Who said that there are no Shortcuts in Life?

This is the Philippines, you can cut the cost of everything: A digital camera usually costing around eight to ten thousand pesos can be bought here at a very low price of three thousand pesos, and sometimes even lower. It’s just a matter knowing where to look. Here, you don’t need to be filthy rich to buy a camera, nor do you need huge amounts of money for a cellphone. You don’t even need to do research for your thesis; neither do you need to do a thesis to get a grade. You don’t need to get married to have marriage contract; learn how to drive to get a license; and if four years is too long for you—you don’t even need to attend a single class to get yourself a diploma. We always find a way to make life easy for us. I’m not saying that this is something that we should be proud of. My point is, in reality they exist—and we are letting them because we want them there just in case we need them. We always want to find the quickest way out. Even if it involves cutting the process short, or scrap it totally.

Why bother spending mountains of cash for education. The only thing you want in the end is a mealy piece of paper you call a diploma. And if you go to places like Recto, you will learn that 1000 pesos is a small price to pay for a document verifying four years of college education. “It’s just like the real thing,” said a woman who wants to be addressed only with the alias Aling Lucy. “No one will suspect the difference. Only a handful can tell that it’s fake.”

Aling Lucy used to peddle bananacues and rice cakes on V. Mapa, earning four to five hundred pesos per day. Life was really hard for her then—living out of an amount barely enough to pay the rent. Three years ago, a friend tagged her along to join her business in Recto: selling unauthentic documents such as marriage contracts, transcripts of records, diplomas, certifications of employment, and even school ID’s and driver’s license. “It’s illegal,” she said “But it brings dinner to the table.” Now, she earns around 500 to 1000 pesos a day, not bad according to her.

She sits on a high chair facing a table with documents laminated on all over it. She would list down on her notebook, her customers’ name and what they want. The customer is then asked to return and claim whatever it is he/she ordered. The order is then sent to a place she called “the house.” According to her, the house is heart of the operation. It is where the layout and printing is taken place. Aling Lucy has no hands on the layout. She’s just there to take orders from customers. There are people in the house tasked to do the technical stuff. The house takes 50 percent of income.

“Sometimes students would come to us asking us make receipts for their enrolment. We would add around 1000 to 2000 pesos to total amount in the receipt. We would ask them to pay only 200 to 150 pesos. So they would earn more than a thousand bucks from their parents.”

The output is very realistic. If there would be anything dubious about their products, Aling Lucy said that it’s only the color and signature.

Yes, her business is illegal but nobody seems to care. All of her operations are done in broad daylight, at plain sight of everyone on the street. She would open her stand at nine in the morning and close at five. Even police officers rarely mind setup. There would be raids from time to time, which set the whole street to panic state. But even the law is not something money can’t buy. “Police raids would often send the people here running, but they are easy to get rid of. Two hundred to five hundred pesos are enough to buy off the officials,” Aling Lucy said. “The pay offs depend on the rank of the officer,” she added. Three hundred is already too much for a rooky, but sometime 2000 pesos is not enough for a police chief. Nonetheless, Aling Lucy said that it is still a price to considering how she gets from her business at the end of the year.

Prices of her items range 200 to 3000 pesos. Grade sheets usually cost 200 pesos, and a diploma costs around 1000 pesos to 3000 pesos, depending on the prestige of the school. Aling Lucy said that the computerization of the schools is making her job a lot easier. Transcripts are now easier to fake. The process of replication is now faster because of new technology.

In some days, she would be able to entice 25 customers. But more often, three to five are all that the day can offer. It’s a tough job. Everyday she puts her life on the line, but who can blame her—it’s easy money. Besides, the world is tolerating her existence. Basic economics: the supply wouldn’t be there if the demand is not.

World Domination

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This could mean only one thing: I am not alone.

Extra-Dimensional Force: The Consciousness

I can't sleep so forgive for this madness.

The Physicist Freeman Dyson said “The more I examine the Universe and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the Universe is, in some sense, must have known we were coming.” This one the freakiest thing I've ever heard. And I'm beggining to think that he's right. I'm not going to talk about God or anything in the same level, rather I realize that whatever it is that we assume to be him, could be just an element of the physical world, which we cannot experience in full.

Scientist think that we live in higher dimensional world. They say that it's possible that the other dimensions (apart from the three or four that we know about) have collapsed into something that is really really small. Kind of like a dwarf sister of the big world that we live in. Now what if, these dimensions aren't really beyond our world but we face them every day, we just cant experience them. Experience requires the consciousness to acknowledge the presence of an object. If out mind is limited to process only those with three dimensions then even if we are faced with something that is extra-dimensional, then we wouldn't know about its existence. Snakes couldn't know about the existence of sound because they don't have ears, therefore they can't experience it. Maybe for us it's the same. We can't know about higher dimensions because we are not equipped with the right physiology to experience it. Maybe it's not about the absence of sensation, but it could be that our minds just can't process it.

Plato said in his allegory of the cave that it is possible to experience a higher form of reality. You could go out of the cave (the reality which you are familiar of) for a certain period of time, make an observation, go back to the cave, tell the people what you saw, and make fool out of yourself. How can this be possible if our perception is only limited to three dimensions? Maybe the answer lies withing the nature of consciousness itself. I have theory that the mind is an extra-dimensional force that is necessary in the universe. Say what? I mean that the human consciousness is a part of this interaction of forces, and that the reason why the universe seem to be tailor-made for man is because man's cognizance is a necessary force in the universe.

Quantum theory says the existence and properties of all objects are dependent on an observer acknowledging the presence (or properties) of that object. The position of a particular particle depends on how a scientist with very huge microscopes (google the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics) would measure it. Man needs to be in the universe to observe the universe. And everything, like the sun, oxygen, water, were placed in the world so that it could be hospitable for an observer. What's worrying is that the universe is like providing man with the predicaments so that it would have sense of what to observe. It could be argued that the purpose of the earth revolving around the sun, the moon revolving around the earth, the earth spinning, and the earth being tilted, is to give us a sense time. Day and night gives us the idea that moments pass by, and the seasons give us an awareness of cycles, and so on. We are now able to observe a fourth dimension (time) through its manifestations.

I'm not really sure if I'm making sense right now. Well, at least I got it out of my system.

The Choice of Sisyphus

There's something that's been bothering me for the past few months. It's the guy named Sisyphus. If you already know the story skip the preceding sentences and jump to the next paragraph, but for those who don't, carry on. In Greek mythology, he was the Smart Alek who made a mockery out of Hades several time (just google the details). Sisyphus was convicted of “crimes against the gods” and was condemned to eternal labor. His punishment was to push a boulder up a mountain, and whenever he would come close to the top, the boulder would slip his grasps and the damn thing would come rolling down again. Talk about eternal frustration.

Here's the thing that's bothering me: what if Sisyphus suddenly decides not to push the boulder any more? I mean, would it make a difference? Would there be a punishment if ever he fails to comply with the first punishment? What could be could be worse than being frustrated for eternity? If you ask me, I would rather suffer the pain of having my liver eaten every day. Mythology never said that he was bound not choose otherwise.

“Maybe there is no punishment,” a friend told me. “Once Sisyphus stops, he would have nothing to do. He would get board, then he would push the boulder back up again, just for the heck of it.” We were drink near the takeout counter of some hotel in Tomas Morato when we had that conversation. I don't think he was already drunk when he said that. But maybe he does have a point. Maybe eternal boredom is a far worse punishment than frustration.