Nice Is Not Rubbish

I was always told by Mr. Smith, my English teacher, that 'nice' is a horrible word and it should never be used and so I've spent my entire life trying to avoid it and replace it with alternative adjectives.  But you know what?  I think 'nice' has it place.  There's no other word that singularly and aptly describes things that are, well, nice.

Subic tries to be nice.  Since it was handed back by the Americans to the Filipinos it has tired to be different and maintain standards of a sort rarely seen elsewhere in the Philippines.  It tries to be clean, secure and orderly, all the things that when they come together make the place nice.  For example, when we had the typhoon late last year the clean up was remarkable so hats off to the SBMA for doing a sterling job there.

There's a whole raft of rules and regulations that residents of the freeport are meant to adhere to.  Not petty rules but rules to keep the place a pleasant place to live in.  Unfortunately, they are not very well enforced and as a result standards start to slip.

For example: nuisance noise (i.e. barking dogs - more about that another time) is not allowed.  Hanging out washing in view of the roads isn't allowed.  Placing your rubbish in secure containers so that the dog, cats and moreover monkeys don't scatter it all over the place, is a requirement.  This is can be difficult because the monkeys are quite smart and have worked out how to open locking rubbish bins.  That I can deal with so long as the scattered rubbish is picked up immediately but all too often it is left scattered all over the place for someone else to deal with.

On the matter of rubbish, we do get our rubbish collected 3 times a week all for the princely sum of US10 a month.  Not bad considering the once fortnightly collections there are in many places in the UK.

I have a dustbin with a locking top.  I ended up putting a bungy cord on it when the monkeys worked out how to flip open the locks but the bungy cord was stolen.  So now I use a piece of rope.  Most residents don't bother with anything at all - see this rant from some nutter - Monkeys Attracted to Rubbish

I have a gardener that attends to the garden.  This morning he's out sweeping up leaves and he's using the dustbin to collect them.  I ask him where the rubbish is that was in the dustbin?  'Oh, no problem sir, I threw it into the forest at the back of the house'.  

Is there word that aptly describes my blind rage when gleefully tells me he's done this?

Now that's not nice.  And why would you do that?  He's here to make the garden nice as so does he really think that by throwing a load of rotting rubbish in the forest out the back of the house is going to improve the place?  All it's going to improve is the rat and cockroach population.  I just cannot understand the thinking or the reasoning.  

But clearly it's considered the usual way of disposing of rubbish because that's what my neighbours do, which makes my blood boil.

Outside of the freeport, where rubbish collection isn't quite so regular and where there's is a problem perhaps it's understandable (but not excusable), but when you have three collections a week, why would you create your own garbage tip at the bottom of your garden?  

Old habits die hard I guess.