The talk of the town last week was about the vehicular accident near the local DBP branch along CPG Avenue this city. At first, we just take the story lightly as just an ordinary road mishap where the zigzagging Toyota double cab vehicle ran into a multicab being driven by an Alturas employee who died on the spot. But what added color to the story was the timely presence in the site of the accident of a city councilor, Adam Jala. Perhaps, Jala was just trying to make true to his campaign slogan: “Gusto ko, tabangan ka”.

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That campaign slogan was perhaps the reason why Jala was catapulted as a no. 1 city councilor despite reports of his involvement in the so-called PDAF scam during his term as a congressman in the third district of Bohol. Well, Jala could be translating his campaign slogan into action but it turned out however that the driver of the ill-fated Toyota Hilux, owned by Jala's father, former Cong. Eladio Jala, was a “girlfriend” of the city councilor. In the initial report of the accident, it was reported that the lady driver, Danielle Nalzaro de Ere of San Jose St. this city, was only 17 years old. Later on, when the official report was made, the driver was identified as a 19-year old.

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So, what's the fuss about the age of the lady driver? She was identified to be a “girlfriend” of Councilor Jala. Other observers have a different notion, of course. One report said that the lady driver, upon seeing Jala in the crash scene, cried out, “Daddy, Daddy!” The age of the lady driver is crucial because a 17-year old person cannot legally own a driver's license. More so, a minor will be susceptible to the crime of seduction in maintaining a relationship with a person who is already of age. The public simply wanted to see the lady driver's license just to put an end to this issue about the age once and for all. The public does not want to know anyway how come de Ere was driving the Toyota Hilux of former Cong. Eladio Jala past midnight last May 15. Don't tell me that Councilor Jala also wanted to help her because of his campaign slogan: “Gusto ko, tabangan ka.”

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We want to find a break from office work last Friday afternoon and brought Merly, the kids and Dudot into a city mall for an early dinner. While inside the mall, we checked our ATM with Banco de Oro (BDO) to verify if our funds are available. The ATM declined our balance update. Other BDO depositors also receive such balance inquiry answer. As our deposit in BDO is one of our flagship accounts, we started to perspire and tried to call Rudy Tutor, BDO branch manager in Tagbilaran City about the problem. He informed us that there indeed was a problem in their system last Friday but he expects for the restoration of their system later.

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We proceeded to have our early dinner inside the city mall. When we requested for the chit later, we used our BDO Debit Card to pay our dinner. But it was rejected as the system's error with BDO was not yet restored. Well, our family also started to perspire. So we just used our other ATM with the other bank to settle our bill. Yesterday morning, we proceeded to the BDO and found out that the BDO system has not been restored yet. The moral of the story is: don't put your egg in just one basket. The BDO debacle may not be an isolated case as far as the other banks are concerned. You cannot just rely on your ATMs. It's good that we have a current account with our BDO deposit so that we were able to withdraw money yesterday. Whew!

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POSTSCRIPT: Indeed there was this paid hack who actually questioned our presence in the 60th anniversary of the Bohol Chronicle the other week. Well, we were told that his ignorance was answered in the video presentation which featured us doing an anchoring job over Station DYRD, long, long before this paid hack came in to the station as a noontime bloc timer of a politician.…There's more when we come back.