MEDIUM RARE With so many SM malls to choose from, where do you think Tessie Sy-Coson does her shopping? “I shop abroad!” came the surprising reply, until she added, “Otherwise I’d be working.” In other words, this workaholic lady would be noticing things, observing people, checking into...
MEDIUM RARE Barbie Mattel is 60 years old, would you believe? Oh, well, in Barbieland you can be anything you want, such as being a Ken rather than a Barbie. The movie “Barbie” begins at the beginning: “Since the beginning of time –” In the US where Barbie and “Oppenheimer” ruled the...
MEDIUM RARE As President BBM rattled off numbers and figures – up to the trillions! – I wished the producers of his televised State of the Nation Address had the viewing audience in mind: They’re not all 99.9 percent numerate. Two sets of figures that were easiest to absorb had to do with his...
MEDIUM RARE He was a builder of churches, a tertiary hospital, at least one school for Catholic boys and girls. Professionally, he was a banker. At heart, he was a lover of music, a silent impresario. What is not so obvious from a brick-and-mortar point of view, he was a keeper of memories of our...
MEDIUM RARE State of the Nation Address. SONA. As old fogeys will tell you, a sitting president’s yearly report to the nation that dates back to “panahon pa ni Quezon,” i.e., Quezon’s time, circa 1935. The format has stayed the same from one president to the next. And as anyone who speaks...
MEDIUM RARE This one’s for you, Social Welfare Secretary Rex Gatchalian. There’s a family living in the Baseco Compound in Tondo, Manila, where a 43-year-old is the mother of 14 children. They would’ve been 15, except for the one who died in infancy. Their father is a mechanic of sorts, but...
MEDIUM RARE Needed: Four typhoons with enough rain to pull up the normal water level of Angat dam. Wanted: A typhoon without floods stopping traffic in the cities, drowning crops in the farms, forcing the evacuation of families (into a situation that’s no longer so much a necessity as a seasonal...
MEDIUM RARE Save water, not now but yesterday. “We know the worth of water when the well is dry,” according to Poor Richard’s Almanack (18th century). We knew our well was drying up even before El Niño could bear down on our fields and farms, on our cities, dams and reservoirs. We knew how...
MEDIUM RARE Can a middle-income society like ours afford quality education? True, tuition is free in public schools, colleges and universities, but at the other end of the spectrum, private schools charge fees that to many parents aspiring to give “the best education” for their offspring, a...
MEDIUM RARE Year after year after year, Polytechnic University of the Philippines hits the top spot as producer of the “most employable” graduates. And year after year, few bother to ask why so. After a short conversation last week with Chino Salcedo, who has been teaching in PUP’s San Juan...
MEDIUM RARE Brace yourselves for a three-cornered fight ...! The battle for supremacy at high noon is one week old today. Whether the TV audience is fickle or faithful, loyal, and true, the initial ratings are in. TVJ on TV5 starring Tito, Vic, and Joey... versus GMA’s Eat Bulaga hosted by Paolo...
MEDIUM RARE Upper middle, middle, or lower middle? The important thing in measuring a nation’s worth, ac-cording to Robert F. Kennedy of the famous JFK family of the United States, is not so much how much it is worth, in figures, as in how happy its people are. Bhutan and Finland are far away...
