The oldest person I know

The oldest person I know may, sooner or later, be no other than myself. That entered my awareness with a jolt; there are now very few people whom I know, who are at least 10 years older than I am. Frightful, isn’t it? One fine day before the pandemic, I was thinking of whom I … Read more

A Christmas Serenade

Just when I was beginning to feel like Scrooge of Charles Dicken’s “Christmas Carol, a group of young people sent me an email asking if they could serenade me with the season’s well-loved songs. Humbug! Scrooge would have screamed, but I am not like him, I am always interested in what young people are up … Read more

What now?

Frankly, I am surprised that the institutions of the United States of America have remained immutable through the course of centuries. I thought their judiciary system was going to crumble at the face of the well-planned onslaught of now former president, Donald J. Trump. He himself must have been unpleasantly surprised that the judges, prosecutors, … Read more

Missing in action

The 75th Post Master General of the USA, Mr. Louis Dejoy, is M.I.A! In May 2020, the Board of Governors of the United States Postal Service appointed him to that strategic post, not exactly to everyone’s surprise. Although he was an outsider, Mr. Dejoy is a successful businessman who was once described as a “Trump … Read more

Circumnavigating life

I am writing about Jim Toolen to show you that this world is filled with people who are interconnected without their knowing it, who made lasting impressions on each other without suspecting it, who are unaware that their lives have mingled like sand and water. Meeting someone again after the course of decades is like … Read more

The immortal

In my secret book, there are a select few who should have been and should be immortal; whom the Almighty should have frozen in time but in the pink of health and at the cusp of their creativity. These are (or were) the people who can live forever and should have lived forever, never bothered … Read more

Looking at us

For us Asians, the 19 th century was pivotal because total and absolute colonization was achieved by the European powers that invaded our region with superior fire power and technology. Our ancestors did not only lose ancestral lands and waterways, they were demolished by the battle for “knowledge production” and the “genealogy of ideas”. Not … Read more

Kill and tell

It is cheaper to kill them in a plane crash, a private plane crash, he said, rather cavalierly with a half smirk. There is no evidence, no smoking gun because the plane crashes, that is your smoking gun. He is John Perkins, retired Chief Economic Adviser and his interviewer, Patrick Bet-David, host of Valuetainment Episodes … Read more

Dear Mayor Isko,

From a distance, I am watching how you are restoring Manila’s historical contours, deftly melding the past with the present, to assure a brighter future for the city of our birth ( we are both Manila-born). Behind the City Hall, the Bonifacio monument with the decalogue inscribed on its back wall is no longer a … Read more