I’ve been to the Neptune Bar in Subic, where Smith and Nicole hooked up. It’s virtually indistinguishable from the relatively upscale, though still sleazy, videoke bars one finds scattered around Manila, Angeles or Olongapo. It caters to a mixed clientele of locals, tourists, expats and periodically, to hordes of U.S. servicemen on R & R. The Neptune is not a place where one expects to meet choirboys.

Nicole wandered in late that hot, fateful night after bar-hopping earlier with her sister and the latter’s boyfriend, an American serviceman. Smith and his posse were there and, by all accounts, he and Nicole hit it off. They promptly proceeded to get even more smashed. So drunk was Nicole that she left the bar on piggy-back, carried by Smith to the Marines’ hired van.

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On December 4, U.S. Marine corporal Daniel Smith was found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment of 20 to 40 years for the rape of a 23-year old Filipina in Subic Bay in the Philippines. The rape, which occurred more than a year ago, has again brought to the fore long-simmering political and cultural tensions between the U.S. and its former colony. Three other co-accused, U.S. Marines Chad Carpentier, Dominic Duplantis and Keith Silkwood, were acquitted and promptly whisked out of the country.

The 21-year old Smith now finds himself an inmate of the Makati City Jail, facing a bleak and uncertain future, as his case winds its way on appeal through the Philippine judicial system. The victim and her supporters, given the pseudonym “Nicole” by the media, feels that justice has been done. Others are not so sure.

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Typhoon “Reming” left at least 1,000 dead in the Bicol Region, with the body count still climbing. Reming (international code name: “Durian”) is what we hope would be the last of a series of yearend killer storms to hit the country in 2006. It is a widespread belief that the closer a typhoon is to Christmas, the more devastating it becomes. And so it was with Reming, with a lot of help from the topography of the magnificent, and deadly, Mayon Volcano.

Prof. Randy David, in his regular column in the Inquirer, writes of a disaster threshold. According to Prof. David, our disaster threshold as a nation is extremely low, such that we suffer much from every visiting calamity and we recover ever so slowly.

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