Sun.Star opinion column
Bottoms up, or what’s outrageously over the top?
Monday, May 5th, 2008Shit hits the fan when fact proves stranger than fiction. No end to the utterly unthinkable, certainly. Hang on, handy as always is the stunt of suspending disbelief.About the lower depths some men often descend into, here’s a reprint of my regular co…
Who in the world are we?
Wednesday, April 30th, 2008We’re all alone, avers a song. But now that connectivity is just at the tip of our fingertips in this Age of the Internet, isolation takes a common and ironic turn.Along that line goes the gist of one of my recent columns “So To Speak” in the op-ed pag…
Past food
Saturday, April 26th, 2008Unappetizing, what’s often up in the air lately. Even the so-called land of plenty is getting jittery, with two major American bulk retailers–Sam’s Club and Costco–reportedly “rationing the sale of large bags of rice to consumers amid a growing globa…
Forked tongues and the lip-smacking Cebuano language
Friday, April 11th, 2008ON THE MATTER of my mother tongue, there’s no ifs and buts. Either I wag it with the earnestness of the dispossesed rabid against the insidious infestation of forgetting, a betrayal against my birthright. Or, be struck mute by the blinding flash and ha…
why clowns ought to cry
Sunday, October 21st, 2007IT’S A WAIL OF A TIME for the usual sob stories that have become the stuff of headlines, and that’s enough to know why a clown’s job is herculean more than ever. With the Glorietta blast recently reminding us, albeit rudely, of the forthcoming cemetery…
surge of the slowpoke: take three
Tuesday, October 2nd, 2007PROCRASTINATION IS A COUNTRY where I’m a constant inhabitant. That explains the laggardly pace of this blog lately, I concede. Allow me to cram and make up for the delay by posting the last three of my opinions columns in the op-ed pages of Sun.Star Ce…
why we need a kick in the head
Thursday, September 13th, 2007PROGRESS DOESN’T ALWAYS pave the way for a smooth-sailing life. Road congestion continues to be the bane fo urban living. Regarding this problem, here’s a reprint of my opinion column in the op-ed page of Sun.Star Cebu (4th of September, 2007):All the …
awry in uniform
Tuesday, September 4th, 2007GUESS WHO’S ALWAYS getting bad press apart from the craven crop of politicians? Policemen, that’s who. As much as one yearns for more exceptions to the rule of misdemeanors and maladroit conduct, there’s just no stopping the rain of rotten tomatoes. He…
on their feet
Sunday, August 19th, 2007WHO SAYS INCARCERATION is a drudge? Not the dancing prisoners of Cebu who recently went out in the open with their terpsichorean skills and caught the world’s eyes.Beyond the crowd-pleasing choreography, my opinion column in Sun.Star Cebu (August 14, …
to erase the stain of badness from their badges
Thursday, August 9th, 2007IF THERE’S SOMEBODY in dire need to possess congeniality to inspire our confidence, it’s none other than the police. Here’s a reprint of my recent opinion column in the op-ed page of Sun.Star Cebu (July 31, 2007):Too true to be goodPerhaps we can love …
magnified madness
Monday, July 30th, 2007A SECURITY GUARD is dependable as long as he stays alert where he is supposed to be, vigilant at any given time but at a safe distance . Something’s iffy, however, when notions of security come masked in the face of paranoia. About the anti-terrorism l…
aren’t we there yet?
Saturday, July 21st, 2007CAN’T TEACH old dogs new tricks, so it’s said. Same thing, ho-hum, holds ever true for one of the Philippine’s most doggone institution: the Commission on Elections (Comelec).Hereunder is a reprint of my latest opinion column in Sun.Star Cebu (July 18,…
beyond grief, in the light of the living
Wednesday, July 11th, 2007IN THE END, death is going to be democratic while sweeping all of us off our feet.Coming to grips with mortality has been no sweat with the recent news about a dear friend’s tragic end. Devastated, utterly am. But death, ironically, also breeds and spu…
tomas the toughie
Sunday, July 8th, 2007FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña is a tough act to shrug off. By dint of any demeanor worthy of either a panegyric or caricature, he’s been looming large in the Cebuano consciousness. Not to be trifled, too, is his leadership ski…
wherever, whatever
Friday, June 22nd, 2007APART FROM the heart, home will always be where the gut is. And purgatory is everywhere, yes. Here’s a reprint of my recent opinion column in Sun.Star Cebu (12 June 2007) :Besides the chicken that crossed the roadEasy goes the green light for envy en r…
consciousness like continents
Thursday, June 14th, 2007TO RECLAIM SPACE is to reassert one’s place, according to poet Mary Oliver, “in the family of things.” After a month of taking a detour from my comfort zone into the uncertainty of an alien landscape, what a relief to return where mind and heart limbe…
leavetaking, and the love of friends
Wednesday, June 13th, 2007“IN THE DEW of little things, the heart finds its morning.” And I, born once upon a high noon in August under a lion’s sign, roar amen.We’ll meet again–all of you in whom I have taken root–in yet another sunrise soon.* * *IT’S BEEN A MONTH since I le…
who deserves the evil eye?
Saturday, April 21st, 2007HARD TO FACE a problem, indeed, when the problem is a politician’s face in a prohibited campaign poster. In Cebu, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) might as well be seeing ghosts while rolling its eyeballs at the election litter all over. Hair-rais…
banishing the boars
Wednesday, April 4th, 2007NO LESS THAN divine guidance. That’s devoutly to be wished for us voters while many politicians go hell-bent to sweep us off our feet with their devil-may-care compulsion for the nation’s cruxifixion. Here’s my Lenten-themed column in the opinion page …
gospel truth beyond the garbage
Wednesday, April 4th, 2007ALL IT TAKES for a hellish experience in the heat of the Lenten season is to shiver through the spine while listening to the litter in the air stirred up by the elocution contest among election-starved candidates. Hear how they hope for us to believe t…
so what else is new?
Tuesday, January 30th, 2007THERE’S NOTHING like elections, more so in the Philippines, to brew a mixed-up slop of hope and cynicism. Nothing like the campaigns, too, to make eyeballs roll as we become witness to a circus of political antics that unravel like a rerun of a primeti…
In Search Of The City’s Soul
Monday, November 20th, 2006TO MAKE Cebu worth the tourists’ winks, those calling the shot for the metro have been at sixes and sevens about hosting the forthcoming Asean Summit. But there’s more than meets the eye, or so fancies my recent column in the Opinion Page of Sun.Star C…
Tempt Me
Friday, April 7th, 2006(In time for Lent, here’s a reprint of my latest column from the opinion page of Sun.Star Cebu)UPTOWN, JUST a bell’s ring and a sermon away from the Sacred Heart Church and the Iglesia ni Cristo, is a nightspot downright definite about its business. …
Who’s Man Enough To Shut Up?
Saturday, April 1st, 2006HYPOCRISY and the temerity to flaunt one’s impoverished imagination– which the Cebu City Council has been wearing on its sleeves lately– got me riled up in my column at the opinion page of Sun.Star Cebu (28th of March, 2006). Read on:Stand Up and Del…
Where Sorrow Wears a Smiley
Monday, February 20th, 2006WHAT MAKES US TICK as a people may make some of us feel sick. So goes the crux of my column tomorrow in Sun.Star Cebu: It’s as awry as a sore thumb sticking out, but mirth in the face of misery is one peculiarity so patently Pinoy. Absurd enough, true,…
No Small Pleasure
Monday, January 30th, 2006A LITTLE GOES a long, long way. So attests a song, though getting the knockout break is often as farfetched as fists raised at the moon. Talk about the ongoing euphoria over Pacman’s punches—to the tune of more than two million dollars— and abjec…
Looking Back: The Best Filipino Film of 2005
Wednesday, January 18th, 2006INDIE PAVES THE WAY. As big studios continue to raise a stinker, squirting puss at the eyes of Filipino filmbuffs, upcoming independent artists are thumbing down their noses at the dinosaurs in the movie industry. Look how the past three years saw inde…