The city of Baguio continues to chug along, like ungreased clockwork. Projects are lined up and queued and funded and a not-insignificant chunk of it falls through the cracks, delayed for the next year pileup.
Business as usual at the turn of a year. The people grow older and grow more numerous, urban sprawl spreads, the cost of living hikes, and we continue to chug along.
Here in the paper, we reach a milestone of a decade-and-a-half of publication this month. I have personally been here for the better part of a decade myself (seven years-ish now), and I have seen my fair share of change internally. The staff changes. Policy changes. The opening of a podcast division. Multimedia and online content.
Safe to say that for both this city and this paper (both that I call home), I have many, many, many complaints. I complain a lot; my entire career as a columnist has revolved around this one fact. But I also (like to think that I) complain as fairly as I can, with basis. So when I criticize this city, and this paper—which I do internally, not here on the column—it comes from a place of honesty. I see flaws in both cases.
But—this is somewhere to be. This is all I have, but it is something.
What some people sometimes do not understand about my civil anger is that it is born of love. I love Baguio, inasmuch as I am not a genuine Baguio boy, as an outsider migrant that barely knows the local language. I love the Baguio Chronicle, even when at times it feels as if it is not mutual.
And it is that personal fondness that informs my regular outrage. I live in and endure this city, I work in this paper and have done so in good faith for the past seven years. I want both to be better.
Even if sometimes it feels as if there are backslides and a lack of progress, I’d like to take this 15th-year issue to acknowledge that there have been changes for the better.
For the paper, even through the tumultuous past two-ish years, we have reached a point of fairly stable progress. The staff is energized (may we be more funded!) and the paper is expanding optimistically into new ventures under the Baguio Chronicle banner. There’s a lot of work to be done there, but things are, one way or the other, looking up.
For the city, there are some definite improvements needed, too. This year, while there are some definite sticking points that we’ve covered in this paper throughout the course of 2024, there are also some clear wins. The economy (as a whole, on a macroscale) is doing better, crime is down, and I will never forget to applaud the passage of the Human Rights Defenders Ordinance.
I want to be 100% clear that there are points and causes for concern. There are, and there always will be. We live in flawed circumstances, in flawed environments, but—smell the air and feel the breeze. Streets and sodium lights. The sky. The world. We are still alive.
