The Irony of Complaining About Expensive Onions While Overspending on Unnecessary Stuff

It's already a new year and I want to harshly greet people with a lot of debts a "Happy New Year" (read here). I'd like to write this one because of this cartoon from The Manila Times emphasizes the irony of the situation. Last Christmas season, I raised the issue of whining about inflation because of the need for lavish celebrations (read here). What do you expect from people whose spending is poorly prioritized? If you're living paycheck to paycheck then why are you wasting the paycheck? That's the question that I can irritatingly ask because of how payday traffic can be so bad. The check arrives? They shout, "YEHEY!" They start to spend here and there, and if they can't afford it, they add credit to credit!

Why do you think they're complaining about the prices of onions? The cartoon from The Manila Times would reflect the irony. The person may have been too busy buying stuff that they don't need now (like I don't need the latest iPhone or video game console), buying luxury brands, and spending for the sake of it. It's like during payday when some people decide to do a barkada (peer) blowout at a very pricey place. I can't determine the prices of the items since I hardly buy designer clothes.

What I could assume is that the person who was crying, "Ang mahal ng sibuyas!!!" ("The onions are so expensive!!!") isn't complaining about the price per se. I think the person has run out of money from buying all the unnecessary stuff. In short, by the time the person remembers he has to buy onions, he has no more money to buy onions. The cost of onions at PHP 600.00 per kilo wouldn't be so bad if the person forgone buying all the unnecessary stuff first.

I guess all the whining that happened last Christmas was because of an overspending lifestyle. The paycheck arrives and they waste the money on what they don't need. By the time they need to buy onions, they end up realizing, "I have no money to buy onions anymore!" That's why they end up whining about onions being expensive. What may even be funnier if such people are also against importation of agricultural products during times of shortage (read here).

The Great Reversal: Democratic Philippines Became MORE Dependent on COMMUNIST Vietnam for Rice

Bao Thanh Nien On January 24, 2026, I read from the Philippine Star Facebook page that a vendor from Baseco, Tondo, is selling Vietnamese rice at PHP 20.00 per kilo. Honestly, it made me laugh over President Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos Jr.'s promise. Was this rice from Vietnam a rice surplus if it wasn't premium rice? My experience with rice selling was with wholesale, and it was a very different time. What I learned in the late 2000s to 2012 may no longer be applicable today. Taking a look back at the history of Vietnam and the Philippines before Doi Moi This time, I decided to go with history because a certain someone on Facebook (as always, I will not mention names as much as possible) has actually called it that the Philippines' dependency on Vietnam for rice, despite the International Rice Research Institute being actually located in Pili Drive, Los Baños, Laguna 4031, Philippines. This guy (whom I nickname Porky due to his obesity) I just mentioned, sp...

Teaching Mandarin by Recalling How Much Chinoy School Students Complained, "Hay, Chinese!"

It's time for a bit of Chinese language Throwback Thursday. I remember how the Chinese school can be summarized as students memorizing without understanding . The problem wasn't the Lǎoshīs (老師) but the system that ran them as persons . I decided to write this article to " bring up a trauma " associated with the Chinese education system. From Kiko Chinese, this picture shows the common complaints from children. Standard Chinese is so hard! The Chinese schools tend to lose students because they keep failing in Grade 2 or Grade 2 in Chinese. In fact, I remember someone failing Chinese four times back in the 1990s. Another one was three years in Grade 3 Chinese, where the Chinese teacher was even stricter than the Grade 2 Chinese teacher. The real issue was that there wasn't any real learning because the old traditional Chinese system wasn't doing anything right . People were treated as if Hokkien were their first language. However, we realize that people can...

Real Talk: No MNCs In Their Right Mind, Would Ever AGREE to That Ridiculous 60-40 Proposal

Here's another art I found on Facebook. Some time ago, I wrote about how the 60-40 policy may not prohibit, while still discouraging FDIs from entering . It's plain common sense, really, that nobody would want to rent a space if they had to part with 60% of their net profits to the lessor (read here ). It annoys me to think that certain Netizens on Facebook are still blaming government corruption over the 60-40 policy. That can get annoying. I can link the 60-40 policy to government corruption . After all, corrupt officials want to perpetuate their stay in power through an ignorant and impoverished population. However, blaming corruption alone is really downright stupid. Some say investors are going to Communist Vietnam because the Communist Party of Vietnam-Vietnam People's Army is serious about cracking corruption. However, the reality is that, ironically, Communist Vietnam has more reasonable economic restrictions compared to the Philippines (read here ). Only a few sec...

Kabataan Partylist Seriously Needs to Learn ECONOMICS from the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union

Vietnam National University, Hanoi Kabataan Partylist, is that you? No, it's actually the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union (Đoàn Thanh niên Cộng sản Hồ Chí Minh), or alternatively, it can be called the Vietnam Youth Union . The color blue may remind some of Kabataan Partylist. Both Kabataan Partylist and the Vietnam Youth Union are involved with recruiting youths into the organization. However, there's a crucial difference between Kabataan Partylist and the Youth Union in how they view economics. The Kabataan Partylist Laguna's blog even writes this: It believes that the Philippines, as a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country, is plagued by a system which allows foreign and big business interests to dominate, while the majority of our countrymen are left poor and hungry . We are living in a society where foreign subservience, peasant landlessness, and rampant corruption are the top three ills. To that end, Kabataan Party-list strives to galvanize the Filipino youth in u...

Indonesia's Masarang Foundation Proves that FDI Can Greatly Help Local Philippine Agriculture

As I've sipped two glasses of Tealive's Aren Caramel (read here )--I was tempted to research more on palm sugar from the Arenga tree. Arenga bears the fruit that Filipinos call kaong and Indonesians call kolang kaling. As a Filipino, I prefer to call it the Kaong Tree or Punuan ng Kaong. This video is from Masarang, Indonesia. Masarang in Tagalog means strong. If the Indonesian word means strong as well--this is a very strong foundation. The research on palm sugar landed me in the organization called Yayasan Masarang or Masarang Foundation. The video I just shared shows the struggle of palm tappers and how FDI can help in learning environmentally-friendly practices. The late Lee Kuan Yew even published in his book From Third World to First about greening Singapore. The pernicious myth that's spread around is that Singapore supposedly only opened to FDI due to lack of natural resources . However, other countries rich in natural resources like Malaysia, Indonesia, Japan, Chi...

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