PARADOXICAL
The faith chroniclesSaturday, March 07, 2026
"What You Laugh at Reveals Your Character"
"What You Laugh at Reveals Your Character"
One of the most valuable lessons I have learned in life is to never poke fun at the personal weaknesses, misfortune, and private foibles of people, most especially the sick, the weak, the disabled, the elderly, the silently suffering -- with few exceptions depending on the context.
As an insensitive youth many years ago, I had been guilty of all of the above in my wish to be funny.
I learned my lesson the hard way.
As a college student and boarder in Baguio, I tried to poke fun at one of the house help to make him feel at ease with me. Apparently, I rubbed him the wrong way because instead of laughing, he got offended when I was only trying to make a joke at his expense.
Again in college, I was at the beach with my classmates when a male classmate saw a very old man in his white undies about to take a dip in the water and said, "Ha-ha, kulubot na!" (Ha-ha, he's wrinkly!). I found the remark hilarious because true, what with all his old man bits sagging, until I felt guilty at laughing along with the rest -- perhaps realizing at the back of my mind that we were all staring "at the future version of ourselves," as someone put it.
Sometimes, my frank nature, which I must have inherited from my Pangasinense father and grandmother, get the better of me whenever I make cutting remarks that have the capacity to offend deeply, and needlessly, not just one person but an entire family.
I figure not everyone has the same sense of humor as I. And we never know what chord we'd strike with the 'right' most hurting word, no matter what our intentions are.
At yet another instance, because I strongly disliked this old politician who struck me as lazy and dumb who waddled into rooms like a penguin, I wrote something about his weak knees as a pun on his famed weaknesses, but the next morning I found my own knees aching for no reason even when I had perfectly healthy knees. So I took the "instant karma" as a strong sign of disapproval from the universe even if I technically didn't believe in the Hindu concept.
Add to this the Bible study talks on "Speech and Wrongdoing" that I've attended that advise everyone to have nothing but good words and not to say a word if you have nothing good to say, with Biblical passages as supporting material. With seminars like that, naturally you end up with one thoroughly guilt-ridden conscience even if you happen to love humor, comic strips, comedy bars, and sitcoms. Yet I have proven that comedy is possible without being mean for meanness' sake.
Since then, TV shows that strongly used political incorrectness as among the tricks up their sleeve in order to elicit laughs did not appeal to me because they made me feel guilty. For this reason, slapstick comedy may be funny on some level, but guilt-inducing at the same time.
I remember writing a lengthy essay, once upon a time, to rebut a young man after noticing a relentless pattern of behavior in his writing on a major newspaper where he was a columnist. He routinely laughed at, lambasted, and lampooned people just because they were older than he was. I didn't know then that there was a term for such a red flag: ageist, ageism.
This is not about extreme 'wokeness,' or a tendency to get easily and overly offended at the slightest commentary even when valid and called for, even if warranted. This is a matter of basic courtesy and a conscious choice to be kind and to do good.
My instinct now says it's wrong to laugh at PWDs, the elderly, frailty, the mentally ill, depressed people wallowing in their un-nameable sorrow, the alone and lonely... Laughing at their status or perceived misfortune is somehow a kind of judgment. What if they were not "being punished" or "paying for their misdeeds" just as we have wrongly judged? What if they are on a journey to becoming saints or some other mysterious reasons?
For another instance, just as we shouldn't be dismissive of the powers of youth, we shouldn't be dismissive of old age either. I can easily name a dozen people who have achieved much, like transform entire towns, even in their advanced age.
As they say, laughing at the weak and others' weaknesses reveals who we are.
There are a few exceptions to this, I would warrant:
First is when you make fun of yourself.
I guess poking fun at one's foibles is also equally acceptable, even expected, among intimates -- between and among family members and close friends -- but within the confines of a safe private space, not in the public square. It is a form of acceptance of an inescapable reality: one's humanity.
Jabs among intimates are considered okay if the people involved know the person well and issued within a limited space involving a minimum number of people. This is a sign of comfortable familiarity with each other. Each one knows the person well enough to know whether the person can take the hit without going berserk or not.
Being self-deprecating means you do not take yourself too seriously. After all, you are just as fallible as the next guy. Taking a jab at one's age means being comfortable with yourself, being at home in your own skin, warts and all. That does not mean devaluing your state of life or your contribution.
Nevertheless, even in this context, I'd rather not delve into negative humor for fear of "breaking a bruised reed or extinguish a smoldering wick." I'd rather dwell on uplifting people for their positive traits, even if it is easily mistaken for bootlicking, patronizing, or some such intent.
What is out-and-out bad and should be discouraged is self-deprecation for its own sake. Abasing oneself should come from a place of strength, out of the necessity of knowing your place in the whole scheme of things. Self-deprecation out of low self-esteem is a kind of debasement. It is not heathy -- it is a defeatist attitude -- and should not be encouraged.
Second is if poking fun at personal weaknesses and foibles is part of a work of fiction or art that drives at an important truth or higher purpose, like when you are dealing with public 'sins' or social follies which are of great public concern. In this context, I would probably excuse the humor of Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain, Dave Barry, Evelyn Waugh, Kurt Vonnegut, David Sedaris, Erma Bombeck, Helen Fielding, Maureen Dowd, P.J. O'Rourke, and at home, Jessica Zafra, Simeon Dumdum, et al. After all, even God mocked the devil. (My favorite is Garrison Keillor (of "Lake Wobegon Days," etc.), of whom I am suddenly reminded that I had found a signed used book of his at a Booksale shop one time, but I couldn't find my copy right now.)
I still vividly remember how a fatwa was issued by an Islamist cleric against Salman Rushdie after the British-American-Indian writer published the novel "The Satanic Verses," and how a newspaper cartoon in Denmark poking fun at Muhammad ended up being a global subject of the same decree to kill in cold blood.
I would hate a world wherein what is funny and what is not would have to be legislated. If we can't easily tell the difference, what does that say about us?
In Pangasinan, the traditional culture is unforgiving when it comes to this. With Pangasinenses being a happy, lighthearted people, there is a tradition of giving certain folk "pangaran" -- pejorative aliases or alternate names born of one's own weakness or shame in a way that sticks with the person for life. For example: an amputee would likely be called "Ariel ya Pukol" (Ariel, the amputee) or a cripple "Juan ya Sikwel" (si Juan na pilantod). Someone who was obviously mentally ill and who must have stolen a chicken once upon a time was once christened "XXX Matakew na Manok" (XXX the chicken thief), to everyone's entertainment.
Pangasinenses are not just frank, they are also mapangaran and mababalaw (mapanglait and pintasero), as can be gleaned from their choice words to criticize, which is myriad. It is, therefore, a saintly challenge for the onion-skinned to not get hurt and to be kind in this brash, straight-talking culture. Congratulations to you if you survive here with your self-confidence intact.
The prevailing mood here is, if you are the subject of one's joke, you have to make an equally hilarious riposte. Or else, you have to take it on the chin and wait for unkind people's comeuppance or for God to be the one to avenge you.
I am worried for people who are careless with their mouth. That's because I've been there. Because from experience, words are not just words, and the people you once dismissed with a laugh always have the last laugh -- guaranteed.
(AI-generated content: 0%)
Thursday, March 05, 2026
Quote: Only God can
" 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. " Amen๐๐๐
We Can't Be Colorblind in a World of Incredible Hues
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.
Monday, March 02, 2026
March 2026 Recap
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 โspiritual liberationโ 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 โBongโ Suntay faced widespread criticism from lawmakers, public officials and celebrities over his controversial remark about what he deems to be his natural male reaction upon 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.
โAlam 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 anoโng pwedeng mangyari pero siyempre hanggang imagination na lang โyon. Pero โdi naman siguro ako pwedeng kasuhan kung ano ang na-imagine ko eh,โ said Suntay.
>>> So basically Suntay is saying women are to be blamed if men get sexually aroused by them because it is 100% normal for men to get sexually aroused at the mere sight of women, more so if the woman is attractive like Ann Curtis and if she wears revealing clothes. The view was correctly called misogynist, as it shifted the blame for his fertile thought solely on women.
It is the final days for โMt. Kamuning,โ the much-derided footbridge in Quezon City that has become some sort of an icon of flawed urban structures.
President Marcos inspected this week the newly completed P87.3-million Kamuning Footbridge and Busway Station that will replace the 7-year-old structure built in 2018 during the Duterte administration, which gained infamy and notoriety for being unsafe and extremely inconvenient to use.
Saturday, February 28, 2026
Notes on EDSA 2026
Friday, February 27, 2026
Post before Delete
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).
Thursday, February 26, 2026
Memories of EDSA from a Thousand MRT Rides
(๐๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ง๐ฐ๐ญ๐ญ๐ฐ๐ธ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ช๐ด ๐ข ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ท๐ช๐ด๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ต๐ฆ๐น๐ต ๐ง๐ณ๐ฐ๐ฎ ๐ฎ๐บ ๐ข๐ณ๐ค๐ฉ๐ช๐ท๐ฆ๐ด. ๐๐ต ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ต๐ช๐ฎ๐ฆ ๐ ๐ธ๐ณ๐ฐ๐ต๐ฆ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ฐ๐ณ๐ช๐จ๐ช๐ฏ๐ข๐ญ ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ๐ด๐ช๐ฐ๐ฏ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ต๐ฉ๐ช๐ด ๐ฆ๐ด๐ด๐ข๐บ, ๐ ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ต๐ช๐ค๐ฆ๐ฅ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ข๐ต ๐ฏ๐ฐ๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ฅ๐บ ๐ฉ๐ข๐ฅ ๐ฆ๐ท๐ฆ๐ณ ๐ธ๐ณ๐ช๐ต๐ต๐ฆ๐ฏ ๐ข๐ฃ๐ฐ๐ถ๐ต ๐๐๐๐ in ๐ต๐ณ๐ข๐ท๐ฆ๐ญ๐ฐ๐จ๐ถ๐ฆ form ๐ง๐ณ๐ฐ๐ฎ ๐ข ๐๐๐ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ข ๐ญ๐ฐ๐ธ๐ญ๐บ ๐ค๐ฐ๐ฎ๐ฎ๐ถ๐ต๐ฆ๐ณโmaybe ๐ข ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ง๐ญ๐ฆ๐ค๐ต๐ช๐ฐ๐ฏ ๐ฐ๐ง ๐๐ข๐ฏ๐ช๐ญ๐ข's ๐ฎ๐ข๐ด๐ด ๐ฎ๐ฆ๐ฅ๐ช๐ข ๐ฑ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ง๐ฆ๐ณ๐ฆ๐ฏ๐ค๐ฆ๐ด ๐ข๐ต ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฆ ๐ต๐ช๐ฎ๐ฆ, ๐ข๐ฏ๐ฅ ๐ด๐ฐ ๐ ๐ต๐ฉ๐ฐ๐ถ๐จ๐ฉ๐ต ๐ฐ๐ง ๐ฅ๐ฐ๐ช๐ฏ๐จ ๐ช๐ต.)
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 escalatorsโeverything 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, โInput! Input!โ 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 needโexcept 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 blessingโa 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 monthsโyearsโof dust, detours, and traffic-induced despair. We told ourselves, half in jest and half in threat: It better be darned serviceable, or thereโd be hell to pay.
And then there it wasโon that battered corner of EDSA at Pasay Road (now Arnaiz Avenue)โa giant billboard rising like a peace offering: โCubao to Makati in 15 minutes!โ It featured a generic, street-smart construction worker as poster boy, neon lights blinking reassurances into the night: โSafety First!โ โPlease bear with us.โ โYour taxes are working for you.โ Iโm 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 fondnessโthe 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 Ayalaโthe 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 IyerโโTo travel is to taste hardshipโโwhile half-expecting someone to shout โEmergency!โ into the compressed air. At other times, I soundtrack the entire stretch of EDSA with techno or punk rock from my brotherโs 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 strangersโ 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 billboardsโBorgy Manotocโs 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 EDSAโs 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 senseโat 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 lagโthose hours of mental recalibrationโare 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-1โwhich slices through the intimate, decaying grandeur of old Manilaโthe 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 โMura lang, piso isa!โ 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 metropolisโcapable 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 1986โthe 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 feelโdespite everythingโa 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.
Friday, February 20, 2026
An accurate summary of the Rodrigo 'Digong' Duterte Presidency
Former President Duterte earned global infamy, praise at home
Story by Agence France Presse
MANILA, Philippines โ 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, Duterteโs 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 โ 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.
Duterteโs 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.
โKill themโ
โIf you know of any addicts, go ahead and kill them yourself, as getting their parents to do it would be too painful,โ Duterte said hours after being sworn in as president in June 2016.
Months later, he would liken the deadly crackdown to the Nazisโ mass murder of Jews, while vastly underestimating the number of people killed in the Holocaust.
โHitler massacred three million Jews. Now there are three million drug addicts (in the Philippines). Iโd be happy to slaughter them.โ
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 peopleโs 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.
โI simply love Xiโ
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 โ 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 nationโs former colonial master, the United States, in favour of China.
โI simply love Xi Jinping,โ Duterte said of the Chinese president in 2018.
โHe understands my problem and is willing to help, so I would say โthank you, Chinaโ.โ
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 prosecutionโs allegations are strong enough to proceed to trial.
Thursday, February 19, 2026
Cooking is Chemistry
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.)
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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, donโt 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 sautรฉed 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.
Wednesday, February 04, 2026
February 2026 Recap / Notes to Self
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 songโs 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 โ 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 Erdoganโs 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 โPortraits of a National Artist as Kultur Warrior.โ
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"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? โฑ275 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.
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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.
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A no water chicken recipe trended. But you have to buy apples and one whole Napa cabbage as among the ingredients.
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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 Koreaโs latest election with 100% of the votes."
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"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.
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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was reported dead. Iranians celebrated -- most of them, to be fair.
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Stupidity that made me laugh: "Kapag ang anak mo transgender, ang tawag sa 'yo transparent?" (Is this offensive too? Hope not.)
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