We beg to differ.
Many who read this blogsite and allied sites may agree that the educational system of the Philippines is in a terrible state. I read some months ago about 58,000 nurses applying for only 10,000 slots in the government. Another one was that around 88% of those who took the civil service example flunked. And we…
Read More “Suggestions on Educational Reform in the Philippines” »
Senator and former “action star” Lito Lapid will be moonlighting again in showbiz despite his duties as senator-judge in the on-going impeachment trial versus Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona. “Kailangan kong kumayod,” (my translation: “I need to scrape hard to make a living”) said the action man which leads us to wonder what sort…
Read More “Senator Lito Lapid now under ABS-CBN Network payroll” »
Almost on cue, Philippine President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III was quick to praise the Filipino crewmen of the ill-fated Costa Concordia which capsized off the Tuscan coast of Italy on the 13th of January while carrying more than 4,000 passengers. Soon after the incident, President Aquino said, “You are men and women of courage, heroism…
Read More “Filipino ‘heroics’ in the Costa Concordia disaster in Italy lauded” »
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…