Because apparently in order to run a nation, what is most important is who our parents are and how they brought us up. Apparently, the good that the parents stand for is necessarily the son’s and the daughter’s. Never mind that we are all more complex than that, and apparently for Grace Poe, never mind that so often throughout PNoy’s administration (and across Kris Aquino’s career), it has been said that his parents must be turning in their graves.
I’ve lived in this country all my life, grew up commuting between Mandaluyong and Quezon City to go to elementary school, Mandaluyong and Pasig for high school, lived in QC near UP Diliman for college and the first jobs I held after graduation.
It took forever before I learned to drive myself around the city, and while that had its perks, I enjoyed taking the MRT to go see exhibits on Pasong Tamo, or whenever I needed to get myself to QC for errands. I walked when I could, up and down Shaw Boulevard, to the nearby neighborhood groceries, or to the malls on EDSA-Crossing.
Doing the arts and culture beat from 2011 to 2013, it always only took me an hour to get from Mandaluyong to Quezon City or Manila, to go to, say, UP Diliman or the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Add 30 minutes to that if it rained.
None of this holds true in 2015. (more…)
Because for whatever reason the President and the Liberal Party have no shame in telling us all that they are trying very very hard to get Mar Roxas and Grace Poe to come together as one team for the 2016 Elections, it also seems imperative that we point out who’s the biggest free rider of all: Senator Chiz Escudero. (more…)
I had read about the stories of the members of the Talent Association of GMA (TAG) Network with sadness and frustration, compassion and anger. I could not believe that this institution, this high profile media network, could be so unkind to its workers of 5, 10, 15 years. I could not believe that the same space that I thought had treated me well enough for three years (or so) as a regular contributor for GMA News Online, had decided to treat its workers so badly.
Because being unfair to another, oppressing one’s workers, is a decision one makes. But also being silenced by fear — that makes us all complicit. (more…)
Probably the one thing I am most thankful for having gone to UP Diliman for an undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature in the latter half of the 90s, were the set of literature teachers and minds available to me, the ones who were well-grounded in nation and how and where theories are limited in capturing where we are, what we think, where to go from here. (more…)