Raymundo W. Lo, MD, FPSP

Climate SOS

Here I am in Christchurch, on the South Island, the pristine  and green Garden City of New Zealand, preparing to return  home to the Philippines, with the news that Super Typhoon Man-yi a.k.a. Pepito, just made landfall in Luzon, wondering if my flight will be able to land safely in Manila.

New age in America?

The stunning electoral victory of Donald J. Trump has left the world in a cloud of anxiety and nervous speculation. In his campaign speeches, he kept emphasizing “America First” and “Make America Great Again” (MAGA). It will usher in a new age of isolationism not unlike that seen in the early 1910s and in the 1930s. 

A tale of two countries

It was with some hesitation that I accepted an invitation to fly to China, specifically Guangxi province, for the First Bonsai Clubs International (BCI) Landscape Bonsai International Convention, knowing the growing tension that continues to fester between China and the Philippines over the West Philippine Sea (traditionally called the South China Sea). Should war break out during the time we were there, we might have been stranded during the hostilities. But the lure of seeing the dramatic landscape of its limestone karst hills amid the two lakes and connecting rivers that inspired beautiful paintings by Chinese artists of the past proved too strong to refuse.

Beeline for Leni

We were all witnesses to a phenomenon not seen before. Here is a lady who campaigned for the presidency and lost (though this is the subject of an ongoing protest in the Comelec and the Supreme Court), and who retreated to her private life. Now, she is just a candidate for mayor of her hometown. 

Wrong sense of priorities

Recent national developments are disturbing, to say the least. With Senate hearings revealing the rot in Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGO)/Internet Gaming Licensee (IGL) (thanks to Sen. Risa Hontiveros), media had a field day covering the exposés detailing how some local governments had been compromised by foreign nationals running criminal enterprises right under their noses. Then came the Quad Comm investigations where explosive revelations about the extrajudicial killings (EJK) surfaced, which implicated the former president and his underlings in a reward system for killing “drug” targets. The more prominent the personality killed, the higher the reward.