Mabini Hall

I grew up with Ironman. Did you? I hear a local film producer is coming up with a Filipino version. The title is: Riceman.
Don’t laugh now because no matter how we twist and turn, the specter of rising prices surrounds us. Even as we sleep, the Meralco meter keeps running and the Manila Water one […]

WELL, the Olympic torch skipped Manila in the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics because of geographical reasons. I say, did we even mount a campaign to host a leg here, given its significance for our country’s image on security, need for investments and tourism and our continuing support for the games despite never […]

Of course everyone knows Malthus. We quote him all the time like this: food supply grows arithmetically while population increases exponentially. There will naturally come a time when we will not have enough to eat. He was wrong. Technology increased the food supply (and the diversity) by leaps and bounds, exponentially. Some country populations are […]

AMBOT” is Cebuano for “I don’t know.” It usually is coupled with “lang” to make “ambot lang” which means “I don’t know” and said with a shudder as a sign of helplessness and futility. I thought of this word and this phrase in the aftermath of typhoon “Ambo,” no relation.
Ever since I became conscious of […]

LATEST assessment tests on public schoolchildren show an ever so small improvement in English proficiency. Is it finally the light at the end of the tunnel—a new generation of Filipinos who speak real English and not some bastardized form? Filipinos who know proper grammar like we do? Filipinos who can express ideas like Claro M. […]

I CONTINUE to follow intently the Obama-Clinton wars. Aside from contentious issues of race and gender, the heart of the matter, is the clash between believing in the dream or vision that Obama is painting versus the brass tacks reality that Clinton is proving. The audacity of hope, of youth versus the certainty of experience […]

It is not another acronym for a scandal in the wings. It is not a feel-good message two weeks after Valentine’s Day. It is simply love, or rather the lack of it, that is the root cause of the country’s instability and conflicts.

Apolinario Mabini once said, “You always look upon your countryman as something more than a neighbor. See in him the friend, the brother, or at the very least, the companion to whom you are bound by a single fate, by the same joys and sorrows, and by common aspirations and interests. As long as the […]