Sense and style in UP

If there is anything that has been proven in the ongoing debate on the issue of the Philippine Collegian editorship, it is that it is impossible to measure sense and style in numerical terms.  We can have notions of good, better or best, but the difference in beauty and sensibility between an essay that is … Read more

Unstoppable women

They once formed a graceful trio that walked the length of the UP Diliman campus every day even before the sun was up.  Their lively chatter covered a rich agenda: family and friends, national politics and social science, academic gossip and paths to spirituality.  For more than 20 years, they were my family’s closest neighbors … Read more

Kidnapped

Someone very dear to one of my children was kidnapped last week. He was on his way to visit her, but decided to stop by the busy Citimall on Commonwealth Avenue to buy something.  Not finding what he was looking for, he did not stay more than 10 minutes.  In full view of early evening … Read more

Conversations for sale

The business of selling conversations on the telephone started in highly urbanized societies where human beings must live together as fragments of  a “lonely crowd”.  The sociologist Johan Galtung quantifies the extent of this mass loneliness thus:  40% of all households in Sweden are one-person households, and 20% of all Americans say they do not … Read more

Spirituality and the OCW

My friend Dodong Nemenzo, who lives near 2 churches in UP but never visits any of them,  tells me that in Japan where he is currently a visiting professor, he goes to church when he wants to eat  balut or dinuguan.   I am sure however that it is more than the meal that follows the … Read more