NO FREE RIDE: Travel, they say, is broadening. To put it in one word, it is educational. We learn lessons.

It is great to travel, especially if one does not spend for it. That is the first lesson, especially for high government officials bitten by the travel bug.

As for us poor journalists, unless one has rich and indulgent parents, we may not be able to travel on our own. But the lucky ones are able to see the world when sent to cover global issues or invited by foreign entities, airlines and other interest groups.

In most mainstream media, the office gives travel allowances and per diems, among other benefits, for official coverage. Sometimes this is provided under the collective bargaining agreement of the workers’ union.

The theory here is that office funding helps ensure that the reporter is not easily influenced by the government official he is covering.

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PAY YOUR OWN: In one state visit to the United States of then President Ferdinand Marcos, most of the journalists laboring under the state-monitored system got away with not receiving a peso from the government by a smart stratagem.

Since the media were owned or controlled by Marcos cronies, these benefactors (I almost said Benedicto) spent for us. We could then look anybody in the eye and say that our trips were financed by our office, not by the government.

The office, not Malacañang, bought our plane tickets. The office gave us pocket money, had special jackets tailored for us, and paid for our hotel and incidental bills. If we ran out of money in unusual circumstances, the office called somebody in the city where we were and this somebody came to our rescue.

The pay-your-own practice was copied from the White House rules. Newsmen covering the US President who fly with him on Air Force One, are billed accordingly though their offices.

The Malacañang Press Office saw this setup, and copied it. As far as I know, the practice has been carried on to this day.

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LEAN BUT MEAN: The trip of President Noynoy Aquino assisted only by a lean team proves that bringing along a planeload of congressmen, senators, generals, cronies and hangers-on is not crucial to the success of the trip.

In fact, the reliance on a lean but mean team is more conducive to making the mission productive.

Then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew often traveled on regular Singapore Airlines flights with only three or so aides. And he would lug his own briefcase.

With due respect, I think disdaining the Waldorf-Astoria on Park Avenue was a bit overdone. All previous presidents, not only Gloria Arroyo, stayed at the Waldorf as a matter of course. Even our great Carlos P. Romulo stayed nowhere else. And that was not because the hotel has a special steak named after him.

Eating hotdog at a sidewalk stand is good copy, provided nothing is reported about what one devoured later in his room.

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SPEECH SEASON: The dirty technical nitty-gritty of document-signing and business meetings related to a president’s visit is handled by subordinate officials behind the scenes and much earlier.

The president simply flies in and signs the documents or stands as witness to the signing by plenipotentiaries. He does not have to understand what he sees or signs.

When the head of government of a United Nations member-country visits in autumn – which is the season for the general debate — a usual practice is to have him read the country statement to the cavernous hall.

This is good for his ego and it impresses the folk back home who think their leader/reader is grappling with cataclysmic issues with world statesmen. Unless the speech-reader is a heavyweight, normally the UN delegates do not bother to listen.

This is much like a TV news anchor who just reads the news put together by a platoon of researchers and writers. Sometimes the newsreader is able to transform himself into a candidate for vice president or senator.

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CLOCKING IT: President Aquino’s seven-minute chat with US President Barack Obama was good enough, considering that some of the other ASEAN leaders with him failed to get even a measly minute.

This to-the-minute detail of a visit of a Philippine president has been one of the supposed indicators of how the White Father regards the visitor from the former colony somewhere across the Pacific.

In the past, somebody was reportedly assigned – with a stop watch, I suppose – to clock the conversation in the Oval Office when the Philippine president calls on his US counterpart.

A first lady with social-climbing predilection is famous for her talent for hanging on and prolonging the conversation just to break the previous record or to outdo another major actor visiting Washington.

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STRINGS ATTACHED: In the final analysis, however, it is not the time spent but the substance and the firmness of the commitments that count.

We say this, reminded of the folk saying that we should not count the chicks before they are hatched.

Every dollar that the US releases to a client state has a plethora of strings attached to it.

The rate of trickle depends largely on good behavior. To put it bluntly, fund releases are dependent on how diligently we comply with the conditions tacked on to the program.

But then, this is how this cruel world turns. Here and there, now and then, we give up a little of our sovereignty and swallow our pride – if we want to get something in return.

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