We beg to differ.
Been seeing this hashtag (which literally means “famous lying lines”) on Twitter and even on Facebook lately. How timely! These are days marked by much lying. In politics, specially. But we won’t go into that. Lying in politics, after all, is such a banality. It’s a wonder people still go out and vote. Filipino voters…
I find it amusing, and yet not surprising at all, that the cases of the Filipino peacekeepers assigned to the United Nations and of the Gilas Pilipinas Basketball team going to play in the FIBA tournament in Spain are being held up in social media as indicators of Filipino “courage”, and consequently, Filipino pride. The…
Not surprising. Political observers gave Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) Secretary Jun Abaya a unanimous Fail in his most recent public relations stunt. Yesterday, the 28th August, Abaya stepped up to a self-imposed challenge to prove Manila’s decrepit Metro Rail Transit was “safe”. The MRT has been beleaguered by recent high-profile mishaps, among them…
Read More “DOTC Secretary Jun Abaya’s epic MRT public relations fail” »
While I find a bit justified the whole stink being raised around the way the Torre de Manila highrise condominiums being constructed in Manila by developer DMCI Homes is supposedly “ruining” the view of the Rizal Monument, I think we are missing the bigger picture. Metro Manila is an ugly city. And that ugliness did…
A friend and I were recently looking through our Facebook timelines and having a laugh. The flood of ALS ice water bucket videos (which, frankly, I find a bit tiring), merited only a few pained chuckles. But what really got us guffawing was a photo shared by a distant acquaintance of ours. In the photo,…
Read More “Which comes first, the ‘nice’ or the Louis Vuitton?” »
The world was shocked with the news that the much-loved Hollywood actor and comedian Robin Williams took his own life. It was hard for his fans to reconcile his animated persona on screen with the revelation that he was actually an unhappy person off screen. It was discomforting to think that someone who made it…
Read More “Robin Williams’s death and the meaning of life” »
What I am really curious about is what possessed comedian Ramon Bautista to insinuate that Davao women are “hipon”, slang for (I am told) women who have a nice body but a not-so-nice face. “Hipon” is Tagalog for “shrimp”. So, yeah, shrimp is the word because the head of a shrimp is discarded after the…
Read More “Ramon Bautista’s ‘hipon’ joke: Davao women should lighten up” »
Metro Manila is a dump. And it is getting worse, not better. The city is being crushed under the weight of its own success as a magnet for domestic migrants looking for jobs the Philippines’ barren hinterlands cannot provide. But why is Metro Manila, the Philippines’ premiere economic and cultural centre, not improving? Not only…
