It’s not as though any of this is new. Almost every government official, including senators and congressmen, have traveled abroad during their incumbency and the public has rarely been told, if at all, how the country has benefitted from those trips. It’s an offshoot of the nature of discretionary funds. Where there is money that isn’t targeted for any specific project or service and how it is spent is left to the sole discretion of he who has control over the funds, well, you get the idea. It becomes easier to understand too why, with a few exceptions, no government official — from the municipal council member to the President—will willingly give up his pork barrel allocation.

It’s the freebie mentality and the Philippines — no, the world — is full of freeloaders. Everyone wants the good life but does not want to spend his own money to experience it. The curious thing is that even those who can afford to spend prefer that someone else does. And this attitude is not peculiar among government officials. It is practiced from the highest echelons down to the lowest ranks, in public and private sectors. Professional critics will, of course, be quick to point out that it is a legacy of a corrupt government, a bad example that people follow. But the converse is just as likely — that government officials’ penchant for freebies is an attitude that they carry over from their pre-government days.

It starts with little things and friendly lines like Mang-libre ka naman! or Magpa-inom ka naman! that we hear every day from the neighborhood tambay to the call center agents to the rank-and-file government employees. It really has nothing to do with not being able to afford the drink. It’s a feeling that one is being wise by making someone else pay. That wa-is or wise is actually the equivalent of panglalamang or panggugulang is conveniently brushed aside.

This attitude is prevalent even among corporate executives and highly-paid professionals. For instance, it is not uncommon for a corporate board to hold an executive or directors’ meeting over a very extended weekend in Hong Kong, Singapore or Phuket, all expenses paid for by corporate funds which, of course, are deducted from the stockholders’ dividends. Never mind that the meeting can be conducted in the company office’s conference room right here in town. Someone always comes up with a justifiable reason to hold it in some swank resort, preferably overseas, without costing the directors and officers a single centavo. Oh, yes, sometimes wives and children tag along too as part of the company expense account. But since it is within the power of the board to make the decision, what can the stockholders do? Chances are, they won’t even know about it until the next annual stockholders’ meeting and the item will be in small print in some back page of the report that they will probably miss it altogether.

There are cases too when the exercise of the freebie mentality is not limited to a once- or twice-a-year board meetings. In some corporations, the company-paid driver ends up as a family driver and the executive’s secretary is actually doing the executive’s kids’ school projects, taking care of his dry-cleaning, coordinating with the caterers and florists for his wedding anniversary party and even buying a wedding anniversary gift for his wife because he’s too busy playing golf using the company-paid golf club membership account. Even the company car, with company-paid fuel, ends up as a family car.

Now, transpose the above scenario, substitute government for the corporation and the board and officers with elected government officials. Do we bother making a distinction between stockholder’s dividends and taxpayers’ money? Whether you’re an abusive corporate director who likes to use company funds for your own pleasure or a government official who likes to travel using government funds, the result is the same. It’s stealing because you’re using money that is not yours but only placed at your discretion as a matter of trust. You’re trusted with someone else’s money with the mandate to use it wisely and make it grow but, instead, you use it to live the good life.

It might look like something out of the prologue of a CSI episode but it isn’t. That’s not a dead body. June 7 must have been a particularly hot day because Speedy slept on the bedroom floor with the sliding door to the garden open. He’d rather do that than turn on the air-con. Sleeping on the floor is free, air-con consumes very expensive electricity. He follows his house rules very seriously, you know.

But I love those step-by-step photos. They make a recipe come alive! So when someone volunteers to take them, I feel ecstatic. Most times, it’s Sam who volunteers. Like a couple of weeks ago when I was planning on baking a key lime pie but both Sam and Alex insisted that it be a mango custard pie instead. I relented and there was Sam with her camera taking photos up until I put the glass dish in the oven. The photos were so great — there is even one that shows the egg yolk in midair between the cracked shell and the blender. I love motion photos like that — something I can do by myself only by using the camera’s timer which really prolongs everything. But with an assistant, I go through the normal cooking procedure without bothering to run back and forth between the food, the sink and the camera.

Sadly, the recipe for the mango custard pie has not been posted to this day. It turned out very well, by the way, so that’s not the reason why it isn’t in my food blog yet. The reason is that Sam still hasn’t given me the photos she had taken. I have reminded her a dozen times, she’s always busy with something, and I don’t insist because it’s her freshman year in college and I don’t want to add to the pressure. So until she finds the time, the recipe entry remains on draft mode because I don’t want to post it with photos only of the baked pie which I took. I want it complete with the ones that Sam had taken.

But it wasn’t the first time that Sam took step-by-step photos of my cooking with the representation that she’s doing it for my food blog. She did the same thing the last time I made siopao but there’s a very different twist to that episode. Heaven knows how long I’ve wanted to update that siopao entry with new photos. So, last summer, when Alex was craving for siopao and volunteered to help me, that in addition to Sam’s promise to take all the photos, I figured it was the perfect opportunity.

So, I sprinkled the yeast into a bowl of lukewarm water and Sam took photos. I mixed in the flour and she took photos. She went on taking photos of the initial kneading of the dough inside the bowl, of the hand-kneading on the granite top of the kitchen island and I was so happy that I’d finally have a complete set of step-by-step photos of how to make siopao.

But you know how it is with dough… you have to let it rise, right?

Okay, so the kneading done, I gathered the dough into a ball and placed it in a lightly greased bowl. Then, I covered it with a damp towel. Sam asked how long it would take for the dough to rise, I told her about an hour and she said she was going up to her room. I told her to just come down after an hour so she could photograph the risen dough (photos of unrisen and risen dough side by side just look so great in a food blog) and the rest of the procedure.

The dough rose, I took it out of the bowl, I cut it into equal portions and Alex and I started to stuff the dough with asado filling. Where was Sam? She had fallen asleep. The dough has to rise a second time after it has been filled, right? The second rising of the dough came and went and there was no Sam. The pork filled dough went into the steamer and still no Sam. Oh, she came down just in time to eat the cooked siopao.

That’s really the problem when your assistant is not your employee and she works on a voluntary basis. You can’t threaten with pay cuts much less getting fired. I can’t fire my kid, can I? Of course, if she were my employee, that would be a different story altogether.