney, Ashley ran to a nearby acacia tree and asked me to take his picture.
“See the lush growth of new branches and leaves at its crown? This is due to pruning. No fear of overgrown branches falling on motor vehicles and people even during storms there. Rene Romero’s advocacy of cutting trees because they pose danger to motorists falls flat on its face here,” Ashley lectured. (Photo below)
Right at his first sight of Phuket, Thailand under early morning light, Ashley exclaimed: “They have no Rene Romero here.” Opening his arms to the view of verdant hills nestling quaint cottages.
At just about every clump of trees Ashley sees, Romero’s name is invoked, not as prayerful ejaculation but as spiteful… anathema?
So went our recent Singapore-Penang-Pukhet-Singapore cruise, with Ashley carrying his Romero baggage.
As he did in our trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam just last September.
The skyscraping teak trees along just about every street and avenue in the city, the urban forest that is the Taodan Graden fronting the Chancery Saigon Hotel we stayed in, the green square near the former presidential palace – all evoked thoughts of tree-cutting advocate Romero in Ashley’s mind, finding expression in: “Thank God, they have no Rene Romero here.”
Yeah, as a paraphrase of that cliché goes: Some people don’t see the forest for the trees, while others don’t see the trees for the forest. But Ashley sees all trees and forest, and more: the nightmare of Romero with a crew of chainsaw-wielding public works men ready to do mayhem.
ASHLEY’S NIGHTMARE came hauntingly real the night we returned from Singapore, October 29. Nearing home from DMIA where the wife fetched me, a dozzer was slamming an acacia tree down near the PTT gas station in Barangay San Agustin.
Romero’s (mal)advocacy wins! Damn!
Out of Singapore’s Changi Budget Terminal in the Hyundai Sonata taxi to Furama City Centre, Ashley spat out an epithet upon beholding acacia and other trees and myriad bushes lining the sides and center island of the broad eight-lane avenue.
“Good they have no Rene Romero here, else those wonderful trees would be marked for cutting, if not altogether already felled,” Ashley prejudged.
Obviously – duh! – the columnist of six newspapers has not forgotten a bit Romero’s express advocacy to cut all trees along MacArthur Highway in the City of San Fernando, nay, throughout the Pampanga stretch of the national road, if taken in his capacity as president of the Pampanga Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Right, that was the appellation attached to Romero’s name in the media stories on the tree-cutting issue.
Walking the wide sidewalks of tree-lined and –canopied Orchard Road, Ashley again was livid: “I am sure Rene Romero has walked this same street a lot of times, what with his money. I just wonder what he felt…”
That’s a no-brainer. Romero felt good of course, as he would be in his element: Cartier and Gucci, Prada and Ferragamo, Armani and Hermes, Versace and Rolex, the very lifestyle of his class in a single street.
“Of course, he would be home in those salons exclusive to the rich and famous. But what could he have felt about those trees abutting on the very road, knowing his aversion to any tree standing even a meter off the road?” The sarcasm not lost in Ashley’s voice there.
So why don’t you ask him once we get home?
It was again Romero in Ashley’s mind as we bus-toured Georgetown, capital of Penang, Malaysia.
“As you can see, trees line our roads here,” the Malaysian Chinese tour guide named May says in her sing-song voice. “The British colonials found this place too hot for them. To make it cooler, and the air fresher, they planted thousands of trees. It is a legacy we continue to practice to this day.”
Ashley automatically: “Penang is fortunate. It doesn’t have Rene Romero for president of its chamber of commerce and industry, or else the British legacy here would have been totally lost.”
Out of a shop for native products on a channelized intersection named Persiaran Gurney, Ashley ran to a nearby acacia tree and asked me to take his picture.
“See the lush growth of new branches and leaves at its crown? This is due to pruning. No fear of overgrown branches falling on motor vehicles and people even during storms there. Rene Romero’s advocacy of cutting trees because they pose danger to motorists falls flat on its face here,” Ashley lectured. (Photo below)
Right at his first sight of Phuket, Thailand under early morning light, Ashley exclaimed: “They have no Rene Romero here.” Opening his arms to the view of verdant hills nestling quaint cottages.
At just about every clump of trees Ashley sees, Romero’s name is invoked, not as prayerful ejaculation but as spiteful… anathema?
So went our recent Singapore-Penang-Pukhet-Singapore cruise, with Ashley carrying his Romero baggage.
As he did in our trip to Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam just last September.
The skyscraping teak trees along just about every street and avenue in the city, the urban forest that is the Taodan Graden fronting the Chancery Saigon Hotel we stayed in, the green square near the former presidential palace – all evoked thoughts of tree-cutting advocate Romero in Ashley’s mind, finding expression in: “Thank God, they have no Rene Romero here.”
Yeah, as a paraphrase of that cliché goes: Some people don’t see the forest for the trees, while others don’t see the trees for the forest. But Ashley sees all trees and forest, and more: the nightmare of Romero with a crew of chainsaw-wielding public works men ready to do mayhem.
ASHLEY’S NIGHTMARE came hauntingly real the night we returned from Singapore, October 29. Nearing home from DMIA where the wife fetched me, a dozzer was slamming an acacia tree down near the PTT gas station in Barangay San Agustin.
Romero’s (mal)advocacy wins! Damn!
