We beg to differ.
Did we really expect a seamless, swimmingly-hosted Southeast Asian Games (SEAG)? This is, after all, the Philippines where nothing works. Filipinos cannot organise their way out of a paper bag and this is reflected in just about every failed system and ways of working borrowed from former colonial masters and sloppily-applied to their setting. It…
One of the most rudimentary rules of grammar is matching the right verb with its subject. But it seems to be so convoluted and complex due to the sheer number of choices one has to consider: TWO… either singular or plural. Filipinos simply find having to weigh between those two choices as too confusing that…
Read More “Lost in Subject-Verb Agreement: Should Filipinos go back to Grammar School?” »
Being exceptional in the Philippines is not only not rewarded, it is also punished. Often severely. Being exceptional, in the eyes of Filipinos, means that you are something the rest of them aren’t. You aren’t in solidarity with the rest of them, especially if they’re mediocre. Naging iba ka sa kanila. Di ka nakisama. Leadership…
Read More “Why being exceptional is a bane in the Philippines” »
It’s time Filipinos pause, step back, take stock, and ask: What is really going on here? If one would attempt to answer that question using the common frame of mind with which Filipinos have coocooned themselves within, the responses would be unsurprising, quite trite, and peppered with certain key words prevalent in mainstream discourse today:…
Read More “Filipinos should junk the 1986 People Power narrative in order to TRULY progress” »
Exceptional. Normally, a race for the presidency involves a cast of exceptional people. These would be the men and women seen to be at the top of their respective games and, as such, worthy of the privilege to serve the Filipino people as their chief executive for the next six years. In a presidential race,…
Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very rare day when I find myself concurring with members of our local media, many of whom I openly disdain. Indeed, as some of you probably know, I usually go out of my way just to bash the local media and their constituents. However, just recently, my apprentice called…
Read More ““Pilipinas Got ‘Talent’ Not Pilipinas Got ‘Awa’!”: The Way It Should Be” »
The deadline for the completion of the LRT (Light Rail Transit) Line 1 project (Baclaran to Bacoor) by the end of 2015 has passed and the promise issued by President Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III that he and Department of Transportation and Communication (DOTC) Secretary Jun Abaya back in 2013 will throw themselves under a…
Read More “Filipinos need to uphold a Deliver-Or-Die ethic like the Japanese” »
“The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.” — The History of Freedom in Antiquity, 1877 THE TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY Alexis de Tocqueville coined the term: “tyranny of the majority”, and Lord Acton,…
Read More “The growing void in the Filipino psyche where substance could have thrived” »