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...
MEDIUM RARE More to see, more to love. That’s what to tell tourists looking for a strange new world to visit: They should come and visit and fall in love with the Philippines, or fall in love in the Philippines? Either way, more fun. But, first things first. When the slogan says LOVE THE...
MEDIUM RARE A nonagenarian is someone who’s between 90 and 100 years old. As this is the first day of the second half of the year, it’s a good time to pay tribute to their achievements, good health and good cheer! On her birthday tomorrow, July 2, Imelda R. Marcos will turn 94. The former First...
Medium Rare On his first day as Land Transportation Office chief, Hector Villacorta was greeted by an enthusiastic fixer. “Renewal, renewal!” was the shouted offer, “two thousand pesos!” A rude awakening, a signal of things to come that cry to be banished forever? Indeed, eliminating fixers...
MEDIUM RARE There’s bad news and there’s bad news, but some news is so bad that readers’ or viewers’ attention does not falter, in fact they become more riveted as the story worsens and dramatic details unravel. This was the case last week when the world watched with bated breath as the...
MEDIUM RARE Filipinos go to Bangkok mostly for the shopping, secondarily for the food. There’s a kind of similarity between Thai and Filipino cuisine, so much so that when Conrad Hotel brought in Chef Mink Suraraksa from Bangkok’s Waldorf Astoria for their Legendary Chefs Series with focus on...
