“Anak (Child), it used to be that you could not ride a Ferris wheel without crying. You were a giant wimp,” my mom wistfully recalled as I pranced around the bedroom after my date at the Enchanted Kingdom (EK) with my soon-to-be husband one Sunday. She could not believe her ears when I said that I went for the death-defying rides there.
Bonifacio Ilagan had an important thing to say at the Edsa rites last Monday. Translating from the Tagalog, he said: “I don’t know of anyone—because there was no one—who raised a fist at the Marcos dictatorship who imagined that at the end of things they would reap all sorts of rewards. That is the mark of heroism….
Why does the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) want to tear up streets still in good condition while leaving badly damaged streets unrepaired? The “concrete reblocking” of portions of Edsa never stops while roads in the provinces badly needed to bring produce to the markets are neglected.
Most of the Philippine food terms preserved in the early dictionaries and vocabularies compiled by the Spanish friars in the 17th century relate to fish and rice. This suggests that rice has been our staple for centuries. The dictionaries also suggest that our ancestors lived close to bodies of water—on the sea coast or on [...]
It seems not too long ago when Edsa evoked a sense of national pride because of the 1986 People Power Revolt. But Metro Manila’s main and busiest thoroughfare has become a curse to the hundreds of thousands of people who traverse it every day, with the traffic problem developing from bad to horrible.
The Manila Seedling Bank, that little bit of green in the concrete and squatter jungle of Quezon Avenue, has long filled the planting needs of Metro Manila and the rest of the country. From it, one can buy not only rare tree seedlings but also vegetable seeds, ornamental plants, cut flowers, fertilizers and other gardening needs. It also provides a green lung for Quezon City, which sorely lacks parks.
I knew next year’s election would be more traditional than the last. The 2010 election was not the rule but the exception. It was one of those rare times when this country voted on the basis of principle rather than personality, on the basis of belief rather than cynicism.
Setting a minimum wage for bus drivers is a good start in solving the seemingly endless traffic congestion along Edsa. But I find it problematic that the government is counting on changes in driver behavior as a reaction to the fixed-salary scheme. Driver discipline is dependent on conditioning, and this conditioning happens on the streets, not in the drivers’ minds or consciences.
Was it you who authorized those ugly murals under the Cubao flyover and on the perimeter fence of San Lorenzo Village in Makati along Edsa? Or was it the Department of Public Works and Highways or the local government units? Whoever, please have them removed immediately because they contribute to the “uglification” of Metro Manila.
Filipinos should stop blaming his father for this country’s abject pass, Bongbong Marcos said on the eve of Edsa last week. “China, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia can all point to the progress they have made these last 26 years but unfortunately, for the majority of our people, nothing much has changed today. Blaming past administrations will not bring food to the plates of the hungry. Excuses cannot substitute for performance and results.”
I am not in favor of renaming “Epifanio de los Santos Avenue” or “Edsa” into “Cory Aquino Avenue.” Aside from causing dishonor to the hero and his living descendants and the confusion every renaming of a major road creates, future generations might get puzzled to see the term “Edsa” in their history books. Since they would not know what or where Edsa was, they might wonder why a peaceful, world-acclaimed uprising by an unarmed multitude is being called “Edsa Revolution.”
True enough it’s the stuff of movies, though not of the action types Erap used to do. More the melodrama ones that featured Sharon Cuneta, or the ones that proliferate on TV today. The ones where the madrasta oppresses the legitimate daughter horribly—and interminably, the pang-aapi carried out over a long period of time, played with much conviction by the usual suspects or kontrabidas —with the oppressed in the end clawing her way out of the mud (bumangon ka sa lusak,) and bringing her oppressor to heel.
