Nothing extraordinary in those words, spoken a few days ago by the captain of the flight that took me home, except that he didn’t stop there. He actually went on to add:

"Upon landing, you may experience some shaking and hear some noises but that’s all because the landing strip in Manila is not as well-paved as others."

As a Filipino who knew the truth, part of me wanted to laugh out loud and shout "Bravo"! But part of me too wanted to walk towards the cockpit and bonk the captain on the head. Except that 1) I would surely get arrested for interfering in the flight and endangering the lives of my fellow passengers and 2) why get mad at the truth just because it hurts?

Malaysia in 2007 welcomed 20 million tourists. Hong Kong and Singapore surely welcomed far more. I suspect that Guam and Hawaii welcomed more than the 3 million or so that we welcomed. And with introductions to our country like the one given by my flight’s captain, why should we be surprised?

Thank goodness my experience at Immigration wasn’t as horrific as I feared it would be. There actually were many Immigration officers on duty and the lines weren’t long and were moving well. Four flights had arrived, and maybe because they didn’t arrive all at the same time, it wasn’t the usual chaos and bedlam at the old airport’s Immigration area.

You still had the usual "greeters" who were holding up name cards and who helped "facilitate" Immigration and Customs clearances for the "special" passengers, but otherwise it was a good experience, befitting a Third World country.

Now that didn’t hurt much, did it?

Recently, the President was said to have announced that the country’s premier airport will now be the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport at Clark. The decision was arrived at after evaluating the congestion at the Ninoy Aquino airport complex. I thought it was a good decision, but a decision made ten years too late. And because it was made too late there are many factors that rob it of its wisdom.

For one, there is the graft-ridden NAIA 3. I still insist we should have an exception to the "no death penalty" rule and execute someone, maybe a few people, for this project.

When the NAIA-3 was in its planning stages, it was very clear that the future of tourism would require an airport complex far bigger than what the complex at the Pasay-Manila boundary could provide. Where other airports have four, sometimes even six runways, we have two. Where others have acres and acres of free land, our airport is hemmed in by urban sprawl. Where other airports are accessible by modern, multi-lane highways and served by high speed rail links, ours requires you to navigate through the traffic of the Tramo-Baclaran or Sucat road area.

Yet three successive governments decided to go ahead with NAIA-3, along the way providing people the rich opportunity to pocket some money. The result is a white elephant of an airport terminal sitting there, rotting away, which, even if still made operational, will be hampered by having only two runways.

In the meantime, not only have we lost in terms of the monies spent from which we are not deriving any benefits, but also in terms of other cities like Ho Chi Minh, Singapore, Hong Kong, Incheon and Bangkok opening either additional wings of existing airports or totally brand new airport complexes to deal with the influx of tourists.

When stupidity and greed mix, the result is a big black eye for the country and a big hole in the pocket of the ordinary Filipino.

In relation to wasted time, can you imagine what has to be done now to make real the designation of the DMIA as our premier airport? We now have to build a new airport complex, maybe another gleaming steel and glass structure with so many gates and so many millions of pesos that could be siphoned off by grafters. How long would that take? So by the time we get done with completing the new airport complex at Clark (as well as investigating whoever makes money from the project!) we would be two decades behind everyone else!

And finally, albeit somewhat minor, is the issue of tastelessness. I find it tasteless that a sitting president agrees to have projects named after his or her parents. There should be a law banning that.

To be fair, this "sipsip" aspect isn’t a trait only found among Filipinos. The US Navy christened an aircraft carrier, the USS George HW Bush (CVN 77), during the incumbency of his son, President George W. Bush. So both Presidents Bush were present at the ceremony.

The examples are even more legion in non-Western countries. Want to bet that there were many projects named after Kim Il Sung for his son Kim Jong Il to bless? Not so sure in Syria whether the young Assad cuts ribbons for streets named after his father.

Couldn’t our legislature pass a law making it punishable by life imprisonment to ever even propose to name a street, building, hospital, school, bridge or even just a public toilet after the parents of any incumbent official?

If we only eliminated sipsip, and ostracized every grafter rather than make them feel welcome at our social events, then we would be making decisions for the right reasons and with much greater foresight and in the process hear less potshots being taken at our potholes.