We beg to differ.
Filipinos choose to measure progress from a Western perspective (mainly financial wealth and capital-intensive development). Thus a “successful” Filipino individual as measured by contemporary Filipino society fits the standard Hollywood mold — big house, party lifestyle, trendy clothes, shiny car, and flashy mobile devices. The trouble with Philippine society is that we embrace the superficial…
I believe they can. Last July I traveled to a remote part of the Sierra Madre mountains in northern Luzon where I spent two weeks with the indigenous Agta and Dumagat communities of the area. Being a travel and documentary photographer based in the Philippines I do a good amount of traveling around the country,…
Roughly translated in English and taken out outside of the context of homosexuality that it is commonly associated with, the Tagalog colloquial word kabadingan in a cultural sense is a contemporary concept that describes a spectacle of loud contrived crassness or obnoxiousness in both behaviour, design, and aesthetic sensibilities that is indulged in for its…
It is the all-too-familiar case of of the same results brought about by doing the same thing again and again. The Year 2011 ended with the usual bang — Filipino style. The Department of Health (DOH) put the casualty figure of the traditional end-of-year orgy of fire and explosives at 739 injured plus one dead…
Read More “The self-inflicted disasters of Philippine New Year celebrations” »
The type of films Filipino filmmakers make reflect the type of people most Filipinos are — people lacking in substance. Just looking at the list of entries for this year’s Manila Film Festival, you can already tell that not a lot of thinking was involved in the process of making them. Even the titles leave…
I read recently that we have another Filipino saint queued for canonisation by the Roman Catholic officialdom in the Vatican. Blessed Pedro Calungsod is a 17th Century Visayan martyr whose bid to be the second Filipino saint is “now a certainty” by virtue of a papal decree made last week according to an Inquirer.net report….
Read More “Pedro Calungsod – yet another Filipino saint Filipinos can look to for miracles” »
Philippine President Benigno Simeon Aquino wants to end 2011 right — or at least his handlers do. Just a few days before the end of the year, Malacañang’s official survey firm, Social Weather Stations (SWS), which is owned and operated by friends and family members of PNoy, concluded the year with another “very good” rating…
Read More “President Noynoy Aquino: Is he the new Filipino god?” »
A bill is currently being debated in the United States House of Representatives that seeks to implement measures that will enable the US Government to control Americans’ access to “foreign” Web sites. The bill called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) has been criticised by big-name Internet business including the likes of Google, Twitter, and…
Read More “US Stop Online Piracy Act pits Silicon Valley vs mainstream media” »