WALA LANG I missed what would have been my first snowfall. It happened on Thanksgiving Weekend the year I was in graduate school at Georgia Tech. Tatay had kept in touch with Texan GI Joseph Slay who was billeted with us during the 1945 Battle of Manila. He invited me to visit and I spent a...
Weddings then and now WALA LANG “Kumare, nais na yatang manahimik nitong dalawa,” began my mother-in-law to be, Conchita Hidalgo-Sandoval, as Alice and I sat there silently. My mother and I had come to her Makati home to formally ask for her hand, the ancient Filipino pamanhikan. It was so...
WALA LANG It has been depressing to read Facebook posts of photos with labels like “Happy Birthday in Heaven,” “See you again in heaven,” “Remembering Mama and Papa in heaven,” and announcements of masses for colleagues, friends, and relations who likewise have left for heaven—we give...
WALA LANG Founded in 1892 by Andres Bonifacio, the Katipunan was betrayed by Teodoro Patiño and fighting began with the Cry of Pugad Lawin (a.k.a. Balintawak) in August 1896. The brutal Gov. Gen. Camilo Polavieja (called “Butcher”) fought back with reinforcements from Spain, arrests and...
Wala Lang PARIS IN THE EYES OF FILIPINO REFORMISTS La Vie Parisienne, Juan Luna (GSIS Collection, National Museum). The impression one gathers from textbooks is that ilustrados in Spain were one in advocating reform in the motherland. This was apparently not the case. The Filipino community was...
Jeffrey Querubin Launching his singing career quite belatedly, Curve Entertainment’s inspirational crooner Jeffrey Querubin, has been a working professional for a long while now. For him, there’s a right time for everything. “I believe that God gave me the right moment to be an inspiration to...
WALA LANG White-haired, bleary-eyed, wrinkled, and hearing-challenged seniors were once young. So were the men and women standing frozen on plaza pedestals. They all were once vigorous youths, had loves, disappointments, ambitions. A street in Paco and another at U.P. Diliman and a house in Taal...
WALA LANG THE RELUCTANT POLITICIAN Dr. Galicano C. Apacible Demosthenes would have been speechless over democracy Pinoy style. Our founding fathers set the tone. Members of the Malolos Congress (1898) were theoretically from everywhere but it’s strange that Pedro Paterno of Manila...
WALA LANG … there’s no place like home. Still on a Virtual History Trail The Pact of Biak-na-Bato was a truce during the Philippine Revolution, signed on Dec. 15, 1897. It provided for an end of the hostilities and, among others, an amnesty, reparations, and the exile of Gen. Emilio...
WALA LANG The man embarked on his career as a U.P. law professor, numbering among his students three who rose to be Chief Justices of the Philippines. Now at age 91, Estelito P. Mendoza continues in the practice of law. In between, from 1972 until 1986, he served as solicitor-general, minister of...
WALA LANG Robert Louis Stevenson narrates the story of Dr. Henry Jekyll, a talented and sociable doctor who concocts a serum that transforms him into the malevolent Mr. Edward Hyde. An updating could be on Netflix, the strange case of the DBM Procurement Service and Pharmally Pharmaceutical...
WALA LANG …there’s no place like home. Still on a Virtual History Trail I don’t know where the Pact of Biak-na-Bato was actually signed, but negotiations took three months (September-December 1897) with negotiator Pedro A. Paterno shuttling back and forth between Manila and San Miguel de...
