Will global recession bring oil prices down?

Tonight’s presentation on Straight from the Sky is indeed a very special show as we bring you the new group “Taytayan” that aims to be the bridge from the past and into the future of Cebu’s Parian District where I was born and grew up. With Cebu having the historical distinction of Colon St. as the oldest street in Cebu, the Parian District must be just as old as Cebu itself! Now how many barangays can make a similar claim? Hence, it is only right that a group that focuses on preserving Cebu’s rich cultural heritage and history should be given our all-out support in order to teach our youth about Cebu’s past.

The official launching of Taytayan was done last Sept. 24 at the Yap-Sandiego Ancestral House, which I said is the oldest house in the Province of Cebu. It may arguably be the oldest house in the Philippines. Kudos to Val Sandiego, President of Carcar’s Heritage and Cultural Society. He got this house from his uncle and did a great job is preserving this historic home. You can’t miss this house. It is just a stone’s throw away from the old “Bomberohan” and behind the Heritage Monument of Ed Castrillo, on the same street as the famous Casa Gorordo across the Ramon Aboitiz Foundation, Inc. headquarters.

The Parian District along España St. is where my grandfather Don Jose Avila used to reside (just across the Heritage Monument) while a few meters away in España corner Ibarra St. is where my maternal grandfather Capt. Valeriano Segura built his home. Their houses were razed to the ground during World War II. After the war, my parents built our house from the remnants of the Segura Ancestral house, which is why I lived in Parian.

Tonight allow me to introduce to you the people behind Taytayan: Val Sandiego, Balbino Guerrero, Chilet Hermosa, Gil Maningo, Paul Melendez and Joy Uy. We missed another member, Gavin Bagares for this show. Please watch it on SkyCable’s channel 15 at 8:00p.m. tonight.

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Manila: Finally the US Congress gave its nod with a 263-171 vote on the $700B bailout plan that they initially rejected earlier last week. But with the US Senate approving a revised bailout plan, it was inevitable that Congress would end up approving this bailout plan. So the finally the anxiety is over. Now whether the US has weathered its financial storm no one can tell. Even the smartest Harvard Economics graduate failed to predict this financial crisis. But now America has been hit hard with this crisis. Perhaps this would teach them that easy money or easy credit is the easy way to bankruptcy!

It would be interesting to see how the rest of the world would react to this piece of good news. Because of the credit crunch, the US car industry that usually brings out its new models in September suffered huge losses for its 2009 models. That’s due to several factors. Perhaps since none of the automakers have come up with a green car as these are slated to be launched by next year. I’m sure that it is the credit crunch that caused the drop in sales. We know that Americans never pay cash for anything, more so with big buys like cars. And with tight credit squeeze, there’s just no one lending money these days and those who are lending will be exacting high interest rates.

With the US economy still in the ICU, stories of a global recession still hang in the air. In fact last Saturday, an independent oil analyst from the University of Calgary said that the global recession could drag oil prices below US$50 per barrel. That should be good news to motorists who’ve grown tired paying for expensive fuel for their cars. But this is not good for our environment because low oil prices means that everyone would resurrect their old gas-guzzlers. You can say that happy days will be here when oil prices go down! But then, that is only a theory.

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I was in Manila for the weekend and whenever I met with friends, they always tell me that they’re amazed about the developments in Cebu that finally Filinvest Land Incorporated (FLI) will invest P80 billion for 50 hectares of the 300-hectare South Reclamation Properties (SRP). Then we heard the latest news that last Thursday, Robinson’s Land Corporation paid P463,450,000 for the Cebu City owned 4.6-hectare block 10 property along Mango Ave. right across the burnt out White Gold Superstore.

This area is the least developed in the North Reclamation area and with Robinson’s there, things are indeed looking up for Cebu City, except for the worries of Mayor Tomas Osmeña on the foot dragging by the Commission on Audit (COA) on this issue. Why did it take them so long to decide that this deal was above board? Shame on you COA!