PARADOXICAL

 " God is not renovating your old self. He crucified it..and you're now new in Christ. "

" Only God can turn a mess into a message.

A test into a testimony.

A trial into a triumph.

A victim into a victory. "

" Things have a way of working out. Never underestimate the power of prayer, faith, and love. " Amen🙏🙏🙏

 We Can't Be Colorblind in a World of Incredible Hues

Some colors are a challenge to describe. Like our official uniforms lately in local government.

Never mind the white shirt for Mondays which is straight white. Nothing to argue about there. It is neat to look at, yes, but boring in terms of creating office discord in relation to the discussion of the color wheel.

Trouble comes with the arrival of this shirt that I initially called dirty white, for it resembles the tint and hue of a dishrag that has seen better days at the sink. Or a moldering white shirt that has developed the patina, gesso, ambergris, or whatever you might call the combination of mildew, fungi, cyanobacteria, and lichen that organically grew on it.

This particular shirt reminds me of an old Ivory soap commercial, with kids mouthing colors nearly like white but not quite white -- terms we've never heard of before to be associated with color. One precocious tyke says "off-white," another "cream," another "stucco," another "ivory," and another kid possibly another technical term that I forgot.

None of these terms applies. It turns out that the "dirty white" shirt has the color called "egret," which strikes me as most precise, because I am familiar with the great egrets, small egrets, and cattle egrets that inhabit our creeks and rice fields.

I am proud to have learned a new word for a color that didn't occur to me before as having a unique existence in nature.

The other shirt assigned for another day is gray -- another easy one, no question about it.

Then we also have a navy blue shirt. Who doesn't know navy blue?

But the recent arrival of a green-looking one is another puzzle to solve because it is a more nuanced kind of green on the color gradient. It is not mint, not teal, certainly not avocado, and neither is it the usual foliage or photosynthesis green, not blue-green, and not quite the drab green of olives, but a green that has a striking sheen to it. As it turns out, it is called "military green," the dominant color of camouflage attire.

The most problematic one is this last shirt that looks dark with combined dark gray and bluish tints -- definitely not black, definitely not gray, but definitely neither blue nor navy blue. It is a complex, sophisticated blend of color no one can place.

People can't agree on what it is called, but the closest concensus is "dark gray." But it is not exactly dark gray, the color of graphite in a certain grade of pencils, because it has bluish tint. I can't find an equivalent of it in nature (or as they put it today, nature-equivalent).

A careful Internet search reveals the closest term for this color to be, no, not midnight blue, but charcoal blue. It's the only term that fits I almost heard "Eureka!" in my mind. Oh, the feeling of relief I had after that.

At this point, I suddenly remember my female officemates of long ago, who were able to tell the difference between chartreuse and green, between blue and turquoise and aquamarine, and between maroon and burnt sienna without the least difficulty.

A fairly well-known female novelist also comes to mind for she can readily tell the difference between violet, indigo, lilac, mauve, plum, magenta, and whatnot while I am pulling my hair trying to distinguish between them.

If we think all this is a trivial matter, it is not.

Because if we can distinguish between raspberry, cherry, ruby, and crimson, then we can make a distinction between a beret and bucket hat, we can tell the difference between an anorak and a cardigan.

We have therefore no excuse for not being able to tell apart the most challenging shades of gray in the vast market of ideas, philosophies, religions, beliefs.

...That is, unless we are afflicted with what they call cognitive dissonance or being in an unconscious state of denial.

Alas, part of being human is to be in a state of denial -- a protective wall we often build around us, unconsciously, to avoid getting hurt by the harsh realities of life.

But reality has a way of biting us in the face, sooner or later, so we eventually tear down our wall we ourselves have built. Hopefully, it won't be too hurting or too late by the time we let our guards down, cease our self-imposed blindness, and open our eyes, and see colors once again for what they are: a delicate graduation, or gradient, or gradation of hues and tones, tints and temperatures, depending on the refraction of light.

By then, we open our eyes to know that a pigeon is not a dove, a crow is not a raven, a heron is different from an egret, Dagupan City's Bonuan milkfish has distinct characteristics from a non-Bonuan bangus, a dialect is different from a languge, Sunni is not the same as Shia, Pangasinan is quite distinct from Ilocano, pornography is not the same as art, licentiousness is a lot different from the exercise of freedom of expression. Etc. etc.

When we see the shades of truth (and untruth) in the shades of colors (or lack thereof in black and white), it should be all-natural for us see distinctions that we can't see, or don't want to see, for the longest time.

 

University of Zurich. Birdwatching reshapes the brain in a similar way to learning a language or instrument. ScienceDaily.

The Archdiocese of Manila has opened a “spiritual liberation” center amid reports of an escalation in cases of spiritual distress that necessitate exorcism. Archbishop of Manila, Cardinal Jose Advincula, who blessed the liberation center in Makati City,

QUEZON City Representative Jesus Manuel “Bong” Suntay is facing widespread criticism from lawmakers, public officials and celebrities over his controversial remark about his personal reaction to seeing actress Anne Curtis.

The backlash erupted after Suntay, during a House Committee on Justice session on impeachment complaints against Vice President Sara Duterte on Tuesday, March 3, 2026, recounted his apparent desire to Curtis.

“Alam niyo minsan, minsan nasa Shangri-La ako, nakita ko si Anne Curtis, ang ganda-ganda pala niya. You know, may desire sa loob ko na, nag-init talaga, na-imagine ko na lang kung ano’ng pwedeng mangyari pero siyempre hanggang imagination na lang ‘yon. Pero ‘di naman siguro ako pwedeng kasuhan kung ano ang na-imagine ko eh,” said Suntay.

 

Post before Delete
(Photo dump, personal documentation, gratitude corner, debriefing post, etc. for February 2026)

These bare-minimum photos don't do justice to how I spent the month of February 2026: Rush the day's news. Rush update of weekly Monday video script. Research and write on new topics for trivia time. Produce and carefully edit the monthly newsletter. Watch new election-era trolls spouting inaccuracies. Help guide staff in answering PM-ed complaints with potentially incomplete side of the story. Manage blood pressure and sugar intake as a result. Help rush speeches and messages. Deal with OJTs. Collab with DSWD on a video contest called "Juana Malakas." Brainstorm and argue endlessly over this new but challenging tire recycling contest that made us into instant architects, engineers, and interior designers. Find people with interesting life journeys to feature. Remind people about proper pronunciation (honorable, beloved, etc. etc.) and correct grammar. Accommodate assorted requests from various departments, especially regarding this upcoming Women's Month celebration. Attend meetings and seminars if I can. (I can't, mostly.) Accommodate a student researcher who asked good questions about buro. Rush publication of a major ad. Answer queries from media about a very sad drowning incident. Manage trauma using the little psychological first aid I know (EMDR, butterfly hug, vagus nerve exercises, holding my breath to avoid hyperventilation). Manage stress levels through other assorted means: pray, listen to Fr. Jason's homilies, list down things to be grateful for, take care of plants, nap and sleep, sunbathe, listen to music, eat nutritious food but try new flavors (observing portion control), have massage using magnesium oil, inhale lavender scent, take an unhurried bath, have quiet time alone intentionally doing nothing, and do other little trivial things I enjoy and that bring back calm by restoring the right levels of serotonin, oxytocin, endorphin, and whatyoumacallit (it can't be tryptophan or melatonin but either will do).

 (𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘷𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘮𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴. 𝘈𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦 𝘐 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘢𝘺, 𝘐 𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘌𝘋𝘚𝘈 in 𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘨𝘶𝘦 form 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘢 𝘗𝘖𝘝 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮𝘶𝘵𝘦𝘳—maybe 𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘰𝘧 𝘔𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘭𝘢's 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘴 𝘮𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘢 𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘴𝘰 𝘐 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘰𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵.)

Memories of EDSA from a Thousand MRT Rides

The first time I took the MRT, I felt I had somehow been spirited out of the danged P.I. All that gleaming metal, that telling scent of newly manufactured rubber, those squeaky escalators—everything shimmered with a kind of improbable newness. It was like taking a brand-new car out for a test drive, a novelty that hums in your bloodstream long after the engine has been turned off. I remember feeling like the robot in "Short Circuit," freshly unboxed into the great wide open, overwhelmed by stimulus, capable only of exclaiming, “Input! Input!” as his digital eyes gulped down the world. That was me, standing there on the platform, recording everything in sight as if afraid the vision might vanish.

After that initiation, I seldom took the MRT. There was no pressing need—except on those rare days when I had to be in Cubao from Ayala in what felt like split seconds. Years later, when I left the comfort zone of Makati and found employment in faraway Quezon City, the train ceased to be an occasional convenience and became a daily ritual. Becoming a regular meant becoming, in some quiet, unconfessed way, a dependent. Twice a day, out of sheer necessity, I surrendered myself to its rhythm. And in doing so, I was forced to regard the experience anew.

The two-way ride soon lost its novelty. It hardened into familiarity, and familiarity, as they say, is the breeding ground of contempt. I fully expected my old, contemptuous self to surface. For a born pessimist, that would have been the logical progression. Yet strangely, after two months of five-day-a-week commuting, I could not muster the disdain. Instead, the ride became a small, improbable blessing—a breath of fresh air in my otherwise unglamorous existence as a commuter.

Each day I stepped into coach after coach carrying a cocktail of clashing, sometimes cryptic feelings. Yet the aftertaste was always delicate. There was nostalgia, for one thing. I personally knew the PR man tasked to handle the public affairs side of that monstrous undertaking when this behemoth was still a blueprint and a prayer. His name was Tony Vasquez. I remember how we, the long-suffering users of EDSA, endured months—years—of dust, detours, and traffic-induced despair. We told ourselves, half in jest and half in threat: It better be darned serviceable, or there’d be hell to pay.

And then there it was—on that battered corner of EDSA at Pasay Road (now Arnaiz Avenue)—a giant billboard rising like a peace offering: “Cubao to Makati in 15 minutes!” It featured a generic, street-smart construction worker as poster boy, neon lights blinking reassurances into the night: “Safety First!” “Please bear with us.” “Your taxes are working for you.” I’m not entirely sure which line did the trick, but the campaign went on to earn international recognition in Finland a year or so later. My friend must have smiled a private, vindicated smile.

Far from inspiring contempt, the giant, er, caterpillar ride became something I regarded with fondness—the way one might cherish an extended ride on a roller coaster in Enchanted Kingdom, our own humble Disneyland in Sta. Rosa. Sometimes I would imagine they might as well install a 360-degree loop somewhere over Magallanes, overlooking the Skyway, or at Cubao where it intersects with LRT-2. To complete the carnival, they could add horror trains at Buendia and Ayala—the stations that dip into tunnels, our closest approximation to a subway. For someone prone to exquisitely pompous thoughts and spectacularly implausible scenarios, the MRT provides a most welcome theater.

It complicates my embarrassingly simple life even as it transports me efficiently from point A to point B. I find myself paraphrasing Pico Iyer—“To travel is to taste hardship”—while half-expecting someone to shout “Emergency!” into the compressed air. At other times, I soundtrack the entire stretch of EDSA with techno or punk rock from my brother’s iPod, testing how rhythm alters perception. And in the midst of meditating on the fate of nations, I am forced into the most pedestrian of multitasking: wedged between a seatmate coughing nonstop and reeking of freshly pounded garlic, and the exquisite dilemma of where exactly to rest my eyes so as not to intrude upon the geography of strangers’ knees. There is unpredictability within the ritual, and it is this that keeps boredom at bay.

As the train glides along with almost clockwork regularity, the window becomes a moving frame through which the city reveals its contradictions. You begin to notice things you had long taken for granted. Hotels painted in Day-Glo defiance announce themselves as both the gaudiest and ugliest structures in the metro. The glinting tiled roofs of Corinthian Gardens and Blue Ridge mansions flash by, prompting the perennial question: will every Filipino ever afford such a roof over his head? And then there are the billboards—Borgy Manotoc’s giant Swatch ad mug staring down, with impunity, at the brass statue of Our Lady of EDSA near Robinsons Galleria, as if commerce and devotion were locked in a silent duel.

Weirder thoughts sometimes ambush me. Once, unprovoked, I concluded that EDSA’s traffic problem could be solved if those working in Makati and Pasay simply swapped homes with those commuting from Quezon City. A housing exchange as urban salvation. It makes perfect sense—at least at 60 kilometers per hour above gridlock.

An MRT ride also induces a kind of disorientation akin to air travel. Working in Quezon City after a lifetime in Makati is its own culture shock. QC, home to media giants like ABS-CBN and GMA, feels more like an NGO and bureaucratic enclave, far removed from the glass-tower certainties I once knew. I am no longer sure which nerve center of the metro possesses more character; perhaps each is merely a mirror held up to a different national aspiration.

The speed of the train collapses distances that once required desert-caravan patience. Before the MRT, reaching Novaliches from Taft Avenue felt like an expedition. The long hours prepared you psychologically for difference. That lag—those hours of mental recalibration—are now erased. Efficiency bridges the gap, but something indefinable is lost behind the triumph of punctuality.

The line was built during the administration of President Fidel V. Ramos under a build-operate-transfer scheme, a $655-million gamble on speed and structure. Thirteen stations punctuate 6.4 kilometers of EDSA, offering vantage points that vary in altitude and attitude: treetop-level, street-level, subterranean, mangy, billboard-choked. At roughly thirty minutes end to end and carrying hundreds of thousands daily, it is both infrastructure and metaphor.

Compared with LRT-1—which slices through the intimate, decaying grandeur of old Manila—the MRT offers a more panoramic, less intimate survey of the New World we have assembled along EDSA. The LRT is visceral, earth-level, thick with prerecorded sales pitches of “Mura lang, piso isa!” and elbow-to-elbow humanity. The MRT, by contrast, feels slightly more detached, even when rush hour hurls a tsunami of warm bodies your way.

For a maximum of fourteen pesos one way, you are granted a panorama of a grimy, topsy-turvy, strangely cosmopolitan metropolis—capable of summoning from you the entire gamut of emotion at a fast clip. This slithering landmark does more than ferry commuters. From its rarefied vantage point, you cannot help but assess how life in the P.I. has unfolded since those four fateful days of February 1986—the longest days this country has ever known.

Standing on a moving platform of steel and rubber, suspended above traffic and history, I can't help but feel—despite everything—a flicker of pride. It is easy to forget it, but this is the street where we made bloodless, peaceful revolutions possible, not only in the Philippines but around the world.

Former President Duterte earned global infamy, praise at home

Story by Agence France Presse 

MANILA, Philippines — Former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte earned global infamy for the deadly drug crackdown that led to his arrest over crimes against humanity charges, despite his huge popularity at home.

A profane-lipped populist and self-professed killer, Duterte’s anti-crime campaign resulted in the deaths of thousands of alleged dealers and addicts. Rights groups say many of those killed were poor men, often without any proof they were linked to drugs.

Yet while drawing condemnation abroad, tens of millions of Filipinos backed his swift brand of justice — even as he joked about rape in his rambling speeches, locked up his critics and failed to root out entrenched corruption.

Trust on Duterte dented by pandemic

That trust was dented by the coronavirus pandemic, which plunged the country into its worst economic crisis in decades, leaving tens of thousands dead and millions jobless with a slow-paced vaccine rollout.

Duterte’s woes deepened in 2021, when the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court (ICC) sought an investigation into crimes against humanity during his crackdown between 2013 and 2018.

He served out his six-year term, leaving office in 2022.

Arrested before his 80th birthday

On March 11, 2025, just weeks before his 80th birthday, Duterte was arrested and flown to the Netherlands, seat of the ICC, where he has been in detention since.

Duterte, who turns 81 next month, has repeatedly said there was no official campaign to kill addicts and dealers.

But his speeches included calls for violence, and he did tell police to use lethal force if their lives were in danger.

‘Kill them’

“If you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself, as getting their parents to do it would be too painful,” Duterte said hours after being sworn in as president in June 2016.

Months later, he would liken the deadly crackdown to the Nazis’ mass murder of Jews, while vastly underestimating the number of people killed in the Holocaust.

“Hitler massacred three million Jews. Now there are three million drug addicts (in the Philippines). I’d be happy to slaughter them.”

His unfiltered comments are part of his self-styled image as a maverick, which found traction in a nation where corruption, red tape and institutional dysfunction impact people’s lives at every level.

Major figure in politics

While unable to run for president again and despite his detention, Duterte remains a major figure in politics.

He was elected to his old job as mayor of his southern stronghold of Davao in midterm elections held in May last year, though jail stopped him serving.

A one-time ally of the Marcos family, the dynasties have grown apart. Duterte and his vice president daughter, Sara Duterte, are engaged in a feud with current President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.

‘I simply love Xi’

Rodrigo Duterte, a former lawyer and prosecutor, was born into a political family. His father served as a cabinet secretary before the nation plunged into a Marcos dictatorship in 1972.

During his long tenure as Davao mayor, Duterte was accused of links to vigilante death squads that rights groups say killed more than 1,000 people — accusations he has both accepted and denied, and which form part of the ICC charges.

His presidency was also marked by a swing away from the nation’s former colonial master, the United States, in favour of China.

“I simply love Xi Jinping,” Duterte said of the Chinese president in 2018.

“He understands my problem and is willing to help, so I would say ‘thank you, China’.”

As part of that rapprochement, he set aside rivalry with Beijing over the resource-rich South China Sea, opting to court Chinese business instead.

He claimed this friendship helped secure millions of doses of a Chinese-made Covid-19 vaccine, but supplies still fell far short.

Billions of dollars of promised trade and investment also failed to materialize.

Duterte now faces his second court date on Monday, when judges will decide whether the prosecution’s allegations are strong enough to proceed to trial.

Cooking is Chemistry

(If we look at cooking as essentially a laboratory experiment, food ingredients become chemical reagents that promise nuclear explosions and other such mini-disasters in the kitchen.)

--------------------------

Forced by life's unexpected circumstances, I had to learn how to cook. If I didn't, I wouldn't eat, or just content myself with pre-cooked fare, or worse, fast food, or worst of all, canned goods. The experimental period -- which is still ongoing -- has brought me a heap of kitchen disaster stories.

One time while debating with myself in the kitchen, I insisted on including mature luffa into the smoldering misua (Chinese noodle) soup I was making. When lunchtime came, I was rewarded with the experience very much similar to chewing sliced bath towels. I was reminded that human beings, unlike cows, don’t have the enzymes needed to digest cellulose in a four-chambered stomach (i.e., reticulum, rumen, omasum and abomasum).

Cooking, I learned, is common sense or instinctive. There are certain ingredients that naturally go together, as though by synergy, like strawberries and cream. So you don't want to combine chemicals invented by man and Mother Nature that should never go together, like banana fruit with coffee or Coke, or you accidentally invent poison. One time, I was laughing my head off at this extreme example forwarded by Stef: pear and arugula smoothie with ginger and walnuts. Yes, some genius in the kitchen actually tried making it.

Okay, cooking is not really common sense, but actually chemistry. Filipino cuisine, in particular, is a lot of balancing act between acidity, saltiness, sweetness, and sometimes bitterness, so the equation always results in A x NaCl x S x B = umami.

But don't treat the kitchen too much as a laboratory -- the saucer as petri dish, the boiler as beaker, and the pots and pans as Erlenmeyer flask. People might mistake you for a mad scientist. I recall a departed aunt's story of how a homemaker in Pandacan, Manila, eagerly planned and prepared then elaborately presented a new dish of sweetish pork stew in milk for a buffet spread. Her dish came off as too exotic that not even one guest dared touch it. Of course, that one dish became the talk of the town in a place where people never associated milk with pork.

I have had my own lessons to learn in terms of experimentation. One time, out of love for cilantro, which I know a lot of people hate with a passion, I decided to use an extravagant amount for a dish I was cooking. I never expected that the exotic Chinese aroma would waft like a cloud from the house, invading neighborhood territory. Pretty soon, the neighbors started dialing the police's Narcotics Division, after sensing something was amiss.

Another time, I eagerly threw a whole bunch of basil leaves into a mung bean sprout Vietnamese recipe I was trying to copy. The entire house smelled like Colgate for three days.

Now, without exaggeration, this really happened to my grandmother, not out of the desire to experiment but in terms of making a new scientific discovery without intending it. One time, she said, she unknowingly mistook the kitchen rag for an ingredient in pinakbet (local vegetable stew). The soot-encrusted cloth revealed itself only at the bottom of the pot when everybody was already burping. Kitchen rags should be considered in the future as essential flavor-enhancer, going by the evidence, a good MSG substitute.

In a similar vein, there was a time I reheated a dish that unknowingly had turned sour. The discovery was made just a split second before shoveling the trash into my mouth. I sure was glad my nostrils were able to detect in time that something was wrong in the sourness -- not the usual pleasurable sourness of, say, sinigang, or I would have dealt with allergic attacks. There is a subtle difference, I have discovered, between acidity, fermentation, and spoilage.

Then there was also a time I fell in love with the flavor of ground pepper, so I indulged on it the first chance I got: I drizzled ground pepper generously on top of a piping hot rice porridge (lugaw). I couldn't count how many times I sneezed right after. The discovery? Not everything edible invented by God is good for you.

Disaster stories of other nature are a dime a dozen. During a house renovation, someone I won't name here (clue: a cousin's aunt) mistook the mound of white cement powder lying near the kitchen for the flour reserved for the sweet-and-sour pork balls. By the time everyone was hungry at lunch, we had to deal with the appalling scene of throwing out cemented minced pork balls from our mouths.

Nobody at home likes steamed veggies. I learned this lesson early, so to tempt people to eat healthy, I decided one day to brown assorted veggies on the pan after reading about how Maillard reaction (or the caramelization of sugars) is responsible for making food more delicious. The problem is I forgot the whole thing; I ended up broiling them to blackened state. Nobody likes charred food as well, I learned the hard way. I was also reminded that people might know by instinct that burnt protein is cancerous.

Out of sheer excitement, I once cooked a tomato-ey pork stew large enough for a family of ten, even though there were only three of us at the time. We ended up having the darned stew for two days of breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner -- plus of course, the reward of hyperacidity. Nobody had taught me that using baking soda would do the trick of counteracting the acidity.

On another fine day, I fell so in love with turmeric that I put turmeric in everything I cooked apart from curry. I put turmeric in fried egg, in stewed vegetables, in sautéed beans, etc. It's like there's an ongoing week-long Turmeric Festival. The results were varied: I discovered exotic new dishes, and I came up with something downright inedible.

But the turmeric fume, I found, is addictive. To be edible, I learned that turmeric must be chopped finely, if not ground finely into sprayable consistency. It is probably better than illegal recreational drugs. No other rival edibles come close as aromatherapy or as potpourri, save for lavender, lemon, apple, and orange scents.

After reading an article online about the virtues of eating at least 15 kinds of raw food every day, I went to a Mongolian hot bowl restaurant at the Mall of Asia in Pasay to try an old meal that I used to have there. I was sure it would give me my RDI (recommended daily intake) of 15 live enzymes from 15 half-cooked species into my bowl, so I threw the following plants into my DIY Mongolian mix:

15. carrot
14. cabbage
13. Chinese pechay
12. mongo sprouts
11. turnip strips
10. cucumber
9. tomato
8. leeks
7. young corn
6. peanuts
5. pineapple tidbits
4. onion
3. garlic
2. obviously since I can't eat rice raw, there should be celery too

Since one more raw food was missing, I scrounged around for an addition until I found a stand of freshly squeezed sugarcane juice somewhere in the mall's food court. That rounded out the list for the day. But nobody told me you could get dizzy with sugarcane juice due to the compound called policosanol combined with the shooting up of blood sugar levels.

My immune system was happy now. There was one major hitch, however: with everything half-cooked, the beef and pork strips I added as protein were stringy. (The chicken, squid rings, squid balls and fish balls I added on the side were fine.)

The biggest disappointment? This exercise in culinary titration hardly guaranteed a delicious meal. The slop tasted more like medicine, the way different perfumes mixed up together end up smelling foul, like urine. Even the Szechuan sauce failed to hold everything together. There must have been some redox reactions involved there, some proton exchanges that shouldn't have happened. What did I expect? Maybe I shouldn't have put in those cucumbers and pineapples so near each other.

In my excitement, I forgot that cooking involves chemicals, and there might be nature-identical reactants that, like I already said, don't like each other being paired together, unlike, say, tomato and broccoli, which reportedly go together fine. Apparently among certain biochemicals, there is some sort of cooperation or drug interaction at work. Quercetin in red onion and apple skin, bromelain in pineapple, and vitamin C reportedly work together as a natural antihistamine (to combat allergy), and there are other emerging studies like this. But I bet Filipinos have always known this by instinct with their endless riffs on dips (sawsawan), to bring all disparate elements together. The ingredients are not really standardized because, to suit one's taste, each bit is calibrated and re-calibrated to the angstrom and micron scales until one gets all the valence electrons cancelling out each other.

There are also other rules at play, like certain vitamins are water-soluble and some are fat-soluble, while some easily get destroyed by heat and some are not absorbed by the body if the food they come in are eaten raw. A study has shown that the fat in avocado, or olive oil, for example, in your tomato or vegetable salad will make the lycopene and other fat-soluble nutrients bioavailable; they would go down the drain otherwise.

Then then are what they call anti-nutrients. The phytate, phytic acid, and polyphenols in rice and beans, for instance, prevent our body from absorbing iron. Furthermore, soaking beans before cooking them, research says, "can help remove some of the oligosaccharides and make it easier for your body to break down the beans, making it less likely for you to have gas after eating them." Fruits and vegetables are similarly advised against as part of evening meal, as they result in gas.

There's also this new trick I've learned when dealing with carbs and sugar, which are alleged to be the top health culprit of all. As one nutritionist advised to those who refuse to go on a no-carbs or no-sugar diet, to observe not just portion control but also eating sugar together with fats and proteins to slow down the digestion and absorption. Another strategy in dealing with carbs is turning them into resistant starch by letting them cool first until they literally turn cold before reheating them prior to eating.

There are times when Einsteins in the kitchen need a break too from all that experimentation. One day, I found myself cursed by both laziness and penury, so I had not much choice. I subsisted on instant noodles and canned goods for days. I rendered much of the kitchen an irrelevant part of the house. In times like that, I discovered that the can opener is the only valuable laboratory tool.

Notes to Self for February 2026 (Recap: A Month of Oddball, Offbeat, Goofy Stuff)

I don't know what's with the whole of February, but it felt like a prank. Most of the things I was able to take in are weird, wild, and wacky stuff.

Strangely, all I picked up are either oddities of the highest order or utter ridiculousness, with mostly nothing in between. Is it just me, or the world has gone really crazy?

Maybe it's the algorithm. In this platform, if you 'like' one outlandish post, the machine gives you 100 more similar to it.

***

Actress Catherine O'Hara, the famed mother in the hit family movie "Home Alone," died. One of the lines I remember the most about the movie is hers, delivered with her guild-ridden face: "I'm a bad mother. I'm a bad mother."

***

Justin Bieber performed at the Grammy Awards with just his boxers on (and socks too just in case his feet felt cold) -- reportedly to promote his brand of boxer shorts. But with all those tattoos on, he was really fully clothed.

***

The issue of mass student promotion became a hot issue in DepEd, with the convening of EDCOM II (Second Congressional Commission on Education). So mass promotion is one major cause of illiteracy in the country.

***

"The song 'Ale' -- The Bloomfields' cover version -- became an instant hit again after a TikToker who had only around a thousand followers, went viral with her unpolished, unstaged dance to the song uploaded on December 19, 2025. Soon after, many other 'TikTokerists' recreated and refined the dance steps, further boosting the song’s popularity, which continued to surge up until February 2026." > This is a good study of how old hits and even obscure songs can randomly resurrect because of a harmless TikTok dance that goes viral.

***

A man named Jeffrey Epstein was all over the news, and the details were barf-level grisly (sex with kids! eating kids! what is that?). Truth be told, we've been hearing of such bizarrezeries about the very rich and famous and their grand conspiracies and strange religion for so long, yet the reports were still shocking, as though to confirm the old rumors.

***

How inspiring -- a story of resurrection in a largely depressing world! > "The Northern Aral Sea is making a historic comeback — with water volumes surging by 42%!" Remember that this sea turned into a dry seabed.

***

A clueless, naive, or trying-to-sound-cool person on social media called palitaw "coconut mochi," and all hell broke loose. But of course, because palitaw is palitaw, not coconut mochi. Hahaha. Rawr! But I, too, have been guilty of mindlessly parroting other writers wanting to sound cosmopolitan and all-knowing who say "kinilaw is like the Filipino version of ceviche" and so on, not knowing any better.

***

Many people rode on the AI caricature trend on ChatGPT, with the prompt, "Create a caricature of myself based on everything you know about me." Not happy with mine result because I recognized the outcome as someone else. I think it's my fault for uploading the wrong photo. This thing is better left to pros.

***

Former House Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. passed on to the great beyond. >> I have no strong recollections of De Venezia who is now being extolled as a "consensus builder" in a world where fractiousness is the norm. He is now being credited for forming political supergroups, say, such as Rainbow Coalition and Sunshine Coalition -- achievements I have long forgotten about him. It must have been because I have been biased right from the start: he was a fellow Pangasinense like PGMA and PFVR (Fidel Ramos) who like them reached the summit of his political career on the national stage, so I naturally rooted for them just because "they were our guys" (haha). ...Except when GMA got involved in that you-know-what with what's-his-name COMELEC commissioner, which the public got wind of through an illegal move (wiretapping) by who knows who.

***

There was some scandal about a gold medalist that I failed to catch, but never mind.

***

Someone creative and naughty invented the term Tsinador to refer to Sen. Marcoleta (et al.?). Another one renamed him Rodent and another reworded his surname to Mark*beta. This tells you how much he is hated by so many. But take note that he won as senator in the first place--despite his hand in having ABS-CBN close down. There must be a compelling reason for that win, too, that those on the opposite side of the fence fail to grasp -- at their own risk! ...The way they fail to grasp why someone unlikely like Duterte would even win and why his daughter might even become the next president. There's something wrong or deficient with the usual commentariat's analysis of what happened. The most rabid pro-Marcos and pro-Duterte people I know are not exactly what you might easily deride as "bobotante." (Not that I am on their side, lest I get read wrongly.)

***

An old slang term, "bonjing," gained traction for some reason.

***

Hahaha! This happened in the Taiwanese legislature many years ago. > "Punches fly in Turkish Parliament as Erdogan’s justice minister nominee sparks a fierce brawl" among legislators in suits, that is! In this corner...!

***

LOL! How many times have I read something like this? This means, if you walk confidently enough, anything -- from discarded aparador to tattered Christmas tree from 1995-- is high couture. > "During New York Fashion Week, an unexpected moment turned into a viral story when a man confidently walked the runway wearing what looked like a garbage bag. ... Soon, security realized that the man was not an official model and escorted him off the runway. The incident amused viewers online and sparked conversations about modern fashion, where even the most unconventional looks can sometimes pass as high style."

***

Pinoy sense of humor > "Viral ngayon sa San Jacinto, Pangasinan, ang isang tindahan na pinangalanang 'ELLEN ELEVEN, na mas lalong ikinatuwa ng netizens dahil eksaktong katapat pa ito ng sikat na convenience store na 7-Eleven." Bwis*t din ah.

***

In a live newscast, news anchor Karen Davila absentmindedly called another reporter named Karen as "Karen Davila," thus adding another amusing incident to the lengthening list of local newsroom boo-boos. But the gold medal still belongs to Michael Fajatin (that painfully long seconds of gibberish), with the silver going to Jiggy Manicad ("nagdadagsaan na ang mga ta*" and "ang ilog nahulog sa tao"), and the bronze to maybe Mike Enriquez? ("Ang sarap mo, Pia!"). Admittedly, even the best of them can commit embarrassing mistakes when they lack sleep or had too much gin bulag. A great consolation for all of us distant observers of the craft and 'lesser mortals.'

***

News about a student who jumped (other news items used "fell") from the LRT went viral. There's a big difference between verbs like transitive and intransitive verbs and passive and active voice verbs, you know. The student hit a passing vehicle and was even dragged along. The student died. The driver of the car was reportedly going to be charged with reckless imprudence resulting in homicide. But good thing the parents of the student decided not to press charges, which would have been unfair to an innocent driver of a randomly passing car. That law punishing the innocent must end.

***

Ian Kyle Tablon, a 4th year veterinary student in Central Mindanao and known snake rescuer, died after he was bitten by a king cobra while rescuing it from a residential area. He was known for bravely responding to reports of cobras in communities to protect both residents and the animals he cared for.

***

"Kids nowadays are weak" (that is why they are prone to suicide), said Sen. Robinhood Padilla. The backlash was quite strong.

***

I learned two new expressions from young people lately: "thirst trap" and "it's giving ____" (2016, e.g.). I don't feel like explaining the meanings for now. Go look them up.

***

A new Latino music artist, a rapper named Bad Bunny, created buzz after his unusual rise to fame from being a bagger at the corner grocer or something. I checked out his performance at the Superbowl, but I didn't particularly like it for now, but wow, the people's reaction to the 'novel' music is something. I take his newfound popularity as a signal of the Hispanization of the USA, a great pivot to, er, Hispanic culture or at least Latin America.

***

A mukbang vlogger died allegedly after eating too much. I want to know the fate of that mukbang vlogger who gorged on pure pork fat like it's popcorn.

***

ICC named Dela Rosa, Bong Go as co-perpetrators in Duterte drug war. The other ones are equally interesting.

***

Philtranco bus line ceased operations after 111 years, due to inability to keep the cash flow going. Even bus lines get tired.

***

Artworks inspired by and dedicated to National Artist Kidlat Tahimik were displayed at the Metropolitan Theater in celebration of National Arts Month 2026. The exhibit is titled “Portraits of a National Artist as Kultur Warrior.”

***

"A 13-year-boy swam for more than two miles in 'rough conditions' to get help for his family who were stranded out at sea. Austin Appelbee reportedly said that he 'focused on happy things to keep him going.'"

***

I had fun viewing this tribal art exhibit online: 'Tijd voor Papoea' (Time for Papua New Guinea) exhibition in the Wereld museum Leiden.

***

A Philippine Coast Guard Spokesperson named Tarriela said something about China that earned the approval of the likes of Abp. Soc Villegas, so I had to do a double-take.

***

Now for something totally unexpected even for the unrepentant neighborhood Marites: Actors -- superstars during their time -- Onemig Bondoc and Aiko Melendez are now in a romantic relationship.

***

Rigoberto Tiglao said Marcoleta was right and other newspaper opinion-makers wrong on RP's EEZ (exclusive economic zone).

***

A Tale of Two Husbands -- and Wives

The Sexbomb Dancers suddenly became popular once again. Their unexpected resurgence in Filipino pop culture apparently happened after a 2025 "reunion concert." A big surprise, considering their music is not something that can be considered bound for immortality, or that fall under classic or excellent category. Their name alone is eyebrow-raising from the start, a name I would associate with a vulgar Tom Jones hit song. All I can remember from them are the lines, "Ispageting pataas, ispageting pababa" and "Get get aww!" It must be nostalgia that is at work here.

Anyway, there was a lot of noise around an absentee member's husband disallowing his wife's participation for religious reasons. His name is Alvin Aragon, who turns out to be an actor, a Starstruck alumnus, and his dancer-wife's name is Izzy Trazona, who it turns out has a trans child (from a previous relationship) who are at odds with her -- again on religious grounds.

Izzy's and her husband's public pronouncements that his wife was "pinagresign ni God sa Sexbomb" and that Izzy willingly left her profession to avoid giving men occasions for sin, let's just say, as expected, got them in trouble with those who don't share their rather bold born-again religious convictions. ...When frankly speaking, these are routine homilies of pastors at their pulpit.

This shows many people have such strong feelings about these issues, to the extent that someone said such a staggering statement as this: "If it means going to hell with [my sons] for it (homosexual lifestyle or trans life), then I will go to hell with them." Wow! I had to read her statement again just to be sure I understood what she really meant. Another poster wrote that the husband's statements border on illegal category. "It's illegal to even make such comments." An actor named IC Mendoza, who says he is a son of pastors, chimed in and roughly made the same comments.

This new development can be seen as a reverse 'leap of faith' in terms of what people want to believe in, a great conviction that they are the ones being right, and 100% so. This a sizeable mass of people downright rejecting traditional Christian teaching, or choosing to have another, less literal reading.

Or it could be that the way Aragon delivered the message or chose his words was the thing that did him in, so to speak. With nuance flying out of the window, he rubbed many people the wrong way. For speaking his mind, he is now being mocked as "St. Alvin," he who has stipulated "the 11th commandment" of God.

Another Sexbomb dancer husband, who happens to be Bulacan Vice-Governor Alex Castro, reacted to the hullabaloo by saying, "May mga nagsabi, Bakit? Pinayagan ko ba? Siyempre di ba, dancer yan eh, syempre minsan seksi yung damit. Sabi ko, ok lang. Ganun ya eh. Yun sya. ... Ayokong baguhin kung sino sya. Ang ano lang, nadagdag lang ako. ... kasi ako yung asawa niya." He was widely applauded as the better husband as opposed to Aragon.

While reading all these, some delicate lines in official catechism, Pope John Paul II's "Theology of the Body," and Christopher West's and Fr. Joel Jason's talks on it kept hovering in my mind together with old arguments about whether certain gradations of dishabille, nakedness, and nudity in various contexts are censorable versus legally and morally allowable. This Alvin Aragon guy was hitting two big birds with one tiny stone!

A desultory reading in the comments section shows a roughly 50:50 ratio in public opinion on the matter. A lot of people also wouldn't back down. Apparently, both sides, while having such strong feelings about it, seem 100% certain that they are right. In terms of communication, this creates an impasse, and arguing your way is impossible, so it is best to let people calm down first and give them space to chew their cud and masticate on own thoughts and beliefs.

Whew, what a tempest in a teapot! This is one of those arguments that may be considered as "opposable thumbs" instead of "non-overlapping magisteria" -- neither of the twain shall meet, or rather see eye-to-eye, and let's leave it at that.

***

Oscar winner Robert Duvall -- once Guinness' Book of World Records dubbed "the most versatile actor in the world" -- died at 95 y.o.

***

What kind of stunt is this? It sounds basic fraud to me. > "Internet personality Jack Argota, known on Facebook as 'Sir Jack Argota,' admitted that the medical certificate he posted supposedly for President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is fake."

***

So sad! > 'Social media sensation,' street food vendor, 'Diwata' of Diwata Pares fame, went bankrupt for various reasons, chiefly business partners who didn't deliver payments. The proprietor, whose real name is Deo Balbuena and who used to live under the bridge if I got that part right, is now back to being an ambulant vendor. The great thing is he chose to keep on going. How he manages to do that despite the big fall from the top is something for the books.

***

Another thing that made the rounds and made some noise: PGMN: "When Senator Bam Aquino argued that cases of alleged drug war killings should ideally be tried in Philippine courts rather than at the ICC, some of the sharpest backlash came from within the liberal movement his family helped shape."

***

Vicente Rafael, a writer/author of such erudition and towering intellect that I have been reading through the years with admiration -- and patience, because I found his highly nuanced multidisciplinary ideas often quite hard to grasp -- died. I was surprised to learn that Lila Ramos Shahani was his wife. Rafael belongs to an elite group of writers/intellectuals that I admire from a distance. Every paper of his that was newly available online, I would download and read at leisure on weekends, even if I wasn't sure if I got him right. (I would have the same fandom-level of reaction to only a precious few: Caroline Hau, E. San Juan...) Now Vicente Rafael is gone when he could have done a lot more. How do you say "sayang na sayang" in English?

Vicente Rafael, may you rest in peace.

***

"A UST grad from Malabon became Southeast Asia's highest-selling artist. His secret? He didn't pick one Filipino identity. He painted all of them--Spanish colonial art, Japanese prints, American cartoons, street graffiti. The result? ₱275 million at Christie's Hong Kong." >> Hey, this view is something I myself espoused: I'd rather embrace everything as part of ourselves, so we get all the richer for it. Call it chop suey, halo-halo, or mongrel, but it's a rich, complicated kind of culture, and that's what the Filipino is all about that various disparate elements don't want to accept for the longest time and foreigners hardly understand.

***

A TV news reporter named Barbie Muhlach couldn't suppress her laughter as she delivered a news report on the arrival of an NBA player named Bol Bol, and we all feel her. Who wouldn't -- with a name on the script like that? Reminds me of a similar Kuya Kim Atienza incident, in which he was forced to read, through his clenched teeth, the name of an island called Z*lz*lah Koh.

***

A vlogger named FLM was arrested by PNP while eating a kani salad (or something) on FB Live. Unbelievable! Then you won't believe what happened next: a press con was held, maximized to parade him in public and humiliate him like he was guilty of a heinous crime. His archnemesis named Makagago (whose real name sounds like he's Tongan, Fijian, or Hawaiian) was present, and he exchanged invectives with the self-styled "Trilyonaryo" (who it turns out has another, real name too). These two have hundreds of thousands of following, and yet this is the first time I've ever heard of them, so under which cave in social media have I been hiding all these years?

***

February 25 was declared by you know who as a "working holiday" once again, inviting a new wave of criticism, not to mention defiant schools and, look, even LGUs. The open defiance speaks volumes, so enough said.

40 years hence, I haven't changed my view of EDSA even if the outcome in terms of politics and economy isn't what we expect or wish today. EDSA in 1986 was a miraculous event, a very Marian too, that's why there's a big brass Chinese-looking saint of the Virgin Mary at the site -- EDSA could have easily turned into Iran or Tiananmen, and yet the reverse happened along the avenue literally called the epiphany (or manifestation) of the saints despite or because of loud calls for help from a cardinal named Sin, and in the end, a devout newly widowed lady (from a landed family) named "heart of Aquinas" was installed as new president despite being most unlikely to become one.

***

But you can't be dismissive of PBBM just yet -- no, not so fast. Two politically aberrant scenes involving him happened one after another: he meeting with Sen. Risa Hontiveros and then another former foe, Naga City Mayor Leni Robredo. He pointing out that he was wearing pink socks on the occasion did not escape remarks of -- I don't know -- approval? from online commenters and assorted asungots, from the neutral to the critical. But in terms of openness to dialogue even from political enemies, he's earning plus points in my book because that is unprecedented from their end, as far as I know.

***

"A 21-year-old man ignited widespread debate after saying he refuses to work because he was born without his consent, arguing that his parents are financially responsible for him since they chose to bring him into the world." >>> Hahaha! I had the same thought in grade school ("I didn't choose to be here.") but I got philosophically lazy I stopped at it. I must have been distracted by other things in life. Who knows what toxicities I would've thought further had I extended and extrapolated this initial premise like this young man did!?

***

A Filipino actor from the black-and-white era, Pepito Rodriguez, died.

***

Travel vlogger Drew Binsky discovered a tunnel under a bridge somewhere in the concrete jungle of Metro Manila that is inhabited by an entire community. Grinding poverty is not shocking to us, Filipinos, who are often the subject of poverty porn, and yet this video still shocked I refused to watch it the first time I saw it until I was forced to.

***

Two motorists in Omaha, Nebraska, USA, stopped for the red light when, a few seconds later, the road crashed below then, sending them into a sinkhole, which was fortunately not that deep. The incident was caught on security camera, and it was riveting to watch how the two men extricated themselves out of their vehicles while bystanders didn't think twice in lending a hand -- a scene restoring your faith in humanity while staring at a little tragedy in the face.

***

Dubai chewy cookie/pistachio bomb mochi trended.

***

A no water chicken recipe trended. But you have to buy apples and one whole Napa cabbage as among the ingredients.

***

Stunt, joke, or serious? > "Nikocado Avocado, a Ukrainian-American content creator, once again shook the internet by declaring on Facebook that, after turning 35, he wants to leave behind his gay identity and start a family with a wife and children."

***

Another incredibly evil madman living it up for far too long. And the world, particularly the UN, hasn't done anything about it, with seemingly no amount of care being given to the long-suffering North Koreans.> "Kim Jong Un wins North Korea’s latest election with 100% of the votes."

***

"Scientists have discovered a hidden branch on the tree of life inside the mechanical rudder of a Great Lakes research vessel. During routine maintenance at a Cleveland shipyard in 2024, crews on the research vessel discovered a mysterious, tar-like substance oozing from the ship's rudder shaft. The material, which resisted burning and left no oily residue, was collected and sent to the University of Minnesota Duluth for analysis. Microbiologists were stunned to find that the sample contained more than 20 reconstructed genomes. Among them were organisms so distinct they represent an entirely new order of archaea and a previously unknown bacterial phylum, effectively adding new branches to the biological tree of life from a single coffee cup of sludge."

***

War between US-Israel and Iran started.

***

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was reported dead. Iranians celebrated -- most of them, to be fair.

***

Stupidity that made me laugh: "Kapag ang anak mo transgender, ang tawag sa 'yo transparent?" (Is this offensive too? Hope not.)

(AI-generated content: 0%)

Copy-pasted homily:

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God's Disruptive Guest List: Rewriting Our Table of Power

17 January 2026 (Saturday)

Today, God’s word presents us with a divine paradox. In Samuel, we see God choosing Saul, a handsome young man from a good family, seemingly the natural choice for a king. Yet, we know this choice will later be troubled, a reminder that even the seemingly "fit" are chosen for service, not status. The Gospel, however, shatters this entirely. Jesus doesn’t call the "fit" from a human standpoint. He calls Levi, a tax collector, a man complicit with the Roman occupiers, seen as a traitor and a sinner. And then, Jesus does the unthinkable: he goes and dines with all the wrong people.

In a Philippine society obsessed with pedigree, socio-political clout, and the "maganda ang lahi" mentality, this is disruptive grace. We have built tables of power, in literal and social senses, that exclude. The poor are kept at the margins, the "different" are labeled basagulero or salot, and public trust is betrayed by those seated at society’s head tables. We judge who is worthy, who is clean, who deserves a seat.

But Christ, the Divine Physician, walks directly to our Levi’s, meaning, to the corrupt, the compromised, the addicted, the ostracized. He walks to the urban poor crowded in danger, to the farmer robbed of his harvest, to the youth disillusioned by a system that seems rigged. He says, "I did not come to call the righteous but sinners." His mission is not to affirm the comfortable at their gated banquets, but to heal the broken at the messy table of humanity.

Today, we remember St. Anthony Abbot, who heard this call radically. He gave up immense wealth to seek God in the desert, rejecting the entire societal script of status and accumulation. He reminds us that to follow Christ is to disrupt the world’s ordering of value and to see that true wealth is holiness and true poverty is slavery to sin and status.

Our call, then, is threefold:

1. To See as Christ Sees: To look past the titles, the surnames, the social media facades, and see the human heart in need of dignity and grace.

2. To Sit at New Tables: To have the courage to step away from tables of exclusive privilege and to deliberately sit in solidarity with those society scorns. This is both spiritual and profoundly social.

3. To Be Disrupted Ourselves: To allow Christ to call us, like Levi, away from our own complicity, that is, perhaps in gossip, in prejudice, in silent consent to injustice and to follow him on the path of humble service.

The Kingdom of God does not have a guest list based on padrino or pedigree. It has a healing call, issued from the Cross, for all. Let us leave this Eucharist, this holy table where all are welcome, ready to rewrite the guest lists at every table we influence. For we are all, in truth, sinners whom the Physician desperately desires to heal.

Awash in Acronyms

When I entered government service in 2016, I would encounter a flood of unfamiliar acronyms in daily usage.

Government workers, I found, routinely used this group of capital letters-turned-words like everyday terms. Without so much as an intro or background explanation, they rattled off these acronyms without expanding, exploding, or spelling them out.

The first acronym I noticed to be in constant use is, of course, LGU, which means Local Government Unit, slowly popularized after the passage of the LGC or Local Government Code.

The next ones are names of the different LGU departments and locally based national government agencies or NGAs: PESO for Public Employment Service Office, RHU for Rural Health Unit, DILG for Department of the Interior and Local Government, and so on.

Then there's the MDRRMO, Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, which is apparently a municipal government department closely associated with the OCD (Office of Civil Defense) and NDRRMC (National DRRM Council).

A number of times, I had to be corrected by the MDRRMO staff to get myself to distinguish between MDRRMO and MDRRMC (MDRRM Council): MDRRMO, they said, refers to just the LGU department, while MDRRMC refers to the entire decision- or policy-making body comprising of practically all LGU departments, locally based NGAs, and select NGOs, CSOs, and POs, in which MDRRMO is just the secretariat.

Virtually every unit (a section under a department), department, and agency has an equivalent acronym: PNP, BFP, MNAO, BPLO, LYDO, PDAO, LSB, etc. (Like many employees, I myself was a walking acronym, designated as the "PIO.") DepEd is not exactly an acronym, but a near-acronym called portmanteau, in which the first syllables of a phrase are combined into one term. In each LGU department and government agency, I found, you'll get easily drowned in a sea of jargons that are abbreviated into more acronyms: EO, RA, IRA, CLUP, AIP, IPCR/OPCR, CDP, LDIP, LEDIPO, ABC, etc.

In particular, the DSWD's (and other agencies') ayudas are a dime a dozen, so to speak: 4Ps, MAIP, AICS, AKAP, TUPAD, etc.

In the case of AKAP and TUPAD (which are acronyms that are actually Tagalog words for 'embrace' and 'fulfill,' to lay it on thickly), I have this feeling that these terms are thought up to be acronyms first, and the matching meaning was figured out much later, resulting in something forced. It's just like those acrostic performances in grade school and schoolmarmy speeches that revolve around short big words like "T-R-U-T-H," with each letter assigned a high-sounding virtue that is discussed at length to sleep-inducing extent.

Acronyms are, of course, a necessary shorthand for long-winded phrases or terms (noun and adjective strings), facilitating communication. It is interesting how, over time, due to frequent usage, a number of acronyms have evolved into accepted words in lower case: radar, sonar, laser, scuba, snafu, taser...

When I was younger, someone intimated to me that disco actually meant "dancing in Satan's company," that's why I think I avoided night clubs for a long time until I couldn't. (The claim turned out to be a canard.)

But do government acronyms have to be so lengthy? The Bicolano writer/poet Marne Kilates once griped about exactly this in a lengthy FB post -- a valid complaint. Why can't NDRRMC be just NDRC or something, for example? How can anyone read an acronym like the kilometric PCANRRD or supposed to pronounce PPCLDO without wincing at the length? After all, the whole point of making acronyms is brevity, so having a very long acronym is a thing of irony.

Here in our town, at least one local public school is called DTCMMES. (The closest contender to the tongue-twisting throne is a private school called SVCSBI.)

Veteran journalist Maria Ceres Doyo wrote at length on the same subject of acronyms, but more as an observation: how government has a penchant for, not just using, but also creating, acronyms every minute it seems, especially during the covid-19 pandemic (ECQ, GCQ, LSI, etc.), and lately, according to her latest column article (MIA, AWOL, CBL, POI, HDO, FFJ, EJK, POGO, WPP, PDL).

In our LGU, I had to deal with such long acronyms with weighty-looking letters in quick succession: MPFSDC, KKSBFI, JKWMWC, each one a rather lengthy mishmash or hodgepodge of an agglomeration or concatenation. At least, MLGOO sounds somewhat like a lowing bovine, though choking at mid-sentence.

Sometimes, as a reporter or writer, I just find myself writing down too many acronyms in one breath, but the editor in me is forced to find a way to make the sentence less clunky, clumsy, or cumbersome. For example: "Ang DOLE-R1 ay nakipagtulungan sa LGU, partikular na sa PESO, POSO, MPDC, MDC, at MCDO, upang maipaabot ang panibagong tulong sa mga navalidate ng MSWDO bilang qualified TUPAD beneficiaries."

These government acronyms tend to agglutinize too, further dizzying or confounding you. Examples are DOST-SEI, DA-WB-PRDP MPIMU, etc., turning the 'alphabet soup' into an acronym salad. You have to understand, however, that oftentimes, an acronym needs to be lengthy to make it distinct to avoid redundancy, as in the case of MAC, which currently stands for three things: Municipal Advisory Committee, Mayor's Action Center, and something else ending in Council.

When to use an acronym as is? The rule of thumb is to use an acronym without explanation if it is known or familiar to a great number of people like DOH, DPWH, etc. However, one must define an unfamiliar acronym the first time it is used, but only if it will be used again at least once elsewhere in the sentence, paragraph, or article -- otherwise, spell it out.

Imagine an Orwellian world or 'The Handmaid's Tale'-like (Margaret Atwood) scenario where acronyms are banned and criminalized. That would mean hours and hours spent on writing down and reading same word strings repeatedly when they could be absorbed in split seconds otherwise.

An excess of acronyms, however, would mean a much-abbreviated world of telegraphic messages -- all done in haste, amidst a life of unreflective busyness -- bereft of the luxury of time best spent on smelling the proverbial roses, or at least spent on savoring the beauty of the written word, down to every jot and tittle of the fine print.

Acronyms are like special punctuation marks such as semicolons: they should be used sparingly, only when absolutely necessary. Or they are irritating to read at a fast clip especially if you only half-remember what they mean.

(A anti-travelogue of sorts that I wrote before I left Manila in 2016 based on unfiled police reports pieced together from my diary)

~1997: ‘Blonde’ Bystander Snatches Boy’s Red Cap

One of the earliest crimes I have ever witnessed face to face in Metro Manila is this little snatching incident.

Inside a jeep bound for home at 7 PM, I saw a teenage boy wearing a red cap on his head, one of those imported NBA baseball caps that must have cost Php1,000 apiece at American Boulevard. The boy looked clean-cut in that generic style preferred by the ‘rich kids’ residing in Paranaque’s exclusive villages.

We passengers were busily avoiding one another’s stolen stares because we were stuck in the area’s usual traffic, the red light at the nearest junction itself staring at all of us unblinkingly. Then the traffic light suddenly turned green.

In a flash, a boy in dirty shirt and blond-dyed hair emerge from the shadows in the street and, with a deft hand, grabbed the ‘rich kid’s’ red cap. Just in time, the jeepney driver revved up the engine and drove on as though in a car chase.

Mission accomplished for the thief.



2008: An Arresting MRT Story

It was the weirdest sentence ever constructed, and it boomed in the white noise of the afternoon: “Ikaw, ikaw, ikaw, ikaw, at ikaw, sumama kayo sa ‘kin!” ("You, you, you, you, and you, come with me!")

It was an order from a tall, muscular man in black, pointing at, tapping, and then commandeering five tambays (hangers-on) parked beside me one lazy afternoon, as I stood just outside the Pasay Taft MRT turnstiles waiting for a friend. The man in black appeared to be on his own, but knowing it’s his turf, he must have been surrounded by his men, also disguised in plain clothes. The tambays had unkempt wear and unruly hair.

“Me?” I thought, stunned and, of course, alarmed and incredulous. "What do you mean 'you,' you idiotic old piranha?" I thought. "If you would so much as round me up among the usual suspects, I'll be sure to embarrass your whole family including your ugly pet iguana."

Through the mercy of God, the bouncer-built policeman excluded me. I sighed, relieved after being nearly choked by breathlessness. I walked away fast from the persons being arrested, which included one woman who looked like she could use some nose pore strips. Exoneration by dissociation.

Then a little commotion ensued. This certainly called for some serious investigative journalism. Being at the wrong place at the wrong time, I just had to stick around. People from all walks, converging all of a sudden from the four corners of the wind, followed the arresting officer as he hauled off five people -- all by himself -- who were too shocked to respond. He didn't restrain them with handcuffs and ball chains. Not yet. There's no need. The ugly morons were caught pointblank. Human nature, I guess. It's the way hostage-takers are hostaged themselves into surrendering. Within a narrow window of a few seconds, as criminologists learn in class.

Soon a respectably sized crowd fenced in the arrest scene, which shortly led into the cramped police booth inside the MRT concourse area. Another similarly built police officer came in as reinforcement. But the woman was smart. All of a sudden, in the ensuing commotion, she managed to break away free. I don't know how she did it, but she vanished into thin air just like that. Split-second superpowers maybe, like Darna's. And no one bothered to catch her, maybe because everyone thought she's a woman who probably had a baby waiting to milk her malnourished self to death.

But the mob and the police were unforgiving to the men. I heard all sorts of premature judgments while accusations and denials were hurled in opposite directions.

"Own up to your crime now!"
"These people should just be killed!"
"Just dump them down the Pasig River!"

I thought, "Shut up you evil, judgmental fools! Look at yourselves in the mirror! Don't you cheat on your wives too, steal kisses from some other chick, or worse, steal a one-nighter with a Php100 slut after a pimp offered you with his familiar, ‘Sir, chicks? Kahit pangkape lang?’ Shut up, you pimps, or you're next to be creamed." Obviously I found the proceedings much too fascinating to just leave and mind my own business.

Then a hapless but furious-looking fellow in a muscle shirt burst into the scene. In contrast to the suspects and the gathering crowd, every single strand of his hair was combed and meticulously gelled in place. "Have they been caught yet?!" he asked aloud excitedly, addressing no one in particular.

Soon he was inside the cramped room too, disputing all the blatant lies of the herded animals. A few irate men from the clearly thrilled onlookers lining the room stroke a mean blow to the bare-faced liars now and then. No one minded. The interrogation continued. The man in tight-fitting shirt furiously claimed that the backpack, the cell phone, and the wallet were all his, his, his. He provided incontrovertible proofs, like calling the number of his wife and the like.

"Aalis na lang ako eh, nanakawan nyo pa ko, ha?!" ("I was just about to leave, and here you are snatching my things, huh?!") He then slapped one of the guys' face, which surprisingly brooked no resistance.

All the accused were now as a flock of lambs. Yet they were nonetheless adamant. "Wala po akong kinalaman diyan," ("I am innocent until proven otherwise,") they all said.

"What?!" What asinine liars!" I thought. "I swear to God I'm gonna kill you myself with my own bare hands by crushing all your testicles! Why don't you just admit it and rationalize by tugging at telenovela heartstrings and say you needed the money because your mother is in the hospital nursing amoebiasis?"

The two policemen now kept on urging the four to admit their crime. "I believe in human rights and adamant about my position on capital punishment (anti, not pro), but you can torture these jerks later, off the record," I communicated to the officers telepathically. "You can just deny the violation later and falsely claim that everything was self-inflicted, nothing extra-judicial. Demand and extract honesty by whichever means, then be dishonest about it later." Right.

I was clearly enjoying all this. This happened for a mysterious reason or purpose, most likely to entertain the hell out of me and the captive audience.

The hooligans remained in denial up to the last minute. What did we expect? Isn't that the routine scene on the nightly news? People claiming they're innocent despite the hard evidence and pronouncing they were actually the victims?

But for a few long minutes, nothing like that was happening. Even the poor victim was getting impatient. "My flight is at 7," he kept on saying. The road to the Ninoy Aquino International Airport was certainly cramped at this hour. But the police wouldn't hear a word. They insisted on having everything put in black in white, in the police blotter.

There was no media person in sight to document the whole thing. I guess that would be me. Citizen journalist, yes? No choice. But too bad I had no portable digicam with me. And I lost the only cell phone with camera I could afford. Yes!... I lost it to scheming snatchers like these…these… ugly manimals! Argh!

Then I noticed the greenish luminous plastic rosary one of guys was wearing around his neck. A talisman for his holy adventures, no doubt. I didn’t know whether to snicker or cry “Profane!” Obviously, his talisman didn't work so far. 

There were nasty punches and verbal blows from the audience now and then. They were cheered on by the rest of the kibitzers in a restrained way, clearly a concretization of all the imagined revenge by anyone who ever figured helplessly in a snatching, mugging, or petty crime scene with this nasty band of perpetrators like this elsewhere in the big city. We were not the aggrieved party in this case, but who cares? We were all victims once.

And who cares if we are equally guilty of committing petty crimes ourselves from time to time, so long as we are not caught? That's what matters.

Everybody else was getting impatient. Even the crowd was thinning out.

But one man thought of something inspired before disengaging himself. He offered the guy within his reach a powerful one-two punch on his back for the last time. Ha-ha. Dramatic exit, you could say. "What a vengeful bastard!" I thought. Even the poor suspect, the recipient of the final blow, didn't expect that. I began to feel stirrings of pity for the alleged criminal. Alleged, because I suddenly remembered the legal rules: presumed innocent until proven guilty.

But neither did the arrested person signal the slightest desire to fight back. A-ha! I thought. People who are not guilty don't react that way: By instinct, they will fume mad at the wrong accusation.

But pitiful me smelled stirrings of Stockholm syndrome somewhere. For a minute there, I had to remind myself who the real victim was: It was the OFW (overseas contract worker) missing his flight, the Filipino who was about to leave everything behind only to be rudely pulled back to his country of origin at the last minute with one final assault, no less from five of his countrymen. All the more reason to leave, he must have thought.

"EVERYONE BACK OFF!" the first arresting officer suddenly shouted, apprehending all the shameless kibitzers. That included me, of course.

I couldn't honestly reply with "We're all citizen journalists here -- that's a crime too?"

We all did disperse like swatted flies.