When you see hundreds of people standing in line for hours under the hot sun so they can buy 2 kilograms of NFA rice - so that they can save P50 - who do you blame?

When you look back and see that during the time of President Marcos, we were a rice-exporting country but today, we are one of the world’s top importer of rice, who do you blame?

When you realize that our neighbors, Thailand and Vietnam, are the world’s top exporters of rice and yet many of their advances in rice farming were developed in the International Rice Research Institute in Laguna, who do you blame for our own country’s lack of progress in rice farming?

Sa Mahal Kong Kapatid,

Congratulations! You made it! I’m sure your mind is filled with memories and reflective thoughts as you close a chapter of your life.

Graduation is not only the end of a chapter. More importantly, it symbolizes the first step in your next journey. And as you begin your next adventure, I would like to share with you these two poems and six pictures that have guided me in this game we call “Life.”

You and I belong to the digital generation and whether we like it or not, we leave digital footprints wherever we go in cyberspace. When we use our emails, surf the net, update our Friendster or Facebook, and write posts and comments in weblogs, we leave permanent traces of our past and present that might affect our future.

To help us understand how our digital footprints affect us, let’s use an Edward de Bono thinking tool that I often use in class with my students. It’s called PMI (Plus, Minus, Interesting) and it’s a simple graphic organizer that can help us weigh the advantages and disadvantages of our digital footprints.

It would always be the same crooks, the same money interests who would take fullest advantage of democracy or any kind of government in the Philippines, while the poor and the brave would always lose out. The batters change in the game of Philippine politics, but the baseball team remains the same and the game remains fixed.

- Ninoy Aquino [1]

As we celebrate the 28th anniversary of the EDSA People Power Revolution, it would be good to look back on the wisdom of the man who inspired us to unite as a people and defend our country against a corrupt government. We are more aware of Ninoy’s oft-quoted, “The Filipino is worth dying for,” but I chose the one above because it is more suitable to our present times.

…we are all victims of the abuses made by the Arroyo administration to our battered nation.

And just like battered women who have successfully left their abusive husbands, so too must we say goodbye to the Arroyo administration. We must move away from our delusion that things will get better if we give them another chance. It’s time we come to the realization that this administration has put our nation in danger. We must say to ourselves, “We deserve better!”

We must force ourselves to take rational action and show our government that abuse of power is unacceptable and we will not tolerate it any longer. We have to show our support for Jun Lozada so that other witnesses can come out and tell their stories about the ills of the Arroyo administration…

The Year of the Pig will be a memorable year for me because it was in August 2007 when I started blogging. Marc encouraged me to join the Pinoy Blogosphere’s Buwan ng Wika Blog Writing Contest. And so I entered my first post, Ang Mother Tongue at Lingua Franca (along with its English version). Writing that essay made me feel like I was in high school again. It felt great to be able to express my self and my ideas. Blogging has allowed me to write anything and everything I want to write about. Every time I write in my blog, I get to live out my childhood dream of becoming a writer.

Now, before I continue, I would like to say that this is not a critique of the Pope’s message. I am not in a position to challenge the Pope’s knowledge of theology and its applications in our world. These are my personal reflections. I would highly recommend my Christian brothers and sisters, even the non-practicing ones, to do the same - read the letter for yourselves and reflect on it. There are many news articles about it in various newspapers but they’re all influenced by the newswriter’s views as to what’s important and significant. So you have to read it for yourself and write down your personal thoughts on it.

I believe that it is in our power to overcome and banish suffering. I believe that suffering is not part of God’s plan for us. I believe that those who have caused suffering in the past should be answerable and should pay for their actions

Any structure (including laws and customs) that limit free will and choice is a violation of freedom. I hope the bishops in our country are listening so that they may stop limiting our freedom to choose our options in birth control.

We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights,
that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
- United States Declaration of Independence, 4th July 1776
Today, I had an enlightening bout with mild depression. I asked the question, Why is it […]