The children, the children

Michael L. Tan - @inquirerdotnet 01/06/2021

It happened one summer, some 60 years ago, when I was in a boat that nearly sank in a freak accident. We were four kids, with three adults — a boatman, an uncle, and my maternal stepgrandmother.…

With Rizal, in exile

Michael L. Tan - @inquirerdotnet 12/30/2020

I’m saving a review of 2020 for next week, although today’s column still takes off from this terribly difficult year, using a rather different approach to reflect on the year with a poem from Jose Rizal, whose…

Online selling, buying

Michael L. Tan - @inquirerdotnet 12/09/2020

Several weeks back, my household helper told me she was leaving her job and returning to her home province to be with her children and help them with the challenges of online classes. When my son found…

‘Long COVID’

Michael L. Tan - @inquirerdotnet 11/18/2020

As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, there is a danger that people will shrug their shoulders and say, “Oh, most people survive anyway.” But illness is illness, and even mild and moderate cases mean lost work days and…

Good grief

Michael L. Tan - @inquirerdotnet 10/28/2020

This year’s All Saint’s Day will be somewhat difficult for many Filipinos who lost loved ones during the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown. This was not necessarily deaths from COVID-19. But because of all the confusion and uncertainty, especially…

1, 2, 3, 1, ¾, ½, 1/3

Michael L. Tan - @inquirerdotnet 10/07/2020

I hope I didn’t trigger an anxiety attack for some parents who are tutoring their children in math. The numbers do represent a pattern, but don’t try to work it out because the sequence was intended to…

Connected learning

Michael L. Tan - @inquirerdotnet 09/16/2020

Many academic institutions, mostly private, have started online classes, and as expected, we’re seeing a lot of “hiccoughs” related to the opening. Last week I wrote about the blood, sweat, and tears surrounding faculty preparation of the…

Vaccines and social solidarity

Michael L. Tan - @inquirerdotnet 08/26/2020

So many false hopes were raised especially because of vaccines being dangled as instant solutions. We saw that recently with President Duterte jumping on an offer from Russia and China to accept their vaccine offers, with the…

Hygiene theater

Michael L. Tan - @inquirerdotnet 08/12/2020

I’ve been sprayed with Lysol and doused with colloidal silver solution, both times by well-meaning friends explaining that their ablutions were done to protect me, and themselves, from the coronavirus. Last July 27, The Atlantic, an American…

The future of medical consultations

Michael L. Tan - @inquirerdotnet 07/24/2020

I’m going to do a bit of a personal medical narrative here, a fancy term for stories about health and illnesses. We use a lot of that in medical anthropology and process the narratives to advise physicians,…

Care fatigue

Michael L. Tan - @inquirerdotnet 07/10/2020

  Last Wednesday I started to talk about the surge in COVID-19 cases and why contact tracing is so important, not just tracing how infections started and spread but also publicizing the findings, without mentioning names of…

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