A recent visitor from Singapore was saying how “boring” it is, I suppose news wise, in her country. Compared to ours, of course, our neighbor would certainly look “boring,” although one might regard it as more as peaceful, untroubled, or smooth.

Everything is a matter of perspective, and in the court of public opinion, the recent waves that have filled Philippine news headlines with various “big developments” can be seen as volatile, frustrating and rough as the seas in habagat season.

Volatile is the temper running through Congress these days, as both houses are packed with hearings and investigations that people are actually following. It’s telenovela season anew, some say, often with accompanying smirks. From feisty comments to bratty ones, we could have a field day tuning in from the morning till the evening news.

Frustrating are the dead-end answers of one Alice Guo, a true enigma even if she has been characterized as a true-blue liar, given the reports over the past weeks. As senators questioned the dismissed Bamban, Tarlac mayor and received the same “evasive and false” answers that made the usually unruffled Senate committee head Senator Risa Hontiveros cite her for contempt, we examine our reactions.

If it were up to ordinary citizens who might cower at being held in contempt by anyone, Alice Guo should be all shriveled by now with all the contempt being thrown at her, virtually and figuratively.

The official first contempt charge came from the Senate itself, which cited her “for repeatedly ignoring the subpoenas issued by the same panel in July,” according to a report in this paper. The second came on Monday when she gave them the runaround to the query of whether she was really Guo Hua Ping, a Chinese national.

Alice Guo insisted that she was Alice Guo. That is what she knows, she said, then apologized for their disbelief. Do fingerprints lie now? The National Bureau of Investigation, after all, confirmed hers and Guo Hua Ping’s as one and the same. One could almost hear the investigating panel’s rapidly thinning patience at her deadpan face and calm-as-a-whistle demeanor. Well-played, one might say, if one were watching a game or a reality show where the survivor is the winner, no matter how Machiavellian the victor.

A Filipino term for the way Guo has been behaving since her capture in Indonesia (where she reportedly greeted media “with a beaming smile”) is “matigas ang mukha.” It means “shameless” more than “plastic,” the latter being more of an insult than a reference to the core reason for a person’s unapologetic behavior.

Well, after all, if one were to play devil’s advocate here, it is also fair to say that Guo stands before an investigative panel, not a court of law. She has every right to hold her counsel unless under threat of perjury. As it is, she is “cited for contempt” — which, to be clear, is not the same as “held in contempt.” The former can get you detained within the Senate, while the latter can get you socially cast out.

What does contempt entail? What does it mean for the one cited for it? Is it as substantial as a Senate investigation, conducted as they are “in aid of law?” What we see and hear these days, whether it is about Alice Guo and her unidentified cohorts or about the molestation issue hounding the showbiz industry, is an exercise in futility.

What is it for? Will we ever see Alice Guo finally reveal what she knows about the POGO hullaballoo, the alleged Chinese silent invasion, the shameful corruption that must have allowed her to be spirited away unbeknownst on a yacht to another country, without help from any Filipino, whether Immigration, Coast Guard or boat man?

Will that day ever come, or shall we wait for another decade or so for anything of a major quality issue to trickle out a few developments every now and then, much like the Napoles case or even the ill-gotten wealth one. Remember that? And now we have another budget hearing giving us another round of shameless entertainment. Before you know it, we will be exploring our spiritual susceptibilities once Apollo Quiboloy takes the stand of public opinion.

So many other controversies have come and gone, superseded by another and another, until the memory fades and only the few who care feebly try to bring them up with any sort of hope.

It’s contemptible, really