HOTSPOT For those living under a rock, vlog comes from the words “video” and “blog,” while blog comes from the phrase web log. The title of this piece is a play on the theme of the Philippine Blog Awards many years ago — “one blogging nation” — which referred to Filipinos’ love...
HOTSPOT We would sometimes go to the province for summer vacation, but we were suddenly and hurriedly brought there in late February. The year was 1986. I can’t remember if Mama explained to us why. What was certain was that it was a free and early vacation, almost a month or two ahead of the...
HOTSPOT If voting were held today, President Marcos Jr.’s new electoral alliance is on-course to dominate the 2025 national and local midterm elections. Marcos himself boasted that he has been able to field candidates not just for the 12 Senate seats, but for all the over 18,000...
HOTSPOT It has gotten tough to react to current events these days, since everything is no longer as predictable and everything we used to view as permanent can now easily go away. This week, 215 members of the House of Representatives signed and endorsed the impeachment complaint...
HOTSPOT Like many of my friends, I was surprised by the recent Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) rally that appeared to be against the impeachment process being initiated against the Vice President. Then, many were surprised to find out that a group called “National Coalition for the Family and the...
HOTSPOT This week, I had the opportunity to visit Bacacay, a small town in Albay. The town’s patroness is St. Rose of Lima, formerly the principal co-patroness of the Philippines alongside St. Prudentiana until 1942, when Pope Paul XII declared the Blessed Virgin Mary under the title of...
HOTSPOT Perhaps one of the first big political frustrations of my college contemporaries happened nearly three decades ago. It wasn’t about a presidential election, but the selection of our paper’s editor-in-chief. Going into the selection process, we were confident that our aspirant had the...
HOTSPOT My sister’s first grandson Calix was supposed to visit Friday, his birthday, but a hopelessly-inept work manager texted his mother late Thursday to take back the approved leave because the company would be understaffed. Why that became our family problem that the work manager even went so...
HOTSPOT I won’t be able to forget 2024. I would gladly say goodbye to it, but would always remember it for many reasons. On a personal level, this is the year we marked an important family milestone: the birth in February of my sister’s first granddaughter Stella Avery. We were as happy...
HOTSPOT The young ones who are transitioning into adults are wondering why Christmas nowadays seems to be not as fun as when they were kids. They are slowly discovering an age-old secret. This secret is passed on through generations. It is quickly discovered by working students, young breadwinners,...
HOTSPOT In the run-up to International Human Rights Day, the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) last week handed out the first-ever IBP Human Rights Awards to the country’s most outstanding human rights lawyers, namely, Edre U. Olalia for Luzon, Kristian Jacob A. Lora for Visayas, and...
HOTSPOT There are only few families in the country who don’t fear getting sick. They are the richest and wealthiest ones – many of them possessing generational wealth, political power or both. Not a few own or partly-own hospitals and medical centers, or are connected with them by sheer...
