The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
In a baby-marsupial way, the little boy clung to his grandmother, when presented to my mother, then a grade school teacher, midway in the school year—not only in hopes he could continue schooling but also to regain his speech that he suddenly lost, as the elderly woman implored.
Points of View & Perspectives
March, 2017
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19 March
The jeepney modernization lie
This discussion is less about the government’s proposed jeepney modernization program or even about jeepneys than it is about another brazen lie foisted on the public. The danger about such constant afflictions where authorities are often caught in obvious falsehoods is in its numbing and cauterizing effect. The Greek story-teller Aesop would have entitled it “The Boy who cried Wolf” …
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19 March
Who’s the sacred cow in M/V Starlite Atlantic sea tragedy?
In our radio program last week, Executive Session, aired over radio station DZRH, my co-hosts Ambassador Teddy Boy Locsin, Jr., Rep. Jonathan Dela Cruz, lawyer Dodo Dulay, social media expert Paolo Capino and I, discussed a tragic incident which happened a day after Christmas last year.
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19 March
No meat days: What does it really mean?
While fasting and abstinence meant only one meatless meal, friends and I dreaded Lenten Fridays. At times, we practiced the extreme with just bread and water, though possibly only out of obedience—what do 14-year olds really understand in terms of self-denial for the atonement of sins, anyway?
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12 March
The Metropolitan Mulcting and ‘Dilihensiya’ Authority
Apply the word association test that psychologists administer to check and discover for latent, albeit hidden, relationships underlying thoughts and simply ask what quickly comes to mind when the letters M-M-D-A are mentioned.
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12 March
Andanar’s early ‘demise’
Last we heard, Miscommunication Secretary Martin Andanar’s role in the Palace has apparently been watered down in the aftermath of that unfortunate scrimmage with media.
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12 March
To draw out and sip to refresh or quench one’s thirst: Wells of Grace
As in most about anything one finds in the “city of the world” (New York), churches unfailingly enthrall a visitor no end. But once the wonder over gorgeous details from the transept to the main altar wanes, one realizes that what deeply draws the beholder, a Filipino like me, for instance, apparently turns out to be the bits of glory one …
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5 March
Angkla’s anchor in Congress
Amidst the heated debate on the death penalty bill, It’s good to know that some significant legislative work is actually being done in Congress.
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5 March
A moment to keep forever
I had always asked for an aisle seat or I would have to stand to let my seatmates crab-walk to go to the lavatory, or as in in one of my flights from Seoul to New York, I had to climb onto my seat and step over a snoring giant who I couldn’t wake up.
February, 2017
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26 February
Choking on Chinese charity
Loosely translated and popularized as “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”! in Virgil’s Latin epic “The Aeneid,” the high priest of Troy prophesied the walled city’s eventual destruction with a dire and ominous warning, “Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes” (I fear the Greeks, and those bearing gifts). The prophesy was eventually fulfilled with the giant Trojan horse left outside the high walls …