While hanging out with fellow writers in a café and talking about a certain controversy that was feasted upon by local radio commentators who took it as yet another opportunity to show off their “hard-hitting” ranting, a…
I was stuck in a traffic jam recently that, according to the report on the car radio, was caused by a big motorcade of a fraternity. The newscaster said that the frat members rode on motorcycles without…
It was sometime during the first weeks of the war in Marawi when I talked about it with my cousin, who had spent some time in the Islamic city as part of his tour of duty when…
Without God,” Fyodor Dostoevsky once said, “everything is possible.” This is not just a reversal of the truism that with God everything is possible. Dostoevsky, a former radical and atheist who later converted to Christianity, was actually…
I woke up to the sound of rain suddenly pounding on the roof, booming thunder and blasts of lightning that caused a short brownout. I grabbed the rechargeable flashlight from the headboard and went out to check…
Just when we thought that we Filipinos have already gotten numbed at even the recent surge of killings as part of the stepped-up Oplan Double Barrel, the second phase of the government’s bloody war on drugs, many…
Faced with the threat of a full-scale military invasion during the postwar years, Chairman Mao Zedong referred to the American imperialism as a “paper tiger,” a bogus superpower that the Chinese communists could easily defeat in their…
For those of us who do not belong to the West, the paradox with nationalism is that it is a foreign idea. It was during the 18th and 19th century in Europe when the idea of a…
The government recently imposed a total ban on smoking in all public places. This national policy follows that city ordinance long implemented in Davao City, one of the strict measures that made then-mayor Rodrigo Duterte popular nationwide.…
As to the present state of the nation, we only have to check the comment section on news articles posted in the social network. In those long threads, where we’d rather stick to our views and throw…
Lawyers occupy a special position in the Philippines. As we are supposed to be a “society of laws,” we always go to lawyers for all sorts of problems. Their opinion is sought on almost every issue, as…
On a wall in my bathroom is a framed map of the streets of Paris. I placed it there to help me remember the names of the streets, the arrondissements or districts, the iconic buildings and the…
