We beg to differ.
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” »
The case of retired General Jovito Palparan who had recently been arrested on charges of grave human rights abuses against activists is an interesting one. On one hand, here is a highly-decorated officer admired by his comrades in the Philippine military for his consistent zeal in the battlefield and singular focus on crushing the enemy…
Read More “Retired General Jovito Palparan is a Filipino soldier” »
A study jointly conducted by the University of the Philippines’ Assessment Curriculum Technology Research Center-College of Education (ACTRC) and the University of Melbourne on the effectiveness of Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Education in (MTB-MLE) in the Philippines has confirmed something many Filipinos have known for some time — that English remains a highly-prized skill that most…
For many Filipinos, the fight being waged by Islamic militants to re-establish a Muslim caliphate across vast swaths of the Arab world in North Africa and the Middle East has remained a mere peripheral issue. Recent events however have revealed disturbing insight into how much of the events over there may be resonating among the…
Read More “Philippine Army keeps cool as Malaysia goes on high alert against Islamic militants!” »
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…
The mounting desperation of the average Metro Manila commuter is becoming so palpable you can taste it in the air every morning when you come out the door of your home and face the hard slog to work. It is utterly depressing to face a day where the first thing you will be experiencing is…
Read More “Traffic has sentenced every Metro Manila resident to prison time befitting murderers” »
“Never again.” It is a call to remind Filipinos that the “horrors” of the Martial Law years of the 1970s should never happen again; that we should be vigilant and always say “No” to dictators, another Martial Law, and, of course, another Marcos in power. The times, however, have all but made that slogan a…
Read More “Noynoy Aquino needs to be reminded: ‘Never again’” »