PARADOXICAL

 Now Trending:

People in Indonesia are rioting -- apparently over corruption scandals.

A lot of netizens are hopping on to the Google Gemini trend of generating a computer-generated image of oneself as a 3D statue of sorts.

Joel Vilanueva's over-the-top speech in the Senate is trending because, as someone said, it resembles a workshop at the Ogie Diaz School of Acting, complete with blocking and 'garalgal' (raspy) vocals.

Over 2,000 people died in a magnitude 6 earthquake in Afghanistan, with the Taliban's no-skin contact rule for women a big obstacle in rescue operation. 

Japan’s Prince Hisahito is the first male member of the imperial family to come of age in four decades — and he might also be the last.

Two young teenage boys were swept away by rampaging waters in a dam in Sitio Pangulo, Carangian, Tarlac City, but were found in a cave alive after more than a day of intensive search operations.

 A funicular in Portugal crashed, killing scores of passengers.

Nepo kids --  from nepotism, the excessively rich kids of powerful and dirty-rich political dynasties

a high-rise in Gaza City was bombed by Israel's military. 

Nearly 40% of Filipino adults are classified as obese, driven by a combination of genetic, environmental, cultural, and socioeconomic factors, according to health experts citing recent findings.

‎A man named Charlie Kirk was shot dead while speaking at an event in a university. Who the heck is he? Never heard of this man despite myself and the circles I frequent online. (Wait, what circles?) He turns out to be "an American right-wing political activist, author, and media personality." The gunman was yet to be identified. The killing sends the message that you could get killed by someone if you hold an opinion different from anyone. 

This murder case sharply divided people, based on the comments, with young people who proudly consider themselves "woke"...not exactly celebrating the death but refusing to lament it like Kirk's fellow conservatives do for the reason that Kirk's views oppose their own take on various matters of great concern.  (Not knowing him at all, I can't tell whether I agree with the things he said that so offended his assailant and ensuing social media critics and haters.) 

Now, Kirk, who is unknown outside the US is now world-famous and an instant Christian martyr.

Gen-Z protesters reportedly set the Nepalese Parliament on fire due to a number of reasons: a ban on social media and allegations of corruption among them. 

Regime changed happened overnight in Nepal, and Japan, France, Indonesia. Who's next?

North Korea reportedly executed (!) 30 officials in purge over flood response, a report said. 

Israel attacked residential buildings in Qatar.

I often encountered a strange word among young Filipino: paldo, paldong-paldo. It is supposed to mean  bale or a large bundle. In slang, "paldo" is "a huge amount of money." Example: Paldong-paldo ka sa OT pay ha! So it is synonymous to tiba-tiba. 

A tree kangaroo thought lost for nearly a century just popped up in New Guinea and the world is buzzing. Meet the Wondiwoi tree kangaroo a species last officially seen in 1928 that somehow survived ninety years off the radar. Yes it really exists and yes it is as incredible as it sounds.

posted by Resty Odon  # 1:45 AM 0 Comments

 "The Bomber Mafia" (Malcolm Gladwell): A Challenging Meditation on the Moral Dilemma of Staging Wars

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:55 PM 0 Comments

TIMELINE: Man's Conception of God

According to Reza Aslan, the origin of the religious impulse is “the result of something [very] primal and difficult to explain: our ingrained intuitive, and wholly experiential belief that we are... embodied souls.” Aslan thus rejects the idea by philosophers and psychologists (Edward Burnett Tylor, Max Müller, Émile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, and Carl G. Jung) that religion is a product of evolution or, say, natural selection due to its inherent benefits (in fact, religion is a constant source of division and war, he points out), and the idea (propounded by Justin Barrett) that religion is merely a "neurological phenomenon" -- a result of the kind of nervous system we have developed. 

To sum up in broad strokes, these are what Aslan observes to be the major developments in the history of how we humans perceive God:

- Belief in the soul

- Worship of ancestors

- Creation of spirits

- Formation of gods and pantheons

- Construction of temples and shrines

- Establishment of myths and rituals

- Monotheism (the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and most especially, Islam)

- Ditheism

- Trinitarianism (Christianity and Catholicism)

- Pantheism

Let me summarize one reviewer's (Randy Rosenthal) attempt at summarizing these developments in some detail:

- 176 thousand years ago - Neanderthal caves with circular stone altars 

- Around 40 thousand years ago - mythogramic caves in which our earliest ancestors made paintings that can be considered scripture. They initially painted mysterious dots, followed by palm prints, animals, 

- Around 18000 BCE - the first depiction of a god — The Lord of Beasts

- At the end of the last Ice Age, between 14 thousand and 12 thousand years ago  - “the Temple of Eden,” Göbekli Tepe was built, a temple complex on a hilltop near Urfa, in modern Turkey (at least six thousand years before Stonehenge, and seven thousand before the first Egyptian pyramid)

- Devotional sites such as the Göbekli Tepe predate the development of agriculture and the birth of civilization, indicating that the transition from the Paleolithic to the Neolithic era was due to the birth of organized religion instead of being due to agriculture.

- Around 8000 BCE - emergence of manism, the ancestor worship  

- Birth of polytheism in Mesopotamian Sumer. 

- Around 4500 BCE - The invention of writing seems to have occurred in Sumerian city of Uruk , and by 2600 BCE humans could write down what gods were like for the first time; the gods (ilu) the Sumerians described were quite human-like

- The Mesopotamians eventually worshipped a pantheon of more than three thousand deities, with idols for each. 

- Similar developments occurred in Egypt, India, and Greece, where gods were always described in human terms. They fought over petty jealousies, had family problems, displayed good and bad moods, and “could be all-knowing or just plain stupid.”

- Some of these religious systems can be described as monolatry, the worship of one god with acknowledgment that many other gods exist. 

- Yet the dominant form of spiritual expression under ancient monarchies was henotheism, the belief that “one all-powerful, all-encompassing ‘High God’ who acted as the chief deity over a pantheon of lower gods who were equally worthy of worship.” 

- Around 1353 BCE - Monotheism, “the sole worship of one god and the negation of all other gods,” for the first time occurred Egypt, when Akhenaten raised the sun god Aten to the status of sole god. To enforce his monotheistic religion, Akhenaten released “nothing short of a pogrom against the gods of Egypt,” with armies marching from city to city, smashing the idols of other gods, and even erasing their names from documents. Yet when Akhenaten died, his monotheistic movement died with him. 

- Sometime between 1500 and 500 BCE (Aslan settles on 1100 BCE) - an Iranian priest named Zarathustra Spitama became the world’s first prophet when he received revelations from Ahura Mazda, a term that means “the Wise Lord,” but refers to a god with no name, since he was the sole god of the universe. Zarathustra was the first to promote a dualistic, heaven-and-hell theology, and to reduce other divinities to “angels” and “demons.” Yet the monotheism of Zoroastrianism was short lived. It was revived in the sixth century BCE, but... 

- 6th century BCE - the magi of Cyrus the Great transformed the one god into two — one good and one evil.

- around 1200 BCE - The Israelites had arrived on the scene, and the early Hebrews incorrigibly worshipped other gods, such as Baal and the goddesses Asherah, Anat, and Astarte. These are clan members of El, the chief god of the Canaanite pantheon, who “was often depicted as a bull or calf.” 

- The Bible uses several names to refer to God, the main two being Elohim, which, despite being a plural form, is usually translated simply as “God,” and YHWH, which is traditionally read as Adonai and translated as “LORD.” In Genesis 4:1, Eve says she has “gained a male child with the help of YHWH,” [1] implying that the name was known from the beginning. But officially, Yahweh first revealed his name to Moses in Exodus 3:15, claiming he was the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to whom he was known as El Shadday. Most believers understand these different names refer to the same god. There are two possible places in the Bible, however, where it appears Yahweh is not only distinct from Elohim, but also inferior to him: Psalm 82 and Deuteronomy 32:7-9. 

- Biblical patriarchs [Noah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob] did not worship a Midianite desert deity called Yahweh. They worshipped an altogether different god — a Canaanite deity they knew as El.”  (plural: Elohim)

- The story of how monotheism — after centuries of failure and rejection — finally and permanently took root in human spirituality begins when the god of Abraham, El, and the god of Moses, Yahweh, gradually merged to become the sole, singular deity that we now know as God.

- True monotheism (monotheism as we know it) only solidified during the Babylonian Exile. Perhaps surprisingly, the first expression of unambiguous monotheism in the Bible occurs in Isaiah 44:6, from the second part of the Book of Isaiah, otherwise known as Deutero-Isaiah, which was composed after the fall of Jerusalem, in 587 BCE. Here Yahweh declares, “I am the first and the last; besides me there are no gods.” It’s not that he is greatest among gods, but there are no other gods. Finally, after thousands of years and two misfires, we have true monotheism. 

- But about five hundred years later, this extraordinary development in the history of religion was “overturned […] by an upstart sect of apocalyptic Jews calling themselves Christians.” 

- With the idea of Jesus being God made flesh, early Christians had to account for some pretty tricky theology. How can God be both Jesus and God? Moreover, how can Yahweh — the jealous deity who gleefully calls for the slaughter of anyone who fails to worship him — be the same God of love and forgiveness who Jesus calls Father? 

- Around the time the Gospel of John was being written, 100 CE, Marcion proposed a two-god theory known as ditheism. There must be two gods: the cruel creator God of the Hebrew Bible known as Yahweh, and the loving, merciful God who has always existed but revealed himself to the world for the first time in the form of Jesus the Christ. 

- Ditheism was eventually rejected in favor of Trinitarianism, and God became Three. Tertullian coined the word Trinity, and the Fathers of the Church clarified the matter: God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, each of which existed at the beginning of time and share the same measure of divinity. 

- In seventh century Arabia, a 40-year-old shepherd turned merchant turned prophet named Muhammad received revelations from a god he called Allah, the only ancient Arabian god who seems to have never been represented by an idol. Muhammad identified this god with Yahweh and Elohim, saying it was really Allah all along. He devoted the rest of his life to replacing Zoroastrian dualism and Christian trinitarianism with the “Jewish view of God as One,” thereby making Islam the culmination of monotheism. 

- The rise of the Sufis and their pantheistic conception of God: interpenetrating the universe, God is all, and all is God. 

- Conclusion: since we project our humanity onto God, we are God. Each one of us.

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:48 PM 0 Comments

Reviewing God

Is the God you believe in really God, or just the kind of God you want, just the image of your own mind's creation -- in psychological terms, just your pathetic projection of your own weaknesses?

The nerve of this guy to ask, but what a wonderful question.

Unfortunately for the author, US academic and writer Reza Aslan, I have encountered such effrontery before. In a retreat talk or something of that sort, I think, by then Fr. Chito Tagle or some other noted cleric, I learned that it is a question originally posed by one daring philosopher, Ludwig Feuerbach. It was he who first needled believers by claiming that the God they worshipped was just a projection of their inmost longings (as for power, praise, etc.). Good thing Aslan noted it at the outset, getting it out of the way.

But it is in supporting his claim using world history that Aslan's book is highly engaging as to be unputdownable.

The first time I've read a survey of the world's faiths or religions, it was then Pope John Paul II's interview transcript-turned-book "Crossing the Threshold of Hope." But Aslan's book is the first of its kind I have encountered in which the history of man's predisposition to believe in a soul, spiritual word, a god, or an afterlife is traced. Even for a Harvard professor, Aslan's scholarly scope is simply breathtaking: from pre-Homo sapiens stage to the various stages in which humans attempted for the first time to do paintings, perform rituals, worship idols, and build temples until these beliefs and practices evolved into a belief in one God and the practices of various religions today.

Weaving together threads from archeology, history, anthropology, philosophy, psychology, neurology, and the arts, it is a fascinating discussion, to say the least. It is so absorbing that I had to pore through even the endnotes in reduced font size until I got dizzy and had a mild headache.

To sum up in broad strokes, these are what Aslan observes to be the major developments in the history of how we humans perceive God:

- Belief in the soul
- Worship of ancestors
- Creation of spirits
- Formation of gods and pantheons
- Construction of temples and shrines
- Establishment of myths and rituals
- Monotheism (the Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and most especially, Islam)
- Ditheism
- Trinitarianism (Christianity and Catholicism)
- Pantheism

Aslan ends his discussion by concluding that his exercise in tracing such a history of the world's religions paralleled his own spiritual journey, and that is why he ends up discussing pantheism as the belief he most subscribes to now, the belief that God is in everything (which is, incidentally, something I have heard before). From being a Christian, then Muslim, he discussed how he ended up choosing to believe in pantheism (the belief that God is in everything) instead, because, if I am reading him right, it is the one belief that does not envision God as something man-made but philosophically speaking, a God that is not formed in the image and likeness of man but the reverse: God as He is, whatever it is He wills to be.

Of course, this reader does not share such a controversial conclusion ("Everything is God." "You and I are God." Me: Of course not!). In fact, as a believer of Christianity as a religion that is a divine revelation of truth, not at all a human creation (but one that requires the agency of human cooperation), I find it laughable though not surprising because it follows a logical train of thought.

In my own observation, a lot of religions claim to have come from divine revelation via a chosen messenger: we may refer to how the Muslims, Mormons, and Iglesia ni Kristo, for example, recall their origin story. Can you argue with people's version of such accounts? You can't. I won't even try. To the uninitiated, it's probably a matter of choosing which messenger to believe.

In any case, whatever your religious inclination is, reading Aslan's academic take on the matter is a highly rewarding experience and even helpful in your own spiritual journey. Personally, in the final analysis, the book strikes me as a scientific and historical account of how man has searched for God and developed its primitive conceptions of god (or more accurately, assorted idols, from Ashtoreth to Zeus) through a length of time that seems to be an entire geological age in scope ("hundreds of thousands of years"), until the one true God with a capital G finally said enough, entered history through Jesus Christ, and revealed his true nature as a triune God.

(Grateful acknowledgment: Joey Ferrer)

posted by Resty Odon  # 2:51 AM 0 Comments

 Mr. Multiple

In a given department/unit/section/division of a local government, there are so many tasks that are hidden, that is to say, unknown to most people, particularly the public at large. 

Because of regular directives, orders, advisories, circulars, and communication letters of that sort from the President through the Department of the Interior and Local Government or some other agency that acts as an overseer, every office is required, from time to time, to implement certain things at the workplace. That's how powerful a sitting president is.

To name just a few of these 'orders'... There is a "no breaktime" policy (i.e., employees can't deny service to a client during lunch time and snack breaks -- someone else needs to be available in case an employee is on official break. Every government employee is required to wear a visible ID. Every employee must attend the flag ceremony every Monday, and in the case of the current dispensation, wear Filipiniana or ASEAN clothes as part of the dress code. All employees with a plantilla position ('permanent employee') must submit a SALN (Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth) annually and an IPCR (Individual Performance Review) quarterly or so. I am just getting started.

I don't know with other LGUs and government agencies, but I have found local government work to be almost like missionary work. There is an element of sacrifice, rules to be followed emanating from a hierarchy of officers, a sense of order and discipline, evangelistic zeal, pursuit of ideals (albeit in the name of material and socioeconomic progress), and the like. 

The policies I have observed to have been added lately for each department are the following: requirements to have a GAD (gender and development) focal person, a mini-budget officer, a mini-planning officer, a point person who needs to complete an ICS (Incident Command System) course, a safety officer, an energy savings focal person, a procurement officer, and in the case of our LGU, a Data Management System (DMS) personnel, an ISO focal person, someone who answers Facebook Messenger and comments on a given time frame, a newsletter circulation manager, and a website administrator.

Any head of a department or section would have hypertension just imagining oneself doing everything by one's lonesome. I haven't even mentioned the meetings an LGU head needs to attend as member of a committee, task force, council, or special body each day or per week. Clearly, one needs a lot of helping hands. To prevent the potential of karoshi (go look up what it means) and save on overhead, it would be best to hire someone who is multitalented and if possible has the superhuman capacity to multitask -- preferably at minimum expense.

When Don approached me one day to ask if he could possibly transfer to my section, he was downcast for a certain reason. While listening to his story, I was also bargaining with him as to whether he was willing to perform this and that task that no one else was willing to take on at the time due to lack of skills or being assigned an already optimum workload. He said yes to all the tasks mentioned. 

Soon, he was taking care of the procurement process. Then he was given the access to DMS messages. Then he took over the website updating and administration. One day, he became a safety officer. And what impressed me was when he was assigned to take up the difficult Incident Command System (ICS) course, and finished all four levels! 

What's more, he was even willing to substitute for someone or be an emergency back-up guy if I lacked a photographer, reporter, and layout artist at a given time, or a proxy for an important meeting or seminar. 

For proving to be such a versatile worker, we his officemates have taken to calling him Mr. Multiple (for multiple intelligence), especially since, on top of everything, he sings well too, and he's into various sports, particularly basketball, judo, and lately, arm wrestling.

He's not perfect -- he has Achilles' heels, of course, but who is perfect?

With his transfer to DepEd, I have lost a key workforce member. But I try to be happy for him. After all, everyone needs to look for greener pastures as one does not get any younger with the marching of the years. 

One thing I am pretty sure, though, is that he's learned a whole lot from his time with us in the LGU because he bravely took on everything put on his shoulder. I just hope he'll be able to put them into good use.

Now I wonder where I would find the most fitting person -- or multitude of personnel -- for the various tasks he just left behind. I figure it would be like looking for that Hindu god with multiple arms. 

posted by Resty Odon  # 1:50 AM 0 Comments

Misadventures of a Hesitant Contest Judge

(My funny and exasperating adventure as a judge of assorted contests)

For a few number of times, I ran into the 'misfortune' of being asked to judge in a contest. I have been a judge of a poster-making tilt, cutest baby, tourism brochure-making match, poetry contest, songwriting competition, and even cook-off (note the effort I made in looking for synonyms). The organizers could not have chosen a worse person for these tasks.

First of all, even though I love words and I am a writer by profession, I don't have the luxury of time to do poems and much less read through them in rapid succession. Although I can appreciate a poem and I have had sophomoric attempts at writing poems, poetry for me is something best made and appreciated in the quietude of isolation and retreat, much like meditating on the day's gospel readings. I would much prefer to read and write essays--and save for moments of mental block, I can do so at the drop of a hat, so I guess I wasn't cut out to be a poet.

And while I love music of all kinds, I have never attempted to create music of my own. I have no experience waking up from a dream hearing beautiful melodies or writing a song or composing a tune.

I am also into art and art appreciation, but I cringe at the idea of calling myself an artist, knowing there are so many out there who actually live and breathe art, whose bread and butter is art.

As for cooking, I am oftentimes a disaster in the kitchen, but I do appreciate the finer things in life like a perfectly cooked dish, be it in private kitchens or in restaurants.

So to judge these things I am not even good at, or I am not the proper authority in, is a laughable idea to me. Writers, for one, are like doctors -- they too have specializations.

Secondly, while I love reading top 10 lists of anything, I am someone who hates the mere idea of ranking artworks of any kind. I understand that the whole point of judging is to uphold certain standards -- in fact, the highest standards. But in cases where the parameters or set of criteria are too general for comfort, like the most popular ones on TV ("Britain's Got Talent," "American Idol," etc.)? Sorry, but no go.

...For how can anyone choose between apples and oranges? In the case of competitions involving poems and songs of all sorts, I feel so uncomfortable with the very idea of pitting, say, a haiku against a full-blown epic poem, or preferring a rap music composition to a mere jingle, say, or a ballad. The whole idea is crazy to me! Judging in this context will twist me mentally, philosophically into a pretzel.

But even with much sulking, I did judge the poems and songs anyway, and for this task to work, I forced myself to relish each piece, be it a poem or a song, so that I could find each of their merits, wherever those may be hiding.

True enough, in case of the poem entries, while being extremely pressed for time, I had to read -- carefully -- through not 10, not 20, and not even 30, but a grand total of 95 poems! It was a crazy time managing my emotions while calm-and-collectedly appreciating each work.

There were very short poems, there were longish poems, there were indeed haikus, a couple of sonnets, and what have you's. There were poems I understood easily and there were poems that I had to read repeatedly to make sense of them until I went crazy. There were works that emerged to catch my attention, works that made me shed a tear or two, and works that offended me in many ways: due to pointlessness, incoherence, inaccuracy, ungrammaticality, faulty word choice, faulty punctuation marks, etc. Many entries are quite prosaic, too direct, too literal -- all anathema to art and literature and most especially to poetry. One verged laughably on being an essay masquerading as a poem because of the arrangement of text.

Most works are predictably a paean or "praise release" for our town in general and for the current dispensation -- which is well-deserved, just to be clear. So the entries that caught my attention the most are those that that did it nicely anyway and those that went to another direction by taking up other less expected subjects and themes or those that went for other surprising angles while dealing with the same pedestrian theme.

Among those that are different, at least one poem focused solely on native delicacies, another chose to highlight a local school, another one dwelt on a recent viral controversy, and another turned the spotlight on a giant statue. A favorite is a poem giving a rundown of the town's barangays -- who could have thought? Too bad it didn't deliver as a whole.

Aside from paeans, there was a pledge, there's the usual acrostic type, which is, to be frank, corny, and there was a billet doux (love letter).

Never have I once imagined that these unnoticed everyday subjects would be the focus of poems in this town someday. Apart from the town of Bayambang per se, there are pieces that include an historical sweep, a focus on a significant episode now called SingKapital, the town's lady mayor, the Christmas display called Paskuhan sa Bayambang, the much-overlooked Agno River, and even the LGU's development projects -- who would have thought?

These works are thus unprecedented in that they are the very first ones, to my knowledge, to honor and memorialize in verse the town in this manner when having a dismissive 'small-town' attitude toward it is a lot easier and in fact has been normalized since its founding.

Collected together, these poems are unanimous in their praise of the speedy changes that the town has been going through, matching the unprecedented development of the town since 1614.

"As Bayambang Breathes" captured my attention the most because it trains the spotlight on the typical day in the life of the town in such a skillful way, a unique strategy among the submissions.

As for the song entries, it's the same dilemma all over again. I had to contend with comparing advertisement jingles with ballads, anthems with folk music, and so on.

The cutest baby contest is, as you can imagine, the most challenging to be in, because all babies are, of course, inherently cute.

(N.B.: Don't get me wrong. I fully support these competitions that promote artists and creators of all kinds. And I must credit the creative dynamo behind these endeavors who has been relentless in pushing for this kind of competitions as part of the annual Tourism Week/Month celebrations. Were it not for his conduct of the three Anlong poetry competitions under his wing, the hidden talents that exist right under our noses would have remained hidden forever. I likewise thank our leader-benefactors for giving the greenlight and approving the funding to worthy endeavors such as this. Furthermore, judging is not a walk in the park, so I am thankful for anyone willing to say yes to invites. And being invited is indirectly an irresistible honor -- who doesn't want it?)

But having said all these, please don't repeat the same mistake of asking me to judge anything with such a broad scope -- and in rush mode too. Understand that it is pure torture to me. I don't know how esteemed judges survive the ordeal, but I am especially distressed whenever I find a piece of work to be singularly worthy of acclamation only to see it lose because I don't share the aesthetic philosophy or professional views of fellow judges, or that the work belongs to another realm of interpretation or mode of appreciation. I have a soft spot for 'losers', especially for uniquely but unconventionally talented underdogs losing out to pros like what I have repeatedly witnessed in "American Idol," "Tawag ng Tanghalan," and other singing competitions. (I don't know why I still watch these shows whenever I can despite the sure heartbreak they'd bring of watching wonderful talents feeling like they were also-rans just because they didn't win the first prize.)

Another thing is that all art is subjective, so I fully expect other judges to have judgments entirely different from the ones I hold. Which was exactly what happened in some contests in which I was a judge: the impasse created by different judges choosing surprisingly different set of winners had to be resolved on the spot in creative ways, or else the contest would be one big fail. And if I have learned anything from the history of art... art is like fashion. To potentially misquote Oscar Wilde, "Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months." In other words, man's definition of art, poetry, literature, beauty is simply unreliable, even whimsical, so who am I judge? Get someone like Simon Cowell instead, please.

Suddenly, Korean or Shine Muscat grapes -- green, large, shiny, sweet, and looking like either a gemstone or a plastic toy grape -- suddenly flooded the market. But I prefer Moon Drop grapes or Sweet Sapphire grapes, which is equally pricey.

posted by Resty Odon  # 6:53 PM 0 Comments

Yet Another Month-Ender (Notes to Self for August 2025)

Crime Scene: Wishing Everything Was a Hoax Instead

In August, there were too many viral things going on at a fast clip that I couldn't keep up. What I managed to catch were of paltry amount, but they caught my attention because they were the most unusual.

First off, August appeared to be a month infested with unusual crime incidents.

- My townmates were totally in sleuthing Marites mode when we heard this: A very much married policeman residing in San Carlos City, Pangasinan, shot dead a woman who was from Mindanao but a rad tech in Taguig, and dumped her body along the road in Sitio Pocdol, Brgy. Bani, our town. Police investigation revealed that the two had a romantic relationship (even though the latter had a boyfriend, a seaman) and the man owed the woman money and had a spat while traveling from Manila to the north. It's a strange case, needless to say, for why would a law enforcer in an illicit amorous relationship with a woman he owed money to (who was also in a relationship) be driven to such a heinous act, while leaving enough evidence. Anyway, we congratulated the local police for solving the crime at all, and with such swiftness too.

- At least three incidents involved a murder in DepEd premises. (1). An 18-year-old boy shot a 15-year-old high school girl in Nueva Ecija right inside her classroom and shot himself as well. The girl was reportedly his ex. (2). Then in Lanao del Sur, a student killed his teacher over a failing grade. Imagine that. All of us must have had an experience of teachers giving us a grade we didn't expect, but killing the teacher? This is obviously an historic first. (3). Got tired of unusual crime at this point, so I am quoting a Philstar account verbatim: "Gunmen killed an Islamic school teacher in an ambush in Barangay Inug-ug in Pikit, Cotabato on Wednesday afternoon – exactly two weeks after two of his students were killed in a similar attack in the same area."

- Ibajay, Aklan vice-mayor was shot dead by a councilor right inside the Sangguniang Bayan Hall. This is the second time this month, I think, that a local official would be murdered at gunpoint. (I failed to take note of an earlier incident.)

- A 7-year-old girl from Asingan, Pangasinan who had been missing for days was found lifeless on a Dagupan City beach, and whatever the reason was, it's totally beyond words that there are deranged adults who are capable of murdering an innocent child with so much ahead of her.

- San Simon, Pampanga's mayor was reportedly caught red-handed accepting a bribe of P80 million.

- A DPWH engineer was arrested after he was caught bribing Batangas Congressman Leandro Leviste with P3-million in cash.

- There were reports of mass shootings again in the US of A, with at least two pupils shot dead. The saddest part is that the tragic thing happened in a Catholic school in Minneapolis while the kids were prayerfully participating in the middle of the mass held as school opener. You'd think this only happens in places where Islamic fundamentalist hold sway like Afghanistan or Nigeria, but no.

***

Other Viral News

- Gruesome viral hoax: A post about an orca (killer whale) scarfing down its female trainer alive because she had menstruation went viral, but it thankfully turned out to be a hoax.

- In another viral heartbreaking news: An OFW died in a bus of a heart attack on her way home after many years. This is an incident rich in novel-strength back story and epilogues.

- A church in Jimenez, Misamis Occidental was closed after it was allegedly desecrated by a vlogger who reportedly spat into a water font, though the vlogger publicly denied it.

Disasters (Both Man-Made and Natural)

- Two girls died in a motorcycle accident, and their male driver killed himself after being blamed for it.

- Wildfires ate up villages in Portugal as well, and near Los Angeles City once again, while flooding of the terrible kind killed hundreds in Pakistan and wiped out swaths of scenic rural villages in China.

- My worst fear while walking alongside Makati's high-rises because it happened to other unfortunate pedestrians before: Falling concrete debris from a condo in Tomas Morato, QC, left two young students critically injured. A boy died later.

- A bridge under construction over the Yellow River in China collapsed, killing at least a dozen construction workers.

- An apocalyptic dust storm wreaked havoc in Nevada, USA, a desert region where Las Vegas City is found. Among the things it destroyed is the so-called "Orgy Dome" in the Burning Man attraction at Block Rock City, Nevada.

- The month closed with unprecedented flash floods across Quezon City. Mahar Mangahas said the unusually high volume of the rainfall was the cause, and it was a lot higher than Ondoy.

- Around 40 students practicing for a dance when a stage canopy suddenly collapsed at Peñaranda Park in Legazpi City, Albay, injuring at least six of the students.

***

Funny/Laughable/Ridiculous

- Funny: A residential CCTV footage showed the top part of a wooden double decker bed collapsing on top of the lower deck, bringing two men crashing on top of another man. The two crashing men turned out to be brothers, quashing wide suspicion that they were having you-know-what while another guy was right under them.

- Senator Erwin Tulfo was loudly berated by Greenhills, San Juan matrons after he allegedly made false claims about the encroachment of a nearby development, a high-rise. One irate lady uttered cusswords (muted in the video), and another woman, a barangay kagawad (council member) even mentioned suing him for libel. The scene smacked of schadenfreude on our part, and I thought I was the only one ending up thinking, "Erwin Tulfo lives in (super-exclusive) Wack-Wack?!?" But apparently not!

Word Watch: Two colloquial words seem to have become common lately -- daks and juts -- apparently from the Visayan words dako for big and dyutay for small, and often used in a vulgar manner to refer to the size of a man's phallus. So, of all the Visayan words that would diffuse naturally into the Tagalog language, it would have to be these two.

- I know that goto, kikiam, and miswa are words that have Chinese origin -- no surprise there. In fact, it's obvious. But hikaw, bilao, susi, hukbo, and ginto? Was I surprised! I was like, "So which Tagalog/Filipino words are not Chinese?" Ha-ha.

- What the heck: Adult pacifiers in China became a thing. But why???

- 'Mt. Kamuning' on EDSA was reportedly scheduled for demolition. Finally, that monument to folly and ugliness and failure in urban planning is going, going, gone. I remember navigating one or two similar footbridges in the past in that area and finding myself struggling between anger and laughter, totally incredulous that such a thing was even possible. The Kamuning footbridge's rival is another hateful overpass in the middle of Cubao where, at one point you have to stoop so low just to make it to the other side of the world.

- Digong Duterte supporters led by Harry Roque in The Hague suddenly had a verbal tussle over, of all things, a humba dish they just shared for lunch. It's perversely fun to watch, especially with that one curly-haired lady (who was wearing lipstick) who chewed on and on (supposedly the delicious dish of contention, with relish) in front of the camera while the heated exchange was going on. Apparently, Roque turned out to be the subject of someone's negative feedback on social media about his partaking of the dish without pitching in (?), which irked Roque, who then demanded to know how much was the darned humba for he'd pay for it, all of it.

Mystery

- A giant crucifix in a Texas church suddenly blazed for no reason.

***

Politics (or is this under Governance, Media, or Showbiz?)

- Pasig City Mayor Vico Sotto criticized broadcasters Korina Sanchez-Roxas and Julius Babao for featuring (at all) the fabulously wealthy Discaya couple, who would later be tagged in alleged ghost flood control projects, ostensibly for their rags-to-riches story -- allegedly for a princely sum -- that is, running in the multi-million levels, triggering a fierce debate on social media regarding the lines between journalism and PR.

I can't help but remember poring through a Catholic ecclesiastical instruction that has long tackled this question: "Communio et Progressio": there are lines that are clear and should not be crossed.

This controversy came after the brouhaha and hullabaloo over failed flood control projects that allegedly turned out to be tainted by corruption.

Not long after, the Filipino public, at least on social media, erupted in anger over the perceived wide corruption in the implementation of government infrastructure projects. Which reminds me of a thought I have developed but have been keeping to myself: Hindi nakakaproud maging mahirap, pero hindi lahat ng yaman kahanga-hanga o nakakainggit (dahil mayroon diyan mga galing sa nakaw at pandaraya).

The DPWH Secretary resigned and was replaced by DOTr Secretary Vince Dizon. Earlier, PNP Chief Nicholas Torre III was replaced too, for some mysterious reason.

Something equally ominous was brewing in Indonesia, involving protests over corruption in high places of government and a lowly citizen being unwittingly killed by government forces. The situation by month's end was tense.

***

Pop Culture

- In a concert, Vice Ganda poked fun at ex-President Duterte and at Sen. Marcoleta's smirking mug. Duterte's supporters cried foul, and the latter was seriously offended and he said so.

- Furthermore, in local showbiz, Vice Ganda had been having a word war with Cristy Fermin for quite some time now.

- And even if I wasn't keeping track of, er, these developments in the gossip department, my feeds kept on showing posts about the supposed spat between Vice Ganda and fellow comic-sidekicks MC and Lassy, and the supposed feud between top international model Heart Evangelista and Miss Universe Pia Wurtzbach. Couldn't care less, so why did I even bother to notice and type these?

- There was a sustained buzz or media hype about the upcoming historical biopic "Quezon" starring Jericho Rosales. It's interesting to see whether Quezon would be demonized and vilified like Aguinaldo or sanitized like Bonifacio and Del Pilar.

- Actress Liza Soberano went on a tell-all about his childhood traumas, but I had to skip it, feeling not ready to consume such content.

- Former sexy star Vivian Velez "threw shade" at Vice Ganda's vulgar and insult style comedy, so netizens enjoyed munching on their digital popcorn while watching how the latest tiff would unfold. (Someone wrote something about it in a style that I would have loved to use.) As for Vice Ganda's comedy, I am personally torn: it is truly hilarious and a refreshing foil to the onion-skinned nature of most Filipinos, but... I am not very comfortable sometimes (because it revels on people's weaknesses), yet I am willing to give this type of comedy leeway in the name of art and freedom of expression.

- Special Coverage: Applause for Mike de Leon!

Legendary filmmaker Mike de Leon passed away, aged 78.

I've been a Mike de Leon fan ever since I watched "Itim" as a retrospective show on TV. It is a dark gothic story starring a young Charo Santos, and I am not even a fan of horror movies. Since then, I had to go out of my way to watch his other obras. I'm not an age-ist person like most young people I encounter, so I didn't care much which year they were made. If a lot of the top film critics raved about it, it's a must-watch. So that's how I was able to watch "Kisapmata," "Kung Mangarap Ka't Magising," "Kakabakaba Ka Ba?", "Batch '81," "Sister Stella L.," "Hindi Nahahati ang Langit," "Aliwan Paradise," and "Bayaning 3rd World." I loved every single one of them. Maybe it's not just because each film is well-made, but also because each story is different and most importantly, elicits strong thoughts and emotions worth mulling over and discussing with friends and fellow cinephiles.

Looking up the wiki page about him, I learned that he made two other films that I have yet to see: "Bilanggo sa Dilim" and "Citizen Jake." Must find these two ASAP.

- Food: A new type of grape suddenly flooded the market. It is called Korean grape but technically called Shine Muscat. Like a gigantic lato (ar-arusip) or grape seaweed, a gemstone, and a plastic toy grape, it is large, green, and shiny-skinned, with a sweet and sourish taste and a firm texture. A rarity before, there was also a significant presence of Moon Drop or Sweet Sapphire grapes in the market, which are equally interesting.

- Dance: I saw a lot of people dancing the Palarong Pambansa dance. I find the steps... Never mind.

***

Science

It's already 2025 and yet two new species of large mammals have been newly discovered or at least reported for the first time this year: a new monkey species (Mittermeier’s Tapajós saki monkey in the Brazilian Amazon) and a new marsupial (unnamed in the report)! This is incredible discovery amidst reports of the sad and tragic extirpation of other species.

***

Sad

Meanwhile, soc-med is no longer fun with all these AI contents ('deepfakes' and fake disaster videos, ChatGPT copy-pasted content). AI might even kill the platform, with the deep distrust that comes with the indiscriminate usage.

posted by Resty Odon  # 2:38 PM 0 Comments

Misadventures with GCash

Since I am not much into apps, I can't remember when and why exactly I set up my GCash account. What I have a vague memory of is that old friends and relatives were asking me if I had a GCash account where they could donate an amount of money to help me in my family's moment of dire need, and that was when my father died in the middle of the covid-19 pandemic and members of our household soon contracted covid one by one.

Even if I didn't know how to have an account, I just had to have one, so of course I asked for help.

GCash was a Godsend, a lifeline. I, with my disabilities, particularly appreciated the fact that I no longer have to go out, commute, line up in a long queue, watch paint dry, lose patience, etc. just to pay my monthly bills.

Why didn't they think up of this e-wallet sooner? And why did I even hem and haw in having it?

I was particularly thankful when news reports broke about the covid virus being possibly transmitted through paper bills.

Soon, I reveled at the fact that I could pay my electricity, water, and Internet bills at my fingertips, with just a few taps. Unbelievable, but it's true.

I also used it as an online bank of sorts. People who transacted with me could pay me easily through it too, and vice-versa. Gone were the days of physically going to the bank and wasting away precious hours inside staring at the tellers and examining the clothes and shoes of fellow clients while waiting for one's turn to deposit, withdraw, or settle something.

But just as it was so convenient to send and receive cash of all amounts and meet my obligations, it was also so easy to get scammed.

One day, a colleague of mine texted on FB Messenger, "Sir do you have PX,000 that I can borrow?"

Since the person had been a good payer, I said I didn't have that kind of amount to spare, just PX,000 right now."

"Oh, that would be enough," he answered.

Right after I had tapped my forefinger on the Send button, here came the news that the person's FB account had been hacked.

Super-gullible me learned a big lesson that day. Good thing the person made an effort to return half of what I lost. It wasn't that much to others maybe, but not to me. Goodbye hard-earned money from honest labor.

Despite that, I didn't blame GCash. I kept on using it, to pay and to get paid.

...Until one day came the news of celebrities losing money received through GCash. I panicked a bit about the sizeable amount I had stored in my account for various purposes. Good grief. To be fair, I saw it intact when I double-checked, but it didn't allay my fears that I could be next. So I had everything encashed first thing the next morning.

Could you blame me if I have trust issues with the app?

The last straw is when I paid a bill through it, or so I remember, only to be told at the physical office of the provider that the transaction didn't get through. Was I appalled!

I frantically tried to search my phone for stored electronic receipts, to no avail. I routinely save my GCash receipts on my phone, but one time, I got fed up with so many receipts stored that I decided to either delete them or email those receipts to myself. Alas, I could no longer find the evidence of payment out of the avalanche of saved files, so eventually, I gave up: I had to have the unpaid bill settled in person, face to face, or suffer the consequences.

I temporarily stopped paying bills through GCash because of this bad experience. But since I continue to send and receive money through it for other reasons, I remain an active user to this day.

I am wary of GCash for another reason: paranoia. I don't know if I should say this, but the reason is Biblical -- something to do with that scary passage in the Book of Revelation predicting the advent of a dystopian cashless society. Has that day come to pass? Are we seeing people with bar codes and QR codes on their foreheads soon?

posted by Resty Odon  # 5:08 AM 0 Comments

Resty S. Odon is a freelance writer who used to be based in Metro Manila, but currently resides in Bayambang, Pangasinan.

Born in 1970 in Pandacan, Manila, he grew up in the big city until his family moved to Bayambang, Pangasinan, where his father hailed from, when it was time for him to go to school. He attended Bayambang Central School (kinder and grade school) and Pangasinan State University Laboratory High School, and he finished B.S. Biology from the University of the Philippines-College Baguio (now UP Baguio) as a Department of Science and Technology (DOST) scholar.

After graduation, he worked chiefly as a writer in various capacities in Manila’s 'knowledge process outsourcing' (KPO) industry. He started as an indexer and abstractor for a humanities database project in Innodata Philippines, engineering and psychology database projects at Asec Philippines, and chemical industry database project in Data Gateway Philippines. Then he became a coder and document titlist for a legal database project in Quorum Litigation Services Philippines, Inc. (later renamed Legal Data Services Inc.). He also tried his hand on medical indexing in Asec Information Technology Inc. For several years, he also worked, on and off, as an online English instructor for Smarthinking.com. In Innodata-Isogen (EMCI), he became a copy-editor for an American medical website and, later, news digest writer for an Australian nursing website. He also worked briefly as a scientific editor for a British-owned, Hong Kong-based editorial services firm KGSupport. He then became an online medical copy-editor for MIMS Philippines.

In 1997, on the side, he tried writing essays for publication and eventually broke into magazine and newspaper feature writing. Soon, he became a freelance magazine contributor, staff writer, and editor. These prior work experiences all seem unrelated, but they each had an impact on his writing. His writings on wide-ranging subjects have appeared in various sections of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, including Sunday Inquirer Magazine. In the People at Work section, he contributed dozens of short think pieces about life in the workplace. He also had articles published in Philippine Star, Fudge magazine (Manila Bulletin), and Manila Times. In asianTraveler magazine, he rose to become an editor from being a proofreader and frequent contributor.

As a content writer online (blogger), he has contributed articles in a diverse range of independent media entities. Eventually, he came out with a book (more precisely, a compilation of essays) accessible online, “Being Filipino This Side of Town,” which explores a favorite subject, the puzzle of Filipino identity.

In 2016, he was hired as a writer by the Local Government Unit of Bayambang, Pangasinan through then Mayor Cezar T. Quiambao and was designated as Public Information Officer (PIO). As PIO, he was responsible for creating engaging content for the official Facebook page of the municipality, Balon Bayambang, and the official monthly newsletter of the same title, on top of managing the Public Information Office of the LGU. His team also periodically produces annual reports and other special publications, including books about the town's history and culture. Among the books he wrote for and helped edit are Subol na Pananisia, which is about the local parish church's history; Say Nanlapuan, the town's detailed cultural-historical profile, an output of a local culture-mapping project; and Santuario de San Vicente Ferrer: The Journey, a book detailing the arduous journey of getting the local parish church officially declared as an archdiocesan shrine.   

In 2024, his essay on his hometown's fish-grilling tradition won the third prize in the prestigious Doreen G. Fernandez Food Writing Award, a competition for all writers of Filipino descent from all over the world. 

In 2025, he was invited as guest columnist by Northern Times, Pangasinan province's newspaper with the biggest circulation.

Apart from overseeing the documentation of LGU accomplishments from day to day, his most recent endeavors are heavily focused on overlooked topics, including his personal experience in public service, as well as the history and traditional culture of his hometown.

posted by Resty Odon  # 5:20 PM 0 Comments

From: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1142308637942536&set=a.556808999825839 

posted by Resty Odon  # 12:29 AM 0 Comments

 Wilderness within Reach

(Every single day in my backyard is mini-ecotourism day.)


Although I have spent a sizeable part of my growing up years in the big city, I am blessed to have spent a great deal of it too in its total opposite: a bucolic setting like my humble place. The thing I appreciate the most about provincial life is the luxury of doing nothing in the backyard and watching nature's little untold wonders unfold right before my eyes. Without all the hassles of getting a passport or spending a single cent on travel, this experience has brought me a lot of unbidden moments of encounter with many little creatures I had never set my eyes on before, to say nothing about the sight of constantly changing clouds and sunsets that give a range of breathtaking hues, from pink to orange to mauve. In my backyard, every single day is a mini-ecotourism day.

Here, in this barangay they once called Palandey (mountain) and which was historically described either as a "jungle" or "mountainous area" then eventually converted by the Americans as a military camp, I have experienced being face to face with fireflies at night for the first time in my life. Kulibangbang and madre cacao trees grew wild in abandon, and so did wild shrubs and grasses and herbs considered either as medicinal plants or weeds: kulibetbet (pandakaki), tsaang gubat, viray, amorseko, makahiya...

At night, the silence was routinely pierced by the chorus of kuryat (kuliglig or crickets), together with various croakings of different frogs. Sometimes, the darkness was punctuated by a hissing sound and an ensuing racket that could only come from a bullfrog fending off a snake. But most nights, depending on the season, meant an assortment of creepers and bugs I had, for the life of me, no name for. From antlions to box moths to katydids to dung beetles and praying mantises, I had to do deep research just to find out.

On good days, a lone eagle or some other raptor could be seen hovering in the blue skies above, and flocks of white herons or egrets flying by. The sight of a giant moth or a giant bat was rare, but they did occur now and then.

During the rainy season, it's anybody's guess what wildings from bird droppings would come a-sprouting and greeting us on a clear morning. I've lost count of plants that made a surprise appearance, but among those are wild pipinos or pepinitos, niyog-niyogan, sung-song carabao, and ivy gourd. A few kinds of snails and sometimes a lizard also routinely made an appearance, adding to the biodiversity.

Each encounter with new species is like unmerited grace, treated as someone's gift to me for no reason at all, just because I exist. Each kind has its own innate beauty despite its reason for being mostly unheralded and unappreciated. Whenever I feel tired of being good and doing good, some organism stops me in my tracks, springing a surprise of discovery, offering a grand eyeball of sorts for the first time, and the little encounter easily comes off as a secret blessing that only I know about.

My experience with letting nature surprise me on its own terms was once sparked by a big yellow butterfly that flew skittishly on top of our santol tree. What, to me, was an unusual sighting was followed by another butterfly species, then, another, and another, all in one day while I was occupied with nothing. I don't know what's with the santol tree at the time (maybe it was blooming and fruiting?), but this incident singlehandedly opened my eyes. I had already found it amazing that there was such a variety of ants and spiders and dragonflies and frogs and fungi (including mushrooms) around me, but it turned out that diversity was also an arresting feature of yet another family of beings or, biologically speaking, organisms: the butterflies. Eventually, I was compelled to draw each of what I saw for the first time and came up with about a dozen kinds.

And it didn't stop with butterflies. The next happy incident would involve birds, and this time, the one that first sparked my curiosity was a tiny black bird with a single white spot on each wing that looked like eyes in flight. It was something I had never seen before, and it would take years before I was able to learn that it was a pied bushchat. The little bird was perched on a guava tree at my eye level but wouldn't fly away upon my approach like any wild bird would, so I sensed something was wrong. Indeed, it seemed weak and unable to fly for some reason, so after inspecting it, I left it perched on the branch. Then it was gone. But obviously it left a lasting mark.

It turned out that there were other birds here aside from the so-called maya bird, which I eventually learned to be not even a maya but a Eurasian tree sparrow. Pretty soon, I became cognizant of any new thing manifesting its presence whether by sight or sound, or as a mysterious silhouette in the shades between branches and shadows of the underbrushes. This is how I got to learn about the yellow-vented bulbul, the fantail, the shrike, the martinez (mynah), the long-tailed shrike, the zebra dove, the red turtle dove, the brahminy kite, the kingfishers, the white-eyes, the munias... I became a 'birder' (bird-watching enthusiast) without knowing the term yet... right in my own backyard.

I feel especially celebratory whenever I discover something new on my list of confirmed scientific names. By being a serious birder, I would eventually discover that certain species that I never imagined to be present within my locality would someday come face to face with me: olive-backed sunbirds (now called garden sunbirds), orioles, spiderhunters, bee-eaters, parrot-finches, pied trillers, golden-bellied gerygones, red-keeled flowerpeckers, pygmy flowerpeckers, woodpeckers, kingfishers, swallows, swifts, tailorbirds, starlings, finches... As time went by, the list got longer and longer. I even strongly believe that those were a coucal, an elegant tit, and a malkoha that I spotted or whose unique call I heard around my neighborhood at least once. Each first-time-ever-in-my-life encounter is called, fittingly in the birding community, a "lifer." There is this sense of frustration with every species left unidentified, like it's an unresolved issue deep within. But, yes, each new sighting calls for a moment of self-congratulation.

From the surface, my own humble patch is not much. With the rapidly encroaching urbanization, most of the creatures are gone. The sudden loss of certain species, I noticed, always coincided with the removal of certain vegetations that the missing ones find attractive (such as bamboo groves, citrus, and native flowering and fruiting trees). But with many of the trees still around, it still holds so much life in all its manifold forms awaiting to be discovered if only you have the eyes for it.

To make things clear, I hold no romantic vision of nature. Nature can be such a bitch, even beastly. Let's not kid ourselves. Nature also means rats, mice, shrews, flies, mosquitoes, armyworms, centipedes, scorpions, silverfish, cobras, stinging bees and wasps, molds and mildew, pestilential caterpillars, leafcutters, locusts, mean ants that bite you fiercely, and termites -- which my place has a fair share of. I am a nature-lover, true, but also a nature-hater and -basher, depending on the encounter. Nevertheless, I am grateful that I am not totally detached from nature, and the wisdom of the wilderness is still within my reach.

(This content is 0% AI-generated.)

posted by Resty Odon  # 3:06 AM 0 Comments

 " Remember that you live in a fallen world: an abnormal world tainted by sin. Much frustration and failure result from your seeking perfection in this life. There is nothing perfect in this world except Me. That is why closeness to Me satisfies deep yearnings and fills you with Joy. "

posted by Resty Odon  # 8:43 PM 0 Comments

 If you are in the business of doing good, expect to be opposed on all fronts. After all, what is life but war? But it is a battle worth fighting for, because it's the only one that matters.

posted by Resty Odon  # 11:19 PM 0 Comments

We are NOT as Intelligent as We Think We are, and That is a Good Thing!

"Uy ang talino mo naman!"

I feel uneasy every time someone gives me that remark just because of what I wrote. Why? Because I know enough about various kinds of intelligence and have met a lot of people who have shown me first-hand what intelligence means: that it is NOT limited to the 3 Rs.

I may be good at words, but once upon a time I saw how my cousin routinely beat me at math in grade school. Our Grade 3 teacher, Mrs. Evangeline Tagulao, had this habit of staging a mini-contest using cards where two pupils guessed the answer to basic math operations. In those contests, it was humiliating for me to realize that I wasn't good in math, not at all. Although 1+1 and 2+2 were basic for me, if my teacher asked a combination higher than those, I would have to relax myself, sit down, and think hard to get the answer right without using a calculator. (No joke, no joke.)

I don't know how I survived school subjects like geometry, chemistry, algebra, physics, statistics, and calculus. It must have been because of how good my teachers were, like Mrs. Cuchapin and Mrs. Saygo.

I may be good at writing essays, but you won't believe how much I admire another cousin who could play the guitar and read notes and chords on this little song book called "Song Hits." As for me, I tried playing "Yellow Bird" one time on the ukelele, of all things, and from thereon accepted that I wasn't born to be a musician. Maybe a critic, but not an actual player.

I know my intelligence is limited whenever I am with someone in a strange place, like a city with streets winding this way and that, and the person has no problem getting lost in it. ...Because left to my own devices, I am pretty sure I would end up panicking like this fool pleading for help inside a labyrinth or deep within the jungle after I ventured a little off the hiking trail.

I admire people who know how to cook well by instinct (even without going to culinary school for it), because I am kind of bad in this department.

Even as a writer, I am envious of people who can write poems, fiction, and especially novels, for which I have no energy doing.

I know my so-called intellect is no match to the innate talent of athletes, so I can't afford to brag about it in the face of their skill.

I may have a way with words, but you can't expect me to be like McGyver around the house, with my knowledge of carpentry and electrical wiring close to nil.

I admire people who can be the life of the party, an event host -- things like that. Because I can't do that even if my life depended on it. Or will only do it at gunpoint.

I am excellent at being a recluse, though. I am fond of ruminating, of navel-gazing, of stargazing. But not to the point of making a career out of it, or coming up with a profound philosophical treatise. Maybe by being the client or patient of the psychiatrist, yes.

They say interest in the natural world is called naturalistic intelligence, and I think I have it in spades, and that is why I took up BS Biology in college. So maybe there is at least one other type of intelligence that I can say I possess. But it only resulted in cultivating succulents that refuse to bloom. I discovered that most plants die on you if you give too little or too much of sun, water, nutrients...

Some people may be secretly envious of me for what I have, or what I have developed (though sheer passion and hard work), but I am, in fact, envious of people who can do anything I am not as good at. Especially singing and dancing.

I am probably the most unbalanced person you know. This thought keeps me humble. My saving grace, I think, is that my interest will strike most people as incredibly wide. As a writer, this enables me to treat most subjects as though they are the most interesting thing in the world.

Anyway, I am glad that no person has a monopoly of intelligence. I don't think I have met anyone who has ticked off all the boxes by Howard Gardner. A few exceptionally gifted people like Jose Rizal may be polymaths, but they, too, have weaknesses. God, in his goodness and generosity, must have distributed intelligence in different ways to different people.

What a wonderful world it is, if that is so, because it means we were born to collaborate with our multiple intelligences, with our own unique giftedness.

posted by Resty Odon  # 3:26 PM 0 Comments

We are all marked men

by Francis J. Kong 

Here is an exciting piece I’ve kept for years and found funny. The article is titled: Nine Important Facts to Remember as We Grow Older.

#9. Death is the number one killer in the world.

#8. Life is sexually transmitted.

#7. Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.

#6. Men have two motivations: hunger and hanky-panky, and they can’t tell them apart. If you see a gleam in his eyes, make him a sandwich.

#5. Teach a person to use the Internet, and they won’t bother you for weeks, months, or maybe years.

#4. Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospital, dying of nothing.

#3. Weather teaches us a valuable lesson. It pays no attention to criticism.

#2. In the ’60s, people took LSD to make the world weird. Now, the world is funny, and people take Prozac to make it normal.

#1. Life is like a jar of jalapeño peppers. What you do today may be a burning issue tomorrow.

This list was funny to me years ago when I was much younger. But now that I am in my senior years, the humor doesn’t carry quite the same punch.

Ryan Holiday, an author I follow, recently launched his book, Right Thing, Right Now: Good Values, Good Character, Good Deeds, where he talks about Marcus Aurelius. It didn’t matter that Aurelius was powerful and wise, nor that so many people depended on him. It didn’t matter that he maintained the stern, rigorous habits of his youth.

Marcus Aurelius was getting old. Like all of us, he faced the path of time, walking it daily, going only in one direction – away from his younger self, never to return.

In Meditations, we catch Marcus as he comes to terms with this reality. He had always meditated on death (that’s what the practice of memento mori was), but now he was no longer a young man. In fact, he was a marked man.

It’s a painful realization, one too many of us try to deny or distract ourselves from. We push the thought away, fantasize about breakthroughs in medicine, or dream of a fountain of youth. We see others as old, but we? We feel the same as we always have, so we pretend nothing has changed.

Seneca faced a similar shock when he visited his boyhood home. The sight was disappointing, especially the old and dying trees surrounding the house. In his youth, the house had been surrounded by lively, green trees he’d helped plant. That’s when Seneca was hit with an unavoidable truth: they were the same trees from his youth, now nearing the end of their lives – and so was he.

We all face the path of time. We all get older. We are all marked men.

In youth, we may feel invincible. But reality eventually arrives. Some face it with courage and acceptance; others deny it, hiding their fear behind superstitions, like: • Avoiding the mention of death • Mirrors in the house • Carrying charms • Knocking on wood • Numerology and death

Fear of numbers like 13 in the West and four in East Asia (due to its phonetic resemblance to the word for death) and shying away from the number “nine” on their birthdays illustrates how numerology is linked to death superstitions.

The wise prepare for this eventuality. They don’t wish to burden their children with unfinished affairs. A responsible leader always plans for such times.

We cannot live fully unless we are at peace with death. Senior Pastor Chad Williams of Union Church of Manila shares a little-known fact about Winston Churchill, who planned his own funeral. After the eulogy and benediction, one person in the eastern tower of St. Paul’s Cathedral plays Taps, and on the opposite side, Reveille/Sunrise, Sunset rings out. “Oh, Happy Days!” indeed.

As the psalmist says: “Lord, teach me to number my days right, that I may gain a heart of wisdom.”

A yellow sticky note pops up on my computer screen every time I log in. It says, “Francis, live each day as if it were the last, because one day, you’ll be right.” This is wise, and I hope you agree.

posted by Resty Odon  # 4:53 AM 0 Comments

By all accounts, I shouldn't be a devout Catholic, I should've been more of a communist rebel or at least a leftist activist. At young age, I had everything going for me to become a rebel. I came from a poor family but moved in a circle dominated by kids from well-to-do families. I knew first-hand the thousand humiliations of being materially inferior.

Couple this with another sense of inferiority: physical. I was the proverbial ugly duckling. I grew up in a family where being mestizo or mestiza was openly preferred and extolled. Growing up bitter was written in my stars, so to speak.

I also grew up with a father who seemed to me to be distant and also struck me as a disciplinarian, militaristic type. I hardly saw a loving God the father in him. I also developed a lack of self-esteem.

It didn't make sense to believe in a loving God. It didn't make sense to have faith. And yet, despite these twin wounds that ran deep inside me, I became the good boy, the nice guy, the one who wanted to please everyone. It wasn't obvious to me then, but I apparently was hungry for love and acceptance. And aside from that, I became a religious kind of guy, a churchy person. Apparently, I too was trying to win God's love and approval.

I am not sure how or why I ended up being so, so today is perhaps a good time to trace it.

(To be continued)

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:04 PM 0 Comments

Thoughts on an FB Reel

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:28 PM 0 Comments

Slander Season Begins

It's election time once again, and so the mudslinging is expected to pollute the airwaves to 100% saturation. Hey, are you actually expecting a campaign debate about platforms and programs? Don't be ridiculous. What you can expect are slander and defamation galore, not to mention the spreading of lies. 

Complementing this reality is our love for showbiz gossip. As of this writing, the word war between comedian-actor Dennis Padilla and his beautiful children with Marjorie Barretto are competing "Trump's tariff tantrum" (as one editor deftly put it) and China's military drill for an impending invasion of Taiwan. The noise generated on social media, I figure, could power solar panels and nuclear reactors enough to avoid outages for 10 years. 

If we are not careful, we can easily get caught up in the ensuing maelstrom. After all, who doesn't love to listen to juicy stuff? As one veteran media man once pointed out, "That's why FB reels are most effective as clickbait."

It behooves us, therefore to reminder ourselves of basic do's and don't's. What can we discuss in public and what can we not? 

What I learned is that, public matters, including very public acts of public officials concerning matters of public concern are par for the course. Private matters, including private faults or sins, when discussed in public is gossip: malicious and defamatory in nature. In Christian moral terms, gossip, whether true or not, is slander, if uttered inappropriately -- that is, if discussed with a third party who has no business knowing it.

In legal terms, as a former colleague turned lawyer pointed out, there are notable differences. "Truth is a defense to defamation whether as libel (written form of defamation) or slander (non-written form of defamation). If defamation is against a private person, then malicious intent is presumed, but if against a public person, you have to prove negligence."

She explains further that defamation in the Philippines is "more confined to imputing to someone a crime, vice, or defect that tends to put a person in dishonor or discredit him/her. So for example, if you call someone who is indeed bald "kalbo," then this is not considered defamation, but if you call someone "prostitute," then it is a case of defamation."

There are a few exceptions to the rule against gossip and malicious speech.

In the case of persons considered as "public property" like showbiz people and celebrities whose livelihood depends on the public consumption of their professional and personal affairs, their issues may be legally discussed in public by common folk. If a celebrity airs his/her dirty laundry in public, that would be fair game for public, er, interpretation and analysis.

(Personally, I would still be uncomfortable lest I end up judging a person's character especially since I don't know him/her personally and I am not privy to the whole story. (Remember that every story has two sides -- even three sides: the sides of the two antagonists and the side of the one caught in the middle and took a neutral stance like, say, Switzerland).

There are very few other exceptions when it is legitimate or necessary to discuss a person's faults with a third party, like when a sibling reports another sibling's wrongdoing to their parents with aim of correcting a mistake, or when you are confessing your sin to a priest, or when you're in a counseling session when you need to reveal identities, but in confidence and within a safe space, or when you are reporting a crime to the police when a misdeed takes on a public dimension.

Another important exception is when discussing an issue to share a lesson or illustrate one's point, but without revealing identities.

An extreme case is during war or when facing criminals, murderers, torturers. Of course, why would you reveal that you are hiding 1,000 Jews in your basement, or that you are entrusted with the family's jewels in the attic, or that you know the state's secrets? Being overly honest in this case would be plain stupid, even under the pain of torture and death, as long as the aim is to uphold what is right and good and true and protect life and limb and property.

It is sad that, during elections, a lot of people take slander lightly. They think it is okay to spread lies, assume doubtful things as truth, and invent malicious things against fellow candidates when it is, in fact, equivalent to murder, the murder of reputations. 

The worst cases are out-and-out cybercrimes, when some people have the gumption to steal other' people's identities to make threats or extort money from the unsuspecting.

In Christianity kasi, when it is none of your business to talk about a person's private faults with a third party (emphasis on private), it is not just uncharitable, it is a serious sin even if the accusation is true because it is impossible to take back what you have released like minute spores or seeds in the four directions of the wind. How much more when the presumption proves to be untrue? -- it becomes a case of bearing false witness against thy neighbor. 

Righteous speech is one of the hardest things to obey, of course. But we can't deny its wisdom, especially when we find ourselves on the receiving end of malicious thoughts from a judgmental public.

posted by Resty Odon  # 7:59 PM 0 Comments