MEDIUM RARE According to the lunar calendar, today, Sept. 3, is the first day of the eighth month. (August in the Chinese calendar is September in the Gregorian.) Exactly half a month or 14 days later, Sept. 17 (Gregorian) will be the day to celebrate the mid-autumn festival. As understated...
MEDIUM RARE Going by government data – in this case Philippine Statistics Authority – a three-meal consumption of ₱64 per person per day “does not classify” that person as “food-poor.” By the skin of their teeth, PDL’s, persons deprived of liberty, are way above the threshold:...
MEDIUM RARE “Such a beautiful country,” sighed the retired soldier. With such beautiful people, I added. The civilian lawyer chimed in, “And nothing has changed or moved forward in the last 40 years.” True or not? No one in our lunching group of five was bold enough to loudly agree or...
MEDIUM RARE If it’s any consolation, there’s no long weekend coming up in September. As of now, that is. Thank God for favors like spring-like weather, no scorching sun, and smooth superhighways to make travel to the south – Silang and Tagaytay, for example – vacation-worthy last week. Even...
MEDIUM RARE Should it be spelled as one word, or two, or two with a hyphen? Whichever, pay day is a working national holiday which happens on the 15th or 30th, or 10th and 25th, according to an employer’s choice. Unfortunately, it is also the day when bills need to be paid or collected, and...
MEDIUM RARE A batch of little girls who are five years old are making history. They’re the first cohort of kindergarten kids to crash the gender wall at Ateneo de Manila in Loyola Heights, Quezon City, an all-male bastion of learning exclusively for boys in the grades since 1859. You’ve...
MEDIUM RARE When I told Cook I was giving her ₱64 for marketing, the look she gave me was one of horror mixed with terror. She was speechless. To add to her dismay, I told her that one peso less would qualify her as poor. The 64-peso meal is a challenge. Can a person, as one government agency...
MEDIUM RARE The universe has a message for golden boy Carlos Yulo: “Soar, Caloy!” Those two words are spelled with letters found in Caloy’s name. According to the ancient art of anagram, every person’s name, whether they know it or not, contains a secret or secrets pertinent to their life....
MEDIUM RARE Thank God there’s a Friday every week. Last week it was Friday the ninth of August, and it turned out to be a fun night for the three of us. There was a fourth person, but he was not present though he might as well have been, for the number of times his name was mentioned. ...
MEDIUM RARE By his own count, it’s been 33 years since we stopped Leo from returning to Taipei, his home base – but not his home – because we could not imagine anyone else cutting and styling hair (like a barber whose services become something of a lifelong attachment as far as their clients...
MEDIUM RARE The story goes that heaven’s deities would release once a year the malicious, malignant spirits who have been trapped on earth for their misdeeds. [Meanwhile, there’s word – no written memo, no official notice – that applicants for a driving license who happen to carry a...
MEDIUM RARE Hip hip hooray, six cheers, or three cheers for each of the two gold medals won by Carlos Yulo in the Paris Olympics 2024, a two-day haul that stunned us and put a shine to the red-white-blue-and-gold of the Philippines’ participation. Caloy is worth more than his weight in...
