We beg to differ.
Lots of populist huffing and puffing going on again after Filipino boxing champ Manny Pacquiao was allegedly refused membership in the über prestigious Manila Polo Club (MPC), which reportedly counts only people who are “the country’s A-listers belonging to the influential and affluent level of the Philippine status quo” as worthy to join its ranks….
Read More “Main Event: Manny Pacquiao vs the Manila Polo Club” »
They’d presumably be flirting and exhibiting wit and cool (the stuff that we are all finely-tuned to use as a basis for making friends and finding mates) using real voices, making real eye contact, and exhibiting real body language, all of these reciprocated by the other party using the same biological ensemble. People who are…
Read More “Online social lives – the modern-day mental virus” »
Making news today is another blast from the past — the re-opening of the 2004 election cheating scandal that engulfed most of former President Gloria Arroyo’s term from then ’til 2009 and a new investigation mounted on the back of a possible testimony from Zaldy Ampatuan and Lintang Bedong both of whom have admitted to…
Read More “Why re-opening the Hello Garci case is like the second invasion of Iraq” »
Driving up or down EDSA, the main road transport artery through the Philippine megalopolis of Metro Manila, is like navigating a badly-designed website. The huge billboards that line the iconic thoroughfare competing for the attention of motorists and their passengers are monuments to the aesthetic sensibilities of Filipinos. Manila, after all, is the cultural capital…
Read More “What Metro Manila billboards tell us about the Filipino character” »
My dear countrymen, members of Congress, honourable House Speaker, Senate President, and Chief Justice, ladies and gentlemen of the diplomatic corps: Today I stand before you, this 25th day of July 2011 to do three things: (1) report on what we had achieved in the last twelve months, (2) give you a summary of the…
It’s been one week since I first jumped into the Google+ bandwagon and published my initial thoughts about it. My observations from that piece haven’t changed — basically Google+ is the Facebook sharing experience wrapped around a Twitter-like networking philosophy. In that sense, Google+ is a true “mash-up” — a Facebook-Twitter hybrid that seems to…
Tired, old, and quite frankly embarrassing. That’s what’s become of the whole yellow motif of the Aquino clan and its circle of business cronies, relatives, “shooting buddies”, lackeys, Media outlets, and cadre of bloggers, publicists, and “social media activists”. It was the primary colour of a successful propaganda campaign that started in 1983, peaked in…
Read More “A call to President Noynoy Aquino to ditch the color yellow” »
The Philippine economy will collapse without the Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs). Remittances from the OFWs contributed significantly to the 7.3% growth in the economy in 2010. The spending fuelled by the billions of dollars they send back home is a factor that is likely helping the country avoid a Greece-like economic failure. Even without drastic…
Read More “Are OFWs’ right to travel being violated by the Philippine Government?” »