It took three months before I read an email from a college chum, now a US citizen.  I thought it not urgent for two reasons:  it came from her and the title is Why Is the Philippines Poor? “…Enjoy reading,” begins her forwarded email that turned out to be a chain. The contents are beyond refuting.  [...]

Human interaction plays out differently when one shops hereabouts.  Once, in a department store in Metro Manila, I heard a cashier asking a fellow cashier of the booth where I was lined up if she had 25 centavos.  There was a man she was serving who will not leave until he gets his full change [...]

Mundane things can confuse.  As an unrepentant pack rat, no matter how I keep records of bank accounts with small deposits, chances are I forget these until I race to avoid having them inactive. At the periphery of joint accounts with the husband are my personal accounts of trickling deposits, which the husband gamely increases now [...]

(Second of Two Parts) Where dreams are, nightmares may not be far behind.  Come to Dubai and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) if you must, but know all of what you are in for. Dubai and the whole UAE are saturated with a work force from a recorded total of 202 nationalities competing for jobs.  We know [...]

(First of Two Parts) Being where I am now doesn’t make me much of an authority, really, but it affords me a certain touchdown with some realities on the ground.  Thus, for those who look beyond the horizon and dream of working abroad, specifically in Dubai, hear me, please. If you believe that coming to Dubai would [...]

For the layman, press freedom is the right to access accurate information, with to-the-point details, no more, no less, through news channels that are collectively known as the tri-media ? print, radio, and television. While the Internet had become another news medium, it still needs to prove itself that it’s not just a rung higher than [...]

Timidly, I do admit to reading horoscopes now and then, especially when I get lazy and have time on my hands.  I no longer follow them as closely as I did like, say, twenty years ago.  One tends to outgrow some things, so to speak. You’re bound to meet the love of your life within the [...]

We know that Filipino workers and job-seekers who arrive everyday at the United Arab Emirates (UAE) aren’t here for a lark.  They’re here to earn their keep, send money home to put a child or sibling to college or support dependent parents, and to save. There is no such thing as minimum wage in this country.  [...]

To shop, or not to shop, there is no question.  Whether ‘tis nobler for the spirit to fiddle with one’s pocketbook while the cooked rice burns…  Let’s face it, there’s something elemental about shopping that’s good for angst attacks.  On the female side of the gender divide, anyway, as any female would care to admit [...]

Rome’s famous road that goes by the name of Via Appia (Appian Way) averages only six meters in width.  The main road in the town of Baclayon lined by the old church and some old houses may be of a similar width on the average. Outside Rome, the first few kilometers of the Via Appia are [...]

Away went civility.  The guy ended up giving me a lesson about cars on the phone.  And that’s on top of making me feel like a potential carnapping suspect to boot.  For your information all cars have alarms, he had said.  The last time someone like you called me about my car alarm, my car [...]

An International Red Cross Conference in Stockholm on August 23-30, 1948 was held to extend and systematize the three Geneva conventions’ principles.  Four conventions resulted from this conference: the Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of the Wounded and Sick in Armed Forces in the Field, Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of [...]

After wars and millions of lives lost and ravaged, it seems national leaders tend to take a kinder look at the world and humanity’s inclination to self-destruct, and perhaps concluded, rightly then and rightly so now on hindsight, that there are more civilized ways of undertaking war as a means of self-defense outside of reciprocal [...]

The most interesting and heroic character in Charles Dickens’s “Tale of Two Cities” novel is Sydney Carton, who in the end gave himself up for a supreme sacrifice.  “It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done.  It is a far, far better rest that I go to than [...]

“Eppur si muove,” still the earth moves, Galileo Galilei the Medieval genius was said to have added to his recantation when he faced the Inquisition for the second time in 1632 as a suspect of heresy.  By then he was already a frail and ailing 68-year-old, once and for all forbidden to talk again about [...]

Genius in Hindsight On the home front, Philippine history records the executions of Frs. Mariano Gomez, Jose Burgos and Jacinto Zamora as unjust.  Jose Rizal’s dedication to their memory of his second novel, El Filibusterismo, said it all.  “The Church, by refusing to degrade you, has placed in doubt the crime that has been imputed [...]

Early On “They believe that the execution of those who have been caught in the act of theft or robbery or some crime is more pleasing to the immortal gods but when the supply of such fails they resort to the  execution even of the innocent,” thus wrote Julius Caesar (100-44   BC) in describing the Celts [...]

Back in the early 80s, when my work in a southern city involved a few stints at news coverage, a media colleague dropped by and offered to take me along to the police station.  The police had finally caught a couple of members of a motorcycle-riding gang of snatchers who sowed terror, mostly on women [...]

They are meant to serve as deterrents to crime if not retribution to crimes already perpetrated. Thus is a  prisoner’s will  broken with specific terror-interrogation techniques.  For those who favor them, torture and punishment are regarded as a sacrifice of a few for the sake of the many. So now we know of a place called [...]