The Fat Man Today

I remember my grade 4 Language professor fondly, because of many things. Firstly, because his first name—Henry—was such an oddity for a ten-year old Pinoy who mostly read American books but was surrounded with names like Jose Luis, Robertino, and other such remnants of our Spanish forefathers. Secondly because he was such a strict man who liked reading a lot. In hindsight, perhaps he wasn’t really as strict as I made him out to be. I was, quite possibly, just a child who had too much respect for authority back then, and would quail from the sight of a teacher who raised his voice even by just a bit. But the most memorable thing about Mr. Avecilla (that was his last name) was that one of his weekly projects for the class was the collection of Senator Juan Flavier’s—then DOH secretary— weekly parables. I forget which paper it was his stories appeared in, but Mr. Avecilla’s demands had us children scrambling for clippings of Senator Flavier’s stories around every Friday, I think it was....

I don’t Uber. I think it’s expensive. I think it’s stupid for people to pay that much for a ride, when you can just as easily use GrabTaxi or EasyTaxi to get a cab who won’t charge you exorbitant fees, unless the cab’s just as greedy. I also read a friend’s post saying that Uber is just as greedy . I don’t think the company’s a saint in any way. And if they refuse to cooperate with the LTFRB, then they deserve what they received; operating under the radar of a government institution isn’t just illegal, it’s also dangerous. There’s no regulating body, which means that if a Uber driver decides to rip you off, you’re in the lurch. But the problem is, this is the Philippines, and the regulating body in question is the LTFRB, or Lotsa Traffic from Recto to Buendia. These guys don’t know the meaning of the word regulate; they just keep on giving out franchises, and the only people they regulate are the ones who don’t do what they say. I mean, what have they done with all the taxi abuse ...

So last Tuesday, I was floored by the following news item, which I will tag to through an image, since I don’t want you readers to miss clicking on, and reading through, the subject of my ire today: Go ahead. Read it first. You done? Okay, let us proceed. If you’re anything like me, then you would have found this outrageous. For plenty of reasons, most of which, I’m betting, is the fact that Pinoy teleseryes are drivel-driven pieces of pandering commercialism disguising themselves as art. Feel free to disagree with me if you want. Now here’s the thing: my parents watch ABS-CBN’s teleseryes often. And I usually catch glimpses of it every once in a while. So I’m not unaware that some of these shows do try, and can actually be entertaining, if not decent. And if the intellectual society wants to study teleseryes, then who am I to argue? I think it might be a good thing to actually figure out how the local culture lends itself positively to the acceptance of these things. But I read fr...

So for most of last week, I was without a computer as water managed to get to my laptop. I managed to survive it, somehow, but I learned that after nearly a decade and a half of being connected to a computer, living without one was like scraping my nails slowly across sandpaper. I could imagine the rough paper slowly eating away at the edges of my nails, barely perceptible but you know it’s happening. You know it’s happened. So the question is, I suppose, how I passed the time without a laptop. I suppose I could have just borrowed one of the other laptops lying around in the house, since, you know, they’re computers too right? Well, I didn’t. Mostly because they weren’t mine, they didn’t have my stench, and I’m very territorial. But it was also because they didn’t have the files I needed to get my work done. Luckily, I was raised as part of the generation that actually did stuff. We were only allowed three hours on the Super NES before we had to go do something else. So I learned to...