San Miguel Light as an economic indicator

Some people watch the price of crude oil, gas, diesel, rice, dollar, eggs, sardines, chicken, the stock exchange, unemployment rate, inflation, etc., etc. as an economic indicator of how things have changed so that they can adjust appropriately.

Me, I simply watch the price of beer.

Taking a quick survey of the bars in Dagupan City (courtesy of the powers of my old N70), I came out with this list tonight (Note: for this purpose, we shall define beer to be San Miguel Light beer):


Mouse House - P35
Quattro - P40
Hall of Fame - P45
Music WareHouse - P45
Diner's - P45
Joshua Tree - P49
Shinjuku - P60
Disc Capsule - P65
808 - P70

While I still have a few bars/cafes not on my list yet, I can conclude a few things and derive the following:

Mean Price of Beer - P51.56
Median Price of Beer - P45.00
Mode Price of Beer - P45.00

For mortals who puke at the sight of complicated numbers with weird operations and labels, let me translate:

Mean is the your usual average, computed the usual way (total divided by the number of values), median is the middle value (values arranged from lowest to highest or vice-versa) and mode is the value that appears most often. In this case, (pun intended) the median and mode have the same values.

If you think this is complicated stuff for illustrating my choice of an economic indicator, you should figure out the scoring system of say gymnastics or diving in the Olympics starting Friday. Before computing for the final score among a panel of judges, the lowest and highest scores are first stripped out, averaged, then multiplied by the degree of difficulty of the routine.

Beer becomes lovelier after this.

Anyway, if you can still remember how much beer cost a year ago, I'd say the average beer was P40, about P10 lower compared today. If THAT doesn't indicate something in the economics of your current paycheck, then lucky for you. It's either your boss have appreciated the intricacies of this economic indicator and have adjusted your paycheck appropriately or your boss have deppreciated you, simply.

In addition to beer being a valid economic indicator (I assumed you have agreed with me since you have followed this spirited discussion up to this point) don't you know that just by knowing the price of beer in a particular place, one can speculate with precision what kind of crowd a place have more accurately than forecasting the forex for the next day?

Take the case of a P35 to P45 a bottle range. The crowd for sure you'll find in these bars that have this price range are college kids. They'll probably buy a bottle and sit it out for an hour or more, not even caring to look at the pulutan section of the menu.

For crowds of the P60 to P70 a bottle range, expect a high profile crowd in the working class, from the yuppies to the executives, from the konsehal to the congressman. (Of course, beer for the female sex in a majority of these places have a much higher price range for reasons I cannot comprehend.)

So next time the big three in the oil industry announces another oil hike, don't get affected. Get out, hit the bars and monitor the price of your beer instead. The higher crude oil gets, the more reason you should enjoy your beer. Why, because even if beer is a valid economic indicator, the price of beer is not directly proportional to the increase of the price of crude oil. Rather, the price of beer is inversely proportional to the price of crude oil because beer is now actually cheaper than the price of diesel and gas, by-products of crude oil.

Cheers.

Homo habilis

Homo habilis is second in line only after Hominid primates in an illustration I googled at terrestrialextras.com explaining the evolution of man. The website, as its name suggests, actually focused on Nativus coniunctus, a future derivative of man...but that's not the intention of today's exercise.

Furthermore, Homo habilis had a short body and long ape-like arms like the australopithecines. But they were distinguished from earlier hominids by their big brain (c. 630 cubic centimetres) and small teeth, according to another website at bbc.co.uk.

Now take a look at my shot taken three nights ago as we were on our third bottle of cold beer together with Kinigtot Bacolor, my artist buddy at the Dagupan Artists' Circle and Joy Ramos, my basketball buddy. It was one of those rainy nights we couldn't resist, most specially now that a night's out in our favorites bars in Dagupan just wouldn't equate anymore. An average bottle of beer cost about forty pesos before the oil crisis started this year. Now, a bottle of beer cost on the average fifty pesos! And even my favorite pulutan sashimi has inflated so much (I was talking about of the price, not its geometric volume), I reckon the average bar in Dagupan which keeps stock of it have problems with extending its shelf life for a few more days..


Well, the resemblance isn't exactly obvious, unless I subject my photo to Bones, America's famous forensic anthropologist (on television at least) to hypothesize how my subject would look like without his clothes on. Of course, he would have to be dead first since Bones only work with bones.

Drop the idea. Even if Bones were non-fiction, I wouldn't want to share this piece of supposedly extinct stage of man's evolution with her. He's mine. I rightfully own him. I even gave him a name, Carding. Shot him first almost two years ago (Takeout) when I started shooting "mga taong grasa ng Dagupan" as one of my more serious photography projects.

Unlike Eva Tot (see previous blog), Carding is one taong grasa I do not wish to communicate with.

Taong grasas are generally peace loving people. They try, as much as we do, to avoid contact of any sorts (not that contact) with other people.

However, Homo habilis had a secret weapon: stone tools. Crude stone implements were used to smash open animal bones and extract the nutritious bone marrow, bbc.co.uk continues.

That is why I am doing this comparison. Carding is one exception. Seemingly harmless, I wouldn't shoot him with a lens less than or equal to a focal length in a 2-digit range. I saw him once hurling rocks at some people who obviously earned them his ire. Mean. He didn't exactly smash open the skulls of these people, but if his aim had been as accurate as David (as in Goliath), the effects would have been the same.

Certainly, he is one violent soul, if he had one. I mean, if this guy was really a survivor 2.3 million years after he was supposed to be non-existent, he really wouldn't have one. Only Homo sapiens have souls I believe.

But then again, if supposing Carding didn't have a soul because he never fully evolved into a full Homo sapiens he was destined to be, what the hell is he still doing here, in the streets of Dagupan City?