MEDIUM RARE Five billion pesos and nine years later, CNN Philippines will be off the air in a matter of days. Sky Cable will come under new management at 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 26, when it transits to PLDT as its owner. The two media entities whom we welcome into our homes every day for information and...
MEDIUM RARE Prinsipe Bahaghari, aka The Little Prince, has taken on an unexpected form as a puppet – “papet” in the vernacular – in a surprising show of what an amateur reviewer might call transfer of technology. First of all, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery is a story, not a...
MEDIUM RARE Certain that “cosplay” would not appear in my well-thumbed dictionary, I turned to “play” and discovered there are more or less 18 different meanings, used as a noun or verb. In the time of Coldplay – “fantastic” entertainment, quoting PBBM describing their concert...
MEDIUM RARE Last December, the Christmas gift I got for a friend – he is patient, born with a sunny disposition, cheerful in every weather – was a T-shirt with a drawing of drivers smiling in close-up with the legend “Heavy Traffic. Happy People.” I thought the slogan was worthy of an...
MEDIUM RARE If Quezon City experienced some Baguio weather for a few days and Baguio residents had Christmas weather all over again, would those feelings amount to climate change? In olden times, i.e., when we were young, Baguio was the No. 1 dream city for its pine trees and springtime weather,...
MEDIUM RARE If it’s not over much, it’s under enough. Wasted food is a habit in high-income families while poor families don’t have enough to eat, three times a day. The homeless who are also waterless can only dream while gardeners in gated subdivisions turn on their hoses to the max...
MEDIUM RARE For bon vivant Benjie Yap, the throngs of faithful devotees of the Black Nazarene of Quiapo massing at the Luneta for the Traslacion at the fringes of Manila Hotel have always been an extra blessing on his birthday, Jan. 8, whatever the year. It may be also a test of his friends’...
MEDIUM RARE I, too, have a story to tell about the image of the Black Nazarene of Quiapo church. Watching last Tuesday’s TV coverage of the Traslacion, or procession of the miraculous image from Quirino Grandstand at Luneta Park to Quiapo church, I could not help remembering how my mother...
MEDIUM RARE The more things change, the more they stay the same... You’ve to give it to the French, for stating a fact of life with such savoir faire. So the new year is now nine days old, but what did we get after welcoming 2024 with a bang? On Jan. 1, a deadly earthquake that killed nearly 100...
MEDIUM RARE Certain days and hours of the week are set aside for senior citizens to enjoy movies free, minus the popcorn. It was an aha! moment when the producers of Monday First Screening, a movie about second chances for senior citizens, struck gold with their first wide-screen obra. Last we...
MEDIUM RARE Having been reassured that we SSS pensioners would be getting our 13th month pay aka Christmas bonus, I rushed out to the bookstore to see how many titles I could afford. True enough, books may now be considered the latest luxury. A pocketbook priced at US$16.99 costs ₱951....
MEDIUM RARE New Year’s resolutions, anyone? A list of to-do’s that happens mostly in the imagination. Are they still fashionable? Are they doable? Just like the fireworks that streaked the dark sky in electric colors and the noise created by firecrackers last Sunday, the last day of 2023, those...
