Filipina Soul

As I was sitting at McDonald’s this morning and quietly having coffee, I happen to sit close by a father and son pair and couldn’t avoid overhearing much of their conversation. The son is a college freshman at UPLB (the nearby university) and the father came all the way from Manila to visit his son and hand him his next week’s allowance. In this day and age of e-technology, the father could have easily just sent the money through wire; but instead he took the time out to take a leave from work, head on to Los Baños and see …read more

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A couple of weeks ago, in lieu of stories after Hurricane Katrina, I came across Greg Macabenta’s column, The Global Pinoy, at Manila Times.
Since 1991, due to an initiative of the Filipino American National Historical Society (FANHS), Filipino American History Month has been celebrated in October. It was on this month in 1587 that the first landfall of Filipinos in what is now the United States was recorded. The galleon Nuestra Señora de Esperanza weighed anchor at Morro Bay in Northern California with several Luzonians among the crew.
Greg Macabenta is also the publisher of …read more

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International auction house Christie’s is competing with two other firms, Sotheby’s and Bonhams, to be the lead auctioneer of the Marcos jewelries estimated to be amounting to 10 (or is it 30?) million $. The Marcos’ jewelries are housed at the Central Bank of the Philippines under the custody of the PCGG.
Once the source of poverty, Imelda’s jewelries have turned into the country’s symbol of hope. Are the Filipinos really going to benefit from the sale of these jewelries? Hopefully…if it doesn’t end up in some people’s pockets!
Now the PCGG is contemplating on auctioning Imelda Marcos’ shoe collection …read more

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Gloria Arroyo is still sitting on the presidential seat.
The President will last because the opposition is weak.
Haven’t they (the opposition) realized it yet?

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Precious Lara Quigaman of the Philippines was crowned Miss International 2005 last night in Tokyo, Japan.
It has been a long time since the country won in an international beauty pageant. (26 years since Phillipines last bagged the Miss International title.) Precious joins the rank of previous Ms. International title holders Gemma Cruz (1965) Aurora Pijuan (1970) and (ugh, sige na nga!) Melanie Marquez (1979).

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First the occupational and physical therapists.Then the engineers and the teachers.
Now the nurses and doctors. Then there are the care-givers, the IT professionals, the seafarers and the domestic helpers.
They’re all gone abroad in pursuit of greener pastures.
I have tons of friends in the U.S.: went there for their PhDs and never came back. I don’t blame them; most of them believe there’s nothing here to come back for.
And we should not forget the migrant Pinoys, increasing at such alarming rate. Everyday I hear news of a friend, or a friend’s friend who has applied or been accepted …read more

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Shameful as it may sound to some people, I’ve never been in a real museum. Most museums here (for culture and the arts) are in Manila. A place which, considering the traffic, not to mention the pollution (and for many other reasons), I deemed too far away.
When I bump into something like this in the paper:
The Spanish Month celebrations, dubbed Fiesta, Spanish Festival for Culture and the Arts, is set to kick off in Manila with the opening of a grand photo exhibition at the National Museum of the Filipino People in Luneta Park.
is the only time I …read more

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Dream, Believe, Fall in Love…
A box-office hit, now on its second week…watch Lovestruck…
One more week of this ad on TV and radio…then I might actually be tempted and watch this current swooner on Philippine Cinema.
You may call it baduy even corny (mushy, soppy are the closest english version I can think of) but Filipinos do love going to the movies, especially if it’s something about love, comedy and adventure. If you’ve seen the many people (from all walks of life) who lined up for this movie’s premiere night (I’ve seen only the TV coverage) you may not even think …read more

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We Filipinos eat every 2 hours, and (on the average) 3 times a day, rice. Where I work (an international organization), our foreign colleagues (and bosses) know where to find the Filipinos on certain times of the day we call coffee break: in the cafeteria of course. But mind you, our coffee breaks don’t’ mean coffee or tea alone. It’s a whole feast of rice, noodles or bread/cake (with matching variants) that usually shocks a (foreign) newcomer: making him wonder if we haven’t eaten any breakfast at home or if there’s more room in our stomach for all that food. …read more

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