Hong Kong, Southeast Asia
Yesterday night I happened to catch my sister watching a Hong Kong travelogue with Korina Sanchez on ABS-CBN.. Hoping that my sister would gradually lose interest and surrender the remote to me, I stayed for some time in front of the TV, intent on switching to Channel V the soonest I get the chance.

So there I was half-heartedly watching when suddenly I heard Korina saying that Hong Kong can be found in Southeast Asia. I almost fell off my chair: Hong Kong is certainly NOT in Southeast Asia--unless there had been some major tectonic movement in the past week.

And then after a few minutes, to further plunge the nation into hitherto unexplored depths of ignorance, Korina introduced an aquarium in Hong Kong as being “the biggest in the world.” How could that possibly be when I saw in one documentary a far bigger aquarium in Okinawa, Japan. That one had a whale inside; all I saw on Korina’s purported biggest aquarium in the world was a fairly large stingray.

The travelogue also featured Taheebo, a medicinal concoction, Korina informed us, that is imported from Brazil. Now, why would she think we would be interested to hear about Taheebo from Brazil on a Hong Kong travelogue? That portion, it turned out, was brought to her TV audience courtesy of Taheebo the company itself.

Has Sunday night primetime programming on ABS-CBN fallen this low? Or was Korina’s staff so smitten with Hong Kong it had no time to check the facts?