One glance was enough to make me glance again, and secretly stare: dark, dark eyes, their lids beautified by the shadow of their depth, a nose forming an acute angle, the folded fitrum of his upper lip creating the illusion of fullness that a pout was unnecessary for beauty, a chiseled cheek, the chisel making up for the acne scars: proportion. ( Read more... )

                “The Commander is responsible for everything that the unit does or fails to do”. As the commanders in the AFP come from the Officer Corps, I say that the present state of unprofessionalism and corruption in the military is a failure in leadership of the Officer Corps. Clearly, the fault and the responsibility lies in the officers ( Read more... )

A year ago, I was delighted to have the industrious, ever loyal and ever  hardworking Edgardo Tolentino as my new housekeeper.

He had been with the family when I was in gradeschool. Then he left for Abra to live in ways I can only be incurious about. A year ago, he came back, not to Magsingal, but here at the penthouse in Sta. Mesa, Manila.

For ( Read more... )

I couldn’t resist watching another HBO movie about a single, homely, middle-aged woman-with some middle age crisis, I surmise. She is smart. She proves her smartness when she becomes a basketball coach-though she knows little about. The idea of it sparked my interest, it was still early, CWTS Culminating Rites were three hours away-it occurred to ( Read more... )

"Excuse me! But nothing will interrupt my eight hours of sleep! Not even you... even if you're due at 1 p.m.!"

I defied my phone's alarm at 3AM. Yesterday afternoon, around 5 p.m., I thought I made up my mind to wake up at dawn to begin the paper. Now it's 3 AM, and regarding the paper, my mind mind was willing, but my flesh was weak. So I though ( Read more... )

. . . the mass media is arguably the most influential in molding public consciousness.

As Mantsios (333) points out, media ". . . is national in nature and single-minded (profit-oriented) in purpose. This media plays a key role in defining cultural tastes, helping us locate ourselves in history. . . and ascertaining the range of national and social ( Read more... )

I’ve been waiting for hours so people could stop crowding Paolo. I needed to talk to him. Then that cluster of classmates scattered around and granted me the space I needed. So I rushed to him before another classmate might interrupt. By the table, he was standing, fixing his stuff in his bag. “Paolo. This is for you.” I handed him the massager. ( Read more... )

Daniel Catabay, garnering 3rd place in the Ustetika; Joanna Parungao, for winning 2nd place in Poetry and Fictionist of the Year; Song Oandasán (me-ayan bragging na!) making it to the top three in the pageant, and ultimately… Mai Andrei Encarnacion, Mr. Arts and Letters 2008.

This year is a triumph for AB Literature.

For me, there’s a little ( Read more... )

I hate it that Neil Garcia keeps using highfalutin  words and long, run-on sentences to prove his point with 400 pages of the same incomprehensible diction.

I hate my computer table, because its sliding desk is not sliding. So I held the Neil Garcia book tight in my hands and hit the desk with it. The desk fell and the pulleys and plastic parts ( Read more... )

The black of letters and the black of blinking eyelids. All these reminded me of the black of sleep, the very luxury unrealized in the span of an hour reading Eviota's "The Political Economy of Gender..."
It was 10 am, more or less, but it felt like it was still sunrise, and the dew was still there. It felt like closed eyes from 1 am to 6 am was ( Read more... )