Category Archive for: pangyayari

komentaryo

InSecurity Bank #bankingcrises

Across the holidays, and until now, we saw a rise in even more stories of OTPs being requested out of nowhere, and scams happening through and across our banking system. It seems important to finally talk about my own story from early 2023, one that I feel is important to serve a public that is generally at the losing end of problems like this one which, by the way, is not necessarily the subscriber’s fault. Note too that I had the privilege to have legal assistance, and my lawyer had quickly sent word to the bank to contest their decision not give me back the money I lost.

That bank being Security Bank.

For a bit of context, I hold accounts across BDO, BPI, Metrobank, and Security Bank. This is not a measure of how much cash there is (haha), as it is a measure of how much interbank transfers cost (a whooping P25 pesos, at least), which is huge if you get, say, P900 peso cheques for your writing.

Now let me start by saying that across all these four banks, for the longest time, it was Security Bank that was my favorite. I thought it was the most secure bank across all the others I had. They call you to tell you when your ATM’s been cut because of questionable activity, and then tell you when the new card’s ready for pick-up. I had family who believed in Security Bank’s, uh, security, and I even got insurance with them because of it. It was for that reason that I also had most of my savings there, and have had it there for years. It’s also important to point out that when friends started to experience unauthorized transactions from other banks pre-pandemic, none of it was happening with Security Bank. So it was easy to believe that, well, it was secure.

Until it wasn’t. Early in 2023, when other banks already had multiple cases of OTPs being asked for by mobile numbers not connected with the banks themselves, I received a phone call that talked about my Security Bank account. The person knew all my details with the bank, including the last four digits of my account, the last time I did an online transaction, the last time I did a face-to-face bank transaction, even who I talked to in the bank to get my insurance. There was no reason to think this person was not from Security Bank. But here was the clincher: when the person asked for an OTP, it was not sent to my mobile number through an unknown or regular mobile number — which would have made me suspicious. Instead the OTP was sent through the number of Security Bank. The same one that sends me confirmation of my online transactions, the same number that sends OTPs. (more…)

kultura

Legit bulaga: TVJ gets its groove back

It was difficult not to be brought to tears by that last moment of Tito Sotto, Vic Sotto, and Joey de Leon on Eat Bulaga! at once looking defeated and trying to contain their anger, as they said goodbye to their audience on GMA 7. It really was about the unceremonious ending and how these three men—icons and institutions all—weren’t even allowed to say goodbye to a time slot and an audience it has had for decades. For some of us, we grew up only knowing of noontimes with this show, our childhoods filled with memories of segments and jokes and moments that had it as backdrop, as subject, as familiar viewing habit.

That I cared at all was a surprise in itself. I had stopped watching Eat Bulaga! a long time ago. It could’ve been at some point in the Aldub phenomenon when admittedly, I couldn’t understand what the fascination was about. It is more clearly about Tito Sotto, when he took a strong anti-Reproductive Health Bill stance. Either way for over a decade or so, Eat Bulaga was ever only in my peripheral vision, a fixture in one’s popular consciousness.

Which might be why that goodbye, happening after the abrupt and disrespectful act of taking the show off the air, might have been emotional for viewers. It didn’t matter if you liked TVJ or not, or were watching Eat Bulaga! or not in recent years. To me, what was clear was that an injustice had been done to the people whose cultural labor went into that show. It didn’t matter what was happening behind the scenes, or whether we think they are the bane of pop culture (—to be clear, they are not). To have cut this team’s access to their audience, disallowing them a proper goodbye from a show that they had built for over three decades—that speaks to issues bigger than our beef with the show’s humour or hosts or mishaps. (more…)

komentaryo

Four cases, one justice system

It would’ve been silly to be surprised by the acquittal of the son of Justice Secretary Boying Remulla on charges of illegal drug possession. That this sentence even exists is its own absurdity: at any other time, and at any other place, a government official, especially of an agency that has to do with Justice, would be the first to step down given a case of this magnitude, if only to be able to say that his position should not be reason for the wheels of justice to turn any differently for his son Juanito Jose Diaz Remulla III.

But we know by now that Secretary Remulla staying on as Justice Secretary is a symptom of what has ailed governance since the Duterte years: a lack of shame from our government officials, which is to say their ability to take on and keep jobs regardless of whether they deserve it, or have credentials or credibility, and really, their predisposition to keep political power on sheer kapal-ng-mukha.

And so it seems more productive to see these moments as an opportunity to talk about Justice in this country and highlight how it applies only to a few, how due process and speedy trials only work for those who have connections to those in power. The best way to prove it would be through the experience of our political prisoners, grown exponentially during Duterte years.  (more…)

komentaryo

PH airspace shut down, overseas dev’t assistance projects, and asking better questions

It’s become normalized since the 2022 election results that at least on the shamelessly middle/upper class echo chamber of Twitter and Facebook, little is done to flesh out issues. After all, it is easier to just pin the blame on Duterte-Marcos. After all, we are angry and exhausted, and would want nothing more than to draw that line between ourselves and the 31 million that voted Marcos-Duterte into power.

While the impulse is understandable, anyone would be hard put to prove that this is the right way to deal with issues at this point. Not when issues are important and critical, and especially when we are so easily distracted by noise, both deliberately manufactured and inadvertently skewed away from asking the right, more difficult, questions.

The mess at our airports on January 1 is one such instance. Because the noise has been primarily about pinning the blame on Duterte—he who inaugurated the Communication, Navigation, Surveillance and Air Traffic Management (CNS/ATM) project—and on Marcos, who has generally fallen quiet as he is wont to do, what we’ve evaded are actual questions about Overseas Development Assistance (ODA) projects, the delays that this particular CNS/ATM project faced, and the three (count that!) presidents under whom this particular project fell—Marcos excluded.

(more…)

komentaryo

Thinking of FVR

In 2016, I met FVR at the book launch of Carmen Pedrosa in Fully Booked BGC.

It was serendipitous in more ways than one.

This was in June, when those of us elsewhere in the political spectrum (i.e., non-Duterte voters) were still adjusting to the idea of Duterte as President. We saw FVR arrive at the launch while Ma’am Carmen was speaking, and as I have been trained to always have a bunch of our independently published books in the car, we scrambled to get a copy of Angela‘s EDSA Uno Dos Tres for FVR.

After the event proper, during which he spoke and paid tribute to Ma’am Carmen, but also poked fun at her seeming fascination with Imelda (haha!), I went up to him to give him a copy of the book, introducing myself as my mother’s daughter. Ma’am Carmen stepped in to introduce me as well, as a young writer who was with a group of old journos on a China trip the year before. FVR’s eyes lit up, and out came jokes you would hear from your grandfather or Tito, that it was easy to laugh-out-loud and roll ones eyes at him.

At some point we sat down, and he asked how Mama was, what she’s been doing—he remembers having sat down for interviews with her in the 90’s for the first EDSA book, and so I said, all of that is in EDSA Uno, plus whatever new information on EDSA that has since come up. He asked what it is I do, what it is Vito does, when I said I was a columnist with The Manila Times, we talked about politics a bit. But it was a very light conversation, the tenor of which was mostly Lolo jokes: “Totoo ba ang glasses mo?” he asked. And when I said yes, he pokes his eye to reveal that his is just a frame with no lenses: “Ito kasi para matalino lang tingnan.” (more…)