National masochism

MY Auntie Juannie called me the other day to complain. "Mike, I have something for you to write about," she said. "Why does your paper have so many sections?"

Auntie Juannie's main gripe about having so many sections is that she often ends up getting an incomplete paper, and as Murphy's Law goes, the missing sections are usually her favorite ones -- for example, the weekly magazine.

She also explained it was too much of a hassle to have to check each time the newsboy delivered the papers, especially because the number of sections keeps changing. She has complained and the newsboy explained that they get the papers already packed for delivery so the missing sections were due to problems at the printing plant. Auntie Juannie's worried that if the number of sections continues to increase, she's bound to get more and more incomplete papers.

Rather coincidentally, my father had the same complaint about this trend among daily newspapers, or at least with two of the three leading ones. Both my father and Auntie Juannie have threatened to go to the remaining daily newspaper but I point out that while it may have fewer sections it features articles in Section A which trail off halfway with the last part featured in Section D.

I know all the world's great papers have several sections but each section is substantial, a joy to read. Here, we get sections that only have four pages, about three of which are taken up by ads.

I've tried to figure out why we have so many sections and can only speculate that it might have something to do with our large families. Maybe with Filipino families having half a dozen kids, plus the parents and grandparents and a few uncles and aunts living together, we need something for everyone: Section D with fashion and cosmetics news for teenage children, for example, Section T with motoring news for the aunt who's into drag racing, maybe even Section Z with pet news for Bantay and Moning.

(Which reminds me, quite a few of my friends have observed that "the other paper" has a regular pet section while the Inquirer doesn't, but that they'd be perfectly happy with a pet page, rather than another section.)

Okay, so maybe having so many sections is part of promoting family life, but I can imagine an alternative disruptive scenario. Think of a case (I'm thinking of a real one) where the father is almost obsessive about orderliness, while the mother, well, let's just say she enjoys an occasional clutter, which can get quite serious when you have so many newspaper sections. Add to that her penchant for saving back issues because her son has a column, and you can imagine the chaos.

Another theory I have about this section-mania is that it runs parallel to our bureaucratic mind-set. We're always creating new government departments and bureaus and sections, each with its own set of procedures and forms (running of course from Form A to Form Z, like our newspaper sections).

The torment doesn't end there. Each form usually has to be filled out at least in quintuplicate, and for low-budget government agencies (which means just about every agency), the forms aren't carbonized so you end up having to sign five times for each document.

My sub-theory here is that it's part of the bureaucracy's AIDS: As If Doing Something.

Mind you, the private sector has been infected as well by these inane procedures. Notice that when you open a new bank account you have to sign at least three times, on each of about five signature cards, plus separate application forms. Not that it makes your account more secure. Once someone forged my signature to illegally transfer quite a substantial amount of money from my account, in a bank that claims to be world-class, to some rinky-dink rural bank in Bulacan. I am certain it was an inside job and no wonder, with so many signature cards floating around in the banks, security's bound to get breached.

If I might get back to the matter of "sectioning," I just have to mention PLDT's totally useless phone directories. You figure out why they have to have three sections, totaling 2,441 pages: "Residential Listings," "Household & Business," "Government/Business."

Need to know when "Chinese goods begin to flow into the Philippines?" Well, well, the directory has "Highlights of Philippine History," which says those goods began to come in 960 A.D.

Now, if your dog just swallowed your cell phone (it happens) and you need a vet, you're going to have to figure out which of the three sections to check. If you finally find the number, it's bound to be "no longer in service."

When you get that "no longer in service" number, your next step is to call the PLDT directory assistance. And know what? At least the last time I searched, through the 2,441 pages, that number wasn't listed. I guess PLDT presumes we all know what that number is. I don't, to this day.

Ah, the mysteries of living in the Philippines. I'm suddenly remembering still another mystery: why do so many offices, government and private, insist on stapling the mail? I suspect it's for security reasons, but really, one staple isn't any more useful for preventing pilferage than sprinkling the mail with holy water. Yet that one infernal staple can make life so much more difficult. Be careful. I have a friend who was once so frustrated trying to open the stapled envelope that he finally ripped it open, accompanied by a volley of invectives, to find it contained a check or what resembled a check. He had to write for a replacement, with a letter of complaint about the offending staple. The response? A replacement check came in the mail properly secured, meaning improperly stapled.

I could think up grand anthropological and sociological and public administration theories to explain more inanities but maybe it's all a simple case of a nation wanting, wishing, craving, begging for pain. National masochism, that's all there is to it.