I do not know Teddy Casiño And when I say that, I mean that I do not know him personally, and at a random meeting he wouldn’t know me from Eve. I’ve been asked by friends if I’m endorsing him though, and the answer is yes, because for someone I do not know, I trust Teddy.
I trust him for exactly the reasons you have been made to think he is not worthy of your vote. I trust him because he is an activist. (more…)
If you had the chance to have the entire Philippines hear what you want to say about the coming elections, what would you write? For one day let’s all blog, tweet and post about our hopes, aspirations, reminders and challenges for the Pinoy voting public.
If there’s one play that had everything going against it, it just might be this one. After all, much ado about Cherie Gil playing Mrs. Robinson happened at the launch of Repertory Philippines’ current theater season. And that is to say: Cherie Gil. (more…)
IV.
At eight years old, my task was to read to my Lola, then blinded by cataract and cancer. Articles from the two newspapers and the monthly Newsweek Magazine that Lolo subscribed to were already chosen early in the morning, long before I was due back from school at noon. Lolo, having read some of these articles by the time I arrive for my task, would doze off as I read to Lola. Meanwhile, Lola would be attentive to my mistakes in pronunciation and enunciation, and try to explain what it was that made reading certain words difficult, in between reacting to the opinions of the day’s columnists. (more…)
I am the last person to defend SM, and I do think we’ve got enough malls and condos in this country. But one of the first things I asked when the petition to save the Philam Life Theater began to gain ground was: why?
And no, not why did SMDC buy the Philam Life property, but why was this property sold at all?
Yet that doesn’t seem to be a question that many people are asking. Instead we are asking questions about why SMDC needs to build more condos, why it needs to build more malls. Instead we throw expletives at Henry Sy and his empire, and say he is greedy and nothing else, forgetting that while the latter might be true, what drives this greed is the fact that they can afford it. And that the government allows it.
This is not to say it’s right, as it is to ask: who allows oligarchs to buy this country’s lands and services? Why is it even acceptable that basic services are owned by one, two, three families? Whose fault is it that our oldest structures, the ones that are monuments to our past, are being sold, one after the other? Why is the only other option for these structures, neglect and forgetting?
And who is blameless in this oft repeated enterprise of a piece of heritage being lost to time or capitalists, and us all raising our fists too late?
