PARADOXICAL

 (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.)

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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, 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.

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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: "I'm a bad mother. I'm bad mother."

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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.

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The issue of mass student promotion became a hot issue in DepEd, with the convening of EDCOM II (Second Congressional Commission on Education).

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"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.

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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.

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Wow! > "The Northern Aral Sea is making a historic comeback — with water volumes surging by 42%!"

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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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 know 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 closed. There is a reason for that, 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.

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

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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!

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LOL! How many times have I read something like this? > "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."

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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."

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In a live newscast, news anchor Karen Davila absentmindedly called another reporter named Karen as "Karen Davila," thus adding another amusing incident in the lengthening list of local newsroom boo-boos. But the gold medal still belongs to Michael Fajatin, 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. A great consolation for all of us distant observers and 'lesser mortals.'

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News about a student who jumped (other news items used "fell") from the LRT went viral. 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.

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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.

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

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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.

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A new Latino music artist, a rapper named Bad Bunny, created buzz after his unusual rise to fame from being a bagger at the 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.

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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.

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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.

***

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: 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).

***

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 then.

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 Sexbonmb" 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 rathe bold born-again religious convictions.

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 an alternate giant '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 choose 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 talks on it kept hovering in my mind together with old arguments about whether certain gradations of nakedness/nudity in various contexts are censorable versus allowable.

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, 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 is 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 Vincent Rafael is gone when he could have done a lot more. How do you say "sayang na sayang" in English?

***

"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.

***

A TV news reporter named Barbie Muhlach couldn't suppress her laughter when delivering a news report about 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 incident.

***

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.

***

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. 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.

***

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

Copy-pasted homily:

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

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.

Back to 2016
(Ano Ba 'Tong Pinasok Ko? A reflection on my 2016 work-related photos)

Sari-saring alaala at emosyon ang naglaban-laban, naghalu-halo, at nagtagisan sa aking isipan nang buksan kong muli ang folder na "2016" sa aking lumang external drive. Deleted na ang mga files na ito sa lumang desktop at laptop ko, kaya't buti at naisave ko ang karamihan ng mga larawan at artikulo. Ngunit tanda ko na may ilang mga 'pics' din ang nawawala at di ko na mahanap pa sa di malamang dahilan. (Navirus? Nadelete ko nang 'di nalalaman?)

Tandang-tanda ko pa ang pagdating ko rito sa munisipyo ng Bayambang sa probinsya ng Pangasinan noong Agosto ng 2016 matapos ang 25 na taong pamamalagi sa Maynila. Pagod na 'ko nun sa mahabang panahon ng pakikipaglaban sa siyudad, kaya't parang grasyang dumating sa buhay ko ang oportunidad na makapaglingkod dito sa sarili kong bayan. (Actually, ikalawang bayang pinagmulan, dahil ipinanganak ako sa Pandacan.)

Down na down ako nun kasi nanalo sa eleksyon si Digong Duterte, pero gets ko naman kung bakit: na-disillusion ang mga tao sa mga "Dilawan" lalo na sa mga naging insensitive actions at statements ni "PNoy" noon, at siyempre malaking factor yung mga paninira online ng Marcos forces sa mga Aquino.

Anyway, ni wala sa hinagap ko itong pagbabalik ko, kasi feeling ko noon wala naman akong mahihita rito sa bayan ng Bayambang; walang kahit anumang oportunidad. Napakarami kong kakaibang experience sa Metro Manila that scraped the highs and lows of life na naging malaking tulong sa naging papel ko sa buhay bilang isang writer, at malaki ang pasasalamat ko run. Pero napakalaki rin ng pasasalamat ko nung umuwi ako rito, dahil 'di ko na rin kaya yung buhay sa siyudad -- yung natatrap araw-araw ng hanggang dalawang oras sa traffic sa EDSA at kahit saang lupalop -- papasok pa lang yun, mataas na gastusin, sari-saring polusyon, overcrowding, ingay, init at alinsangan, krimen, at sobrang kumpetisyon sa trabaho...

Tumatanda na rin kasi ako nun. Kumbaga, hindi na rin ako mabenta sa merkado. Kaya subconsciously siguro, hinahanap-hanap ko na ang simpleng buhay probinsya. Kaya siguro nag-LSS ako sa kantang "Take Me Home, Country Roads" ni John Denver noon, isang kantang di ko naman kapanahunan.

Pagdating ko rito, I didn't know what to expect, pero nature ko to give my all in everything I choose to put my heart into, kaya yun ang inatupag ko: ibigay ang buong sarili. Pero bukod dito, napakalaking factor yung malaman kong magsisilbi ako sa isang tao na kumbinsido akong may tunay na puso sa paglilingkod-bayan. I think I perfectly matched his campaign tagline of "Baley Ko, Pawilen Ko, tan Tulungan Ko" (Bayan Ko, Babalikan Ko, at Tutulungan Ko), because even though I had no billions of bucks to offer, I had a million bits of knowledge and experiences to share that can be helpful to a lot of people back home.

Sari-saring tao ang aking nakilala mula sa iba't ibang antas ng lipunan, kaya't iba't ibang ugali rin ang aking kailangang pakibagayan sa araw-araw. May magalang, may sweet, may super friendly, may medyo maangas at mayabang, may di namamansin na akala mo kung sino (feeling superior siguro?), may aloof (sobrang tahimik at mahirap timplahin), may super-daldal, may medyo bastos.... Napansin kong medyo marami-rami sa mga ito ang ilag sa akin sa 'di ko mawaring dahilan -- bagay na nakapagtataka sa akin dahil hindi ako sanay sa ganoong trato. Kahit saan kasi ako magpunta dati, feeling ko maraming tao ang natural na friendly sa akin kasi ako ay si Mr. Nice Guy at mukhang mahiyain kaya't hindi intimidating.

Kahit nakailang linggo na ako sa trabaho, medyo disoriented pa 'ko nun. Sa halip na CENPELCO, ang nasasabi ko lagi ay MERALCO. Tapos biglang magke-crave at maghahanap ako ng iba't ibang bagay na wala rito o mahirap hanapin. (Tulad na lang ng Vietnamese food like pho, New York pizza ng Yellow Cab, oatmeal-raisin cookie at coffee latte sa McCafé, o kaya'y bagel ng Country Style.) Akala ko talaga minsan nasa Maynila pa ako. Subalit bigla akong matatauhan na nasa Pangasinan na talaga ako dahil ang mga naririnig kong pananalita sa Tagalog ay biglang iba ang punto at may kakaibang mga adisyunal na salita. Example: "Bakit ey?" "Ta ni, pupunta ako dun." "Halika na siren."

Sa dami ng kailangang gawin sa araw-araw, wala akong panahon sa sarili ko. Wala rin akong panahon makipagkaibigan ng malaliman. Buti na lang at marami akong alam na anti-stressors o iba't ibang paraan upang magrelax at magreset nang hindi na gumagastos o umaalis ng bahay o upuan. Ang importante sa akin ay magawa ang dapat gawin, makuha ang tamang impormasyon sa informant ng agad-agaran, dahil kumbaga, ang balita ay hindi naghihintay ng oras. Hindi ka rin hihintayin ng mayor kung kelan ka ok. Lahat ng task at request niya ng tulong, kailangang magawa agad.

Besides, tulad ng nasabi ko na, nasa stage na ako ng life na tapos na sa pakikipagcompete sa iba, pagpapa-impress, 'pakikipaglandian' (for lack of a better word), pakikipagplastikan, etc. Galing kasi ako sa mga apat na taon ng psychospiritual counseling noon sa Maynila kung saan pinakamalaking bagay sa akin ang self-awareness at authenticity. ...At bago pa 'yan, top priority ko ang spiritual growth, dahil ilang taon din akong aktibo sa transparochial Catholic charismatic movement. Because of these out of the usual pursuits, ang dami kong naging kaibigan at kakilala hindi lang sa simbahang kinabibilangan ko kundi sa iba't ibang Protestant at iba pang Christian churches, both online at offline. (Para ngang mas marami pa akong nakilala through FB Messenger kahit never ko pa na-meet in person).

This means a bizarre (because previously unthinkable) set-up in which Christians of various denominations got together to pray, even pray for one another. Normally, it shouldn't even happen, given our basic theological differences.

Batid kong hindi ako madaling maispelling ng iba, o ng karamihan. Iyan ay dahil diyan sa background kong iyan na pinili ko -- consciously at by choice talaga. May pagka-monk ang napili kong journey sa gitna ng tinatawag na secular world. Yan kasi ang sa tingin ko na pinaka-akmang "state of life" ko given the unique circumstances in my life.

Anyway, iyan ang tunay na ako pagdating ko sa Bayambang na hindi alam ng mga taong nakakasalamuha ko. Alam kong medyo kakaiba at di maiintindihan ng marami. Isang taong di na bumabata kaya't marami sa aking mga ka-opisina ay parang mga anak ko na, kaya't di na mahilig magpapicture, pumorma ng husto para magmukhang guwapo, at let's just say may mga iniinda na ring sakit. Iba na kasi ang naging prayoridad ko sa buhay: knowing God, evangelization, spirituality, service, community, as well as wholeness, psychospiritual growth, healing from various traumas of childhood, grief work, self-actualization, search for deeper meaning and purpose in life, peace of mind.

Pagrepaso ko sa mga photos sa archive ko sa trabaho sa ilalim ng taong 2016, kapansin-pansin sa akin na marami sa mga nakilala ko at nakatrabaho ay wala na sa munisipyo, at nakalulungkot na ang ilan sa kanila ay wala na rin sa mundong ito. Ang isa pa nga sa kanila ay suking duktor ko pa, na isa sa mga nabiktima ng covid-19 noong pandemya. Ang isa naman ay pumanaw matapos madisgrasya sa motorsiklo, at ang isa ay namatay dahil sa karahasan -- binaril ng kung sinumang demonyo sa 'di malamang kadahilanan.

Sa loob pala ng sampung taon, ang dami-daming maaaring mangyari, kaya't laking pasalamat ko sa Diyos na andito pa ako at marami pa rin naman sa mga nakagisnan kong makasama sa trabaho. Marami na rin ang dumagdag na pumalit, ngunit 'di ko maiwasang malungkot sa mga wala na, lalo pa't mayroon silang kanya-kanyang naiambag.

Kapansin-pansin din na wala sa ni isa mang photo ang taong nag-chat sa akin sa FB na mayroong opening sa munisipyo: ang noo'y Tourism Officer na si Chris Gozum. Parang walang naging pagkakataon, o kaya'y isa yun sa mga nawawala dahil nadelete unintentionally.

Makikita rin sa mga photos ang laki ng pinagbago ng munisipyo mula sa taong iyon. Dahil sa tapat at mabuting pamamahala, ang laki rin at ambilis ang pinagbago ng bayan ng Bayambang kahit na sa mga di inaasahang bagay.

Designated as the town's Public Information Officer (meaning unofficial, without the Sangguniang Bayan's institutionalization via legislation or ordinance), I also wrote most of the mayor's speeches. It tickled me no end that it was my own words the townfolk listened to without knowing each time the mayor read his speech from a prepared script. It felt weird each time I had to listen to myself on the biggest occasions as the mayor delivered a speech, and no one else knew it except for those few individuals who had knowledge of the inner workings of the local government.

Dahil mahilig nga akong pagsulat, I attempted to make a diary as a PIO, pero di ko kinayang isustain dahil siyempre nakafocus ako lagi sa mga araw-araw na gawain ng Munisipyo. I was too busy documenting the mayor's first 100 days in office. Nakakapagod, pero somehow, I felt at home, like figuratively and literally.

Anyway, hindi nagtagal ay napagtanto kong dito ako inilagay ng Diyos sa dahilang Siya lang ang nakakaalam. From my own point of view, it's an entirely different battleground, but it is not much different from a religious missionary work after all. In public service, I have found, it is the same life of service, hard work, selflessness, hiddenness, a constant battle with the egotistical self in the name of serving others, serving God's people, it is the same dependence on God for provision of needs and most especially wisdom.

In this new battlefield, not everything is, of course, "coming up roses" -- that's par for the course. For example, I found myself in the middle of a fierce political war in a town where everybody knows everybody, something which was very difficult on my mental health, on top of my huge workload, thus causing me sleepless nights. It's because the 'war' involved things that are supposed to be anathema to me: hatred, vindictiveness, hidden agenda, intrigue, lies/slander/false charges... Every day, there was also a clash of ideas, of personalities, of perceptions and interpretations, and most especially assumptions and presumptions. 'Pag sobrang hirap ng sitwasyon, napapatanong na lang ako bigla ng, "Ano ba 'tong pinasok ko? Akala ko ba puro petiks lang ang trabaho sa gobyerno?" Pero kalauna'y nareresolba din at nagagawan ng paraan.

It was also a humbling experience to serve in this capacity while being incapacitated or inadequate in some way. I was challenged in so many ways I never expected, starting with the day's topic or subject of news coverage. (At this point, I know it's corny, but the song "A Whole New World" kept playing in my mind.) Lahat kasi bago sa akin. At lahat ay kailangan kong alamin. Nakakagulat na ang lawak pala ng scope ng trabaho ko. Basta kasi may pasabog na balita, kailangan ko itong alamin at sundan, kahit ano pa yan: sesementuhing daan, feeding ng mga malnourished, tulong sa pulis at bumbero, pagsasaayos ng palengke, paggawa ng bus terminal, bagsakan, trike terminal.... Nevertheless, in that way, it seldom got boring for me, a person who gets bored so easily. May mga balita na tuwang-tuwa ako icover, at mayroon ding 'di ko masyadong type, pero lahat ay kailangang gawin ng tama at may puso.

It was a far cry sa mundong dati kong ginagalawan: the length and breadth of Metro Manila, especially the Pasay-Paranaque-Makati areas, BPO/KPO firms, side hustles like editing papers and writing for publications as a freelancer.

Ang hirap pala maging mayor! (Try niyo para maintindihan niyo rin.) It means overseeing more than 30 units/departments, coordinating with several national government agencies, and supervising 77 barangay chiefs of a town with about 120,000 residents. In terms of paper works alone, you need to go over and sign a pile of documents around a foot high every single day. You have to constantly balance the oftentimes conflicting needs, demands, wants, and wishes of different sectors. I don't know why anyone would want all that. One time, I said to myself, I am not that crazy (yet) to even dream of it. Unless you were called into it, para kang kumuha ng batong ipupukpok sa ulo mo. (Sorry na sa lahat ng pulitiko, haha.)

That's what 2016 was all about to me, and this story continues to this day, 10 years hence, a life of living by faith, following one's own unique calling, a life of reliance on something bigger and something outside myself.

"Humility is not thinking of yourself but thinking of yourself less."

 Resty S. Odon is a Filipino writer, journalist, editor, and public information officer from Bayambang, Pangasinan. He has a varied background in writing, publishing, and local government communications: (bayambangmunicipalnews.blogspot.com)

• He’s a seasoned freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in major Philippine publications such as Philippine Daily Inquirer, Philippine Star, Manila Times, and asianTraveler. (bayambangmunicipalnews.blogspot.com)

• Odon graduated with a B.S. in Biology from UP Baguio as a DOST scholar and later worked in Manila’s knowledge process outsourcing industry before focusing on writing and editing. (bayambangmunicipalnews.blogspot.com)

• Since 2016, he has served as Public Information Officer (PIO) for the Bayambang Local Government Unit (LGU), where he produces historical and cultural publications and manages the town’s official media platforms. (bayambangmunicipalnews.blogspot.com)

• He is an author and essayist; his book Being Filipino This Side of Town reflects on Filipino identity, and he won third prize in the Doreen G. Fernandez Food Writing Award (2024), writing on regional food and culture. (bayambangmunicipalnews.blogspot.com)

• Odon also works on documenting local history and cultural projects, and contributes to both local and national media, including being a guest columnist for Northern Times in 2025. (bayambangmunicipalnews.blogspot.com)

• Beyond journalism, he’s been involved in culture and heritage documentation, such as compiling traditional literature and expressions for regional projects. (Scribd)

In summary, Resty S. Odon is a writer-journalist and communications professional with deep ties to Bayambang’s cultural life, local governance, and media landscape. (bayambangmunicipalnews.blogspot.com)

 Resty S. Odon is a Filipino freelance writer, editor, and public servant who currently serves as the Public Information Officer (PIO) for the Local Government Unit of Bayambang, Pangasinan.¹