The May 13 elections went like a roller-coaster gone awry. It blasted off squeakily, accelerated as knots and bolts snapped, took a loop (bumping off riders), then halted in its tracks. Something was amiss: an error in the operating computers, absence of safety devices, power outage. Unruffled, the operator called it a perfect ride.
What is it exactly that we praise in fathers? The answer, of course, very much depends on the culture. While there are traits (like being a good provider) that are universally admired, our notions of what constitutes ideal fatherhood will tend to vary not just across cultures but also across generations.
The Inquirer’s “Comic Relief” page includes social critique in the form of humor, and we take pride in the Filipino cartoonists whose careers and artistic lives have found a home there. A prime example is “Pugad Baboy” which, for more than two decades, poked fun at the Filipino, the better for us to understand ourselves.
The discrepancies, variances or differences (or whatever the Commission on Elections wants to call them) between the manual count and the electronic count made by the PCOS machines present formidable basic problems which I think must be solved by definitive legislation.
My introduction to the brave new (for me) world of activism took place when I was in high school when I joined a picket against the Roman Catholic Church.
The story is told about a wife who exclaimed to her husband: “Honey, our maid has left us, and she brought with her our towels!”
Five years ago, I discovered what forever meant. It’s a time and space outside of everything you have ever known, a kind of every day that stretches without boundaries, magnified exponentially.
Internal Revenue Commissioner Kim Henares was the first to blink in the confrontation with the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry (PCCI) over Revenue Regulation (RR) No. 18-2012.
With due respect to President Aquino, he should reconsider his stand against Charter change. I am convinced that in the next three years, his administration will not attain inclusive growth and increase investments in infrastructure from the low of 2 percent of GDP to the required 5 percent without a tripling, or even quadrupling, of the annual flow of foreign direct investments (FDIs)—i.e., from the present measly $2 billion to $8-10 billion annually in the next three to five years.
Some Catholic bishops “flunked” President Aquino for “failing to curb poverty” even as the Philippines’ economic growth outstripped that of other Asian countries. “Growth has not trickled down to the poor,” scoffed National Secretariat for Social Action’s Bishop Broderick Pabillo. “On a scale of one to ten, I’d give Aquino a grade of three.”
The satisfaction of Filipinos with the performance of their national government, from mid-2010 until the first quarter of 2013, is unprecedented ever since Social Weather Stations began tracking it in 1989 (see “Satisfaction with gov’t dips but still ‘very good’,” BusinessWorld, 6/06/2013).
The idea that much of what a college graduate learned in school will turn out to be quite irrelevant at work is a prevalent one. Certainly, there may be a lot of anecdotal evidence to support this notion. However, the fact remains that a strong academic foundation is critical to one’s success and continuing upward mobility in the workplace.
