Essays from the Weekend

  What a wonderful day it was yesterday to find out that Hidilyn Diaz earned the Philippines’ first Olympic gold medal! Let me break down this joy: 1. The first Filipino to get the gold is a Filipina! 2. In weightlifting, no less! She disregarded all the Filipina mothers’ advice that “ women shouldn’t lift weights, ang matres mo! ” She disregarded the pressure to conform to the Filipino conventions of what a woman should look like, what a woman should focus on. Hidilyn did Hidilyn and she embraced her strengths and unique qualities, conventions be damned. This is what it looks like when we embrace our true strengths and strive to be the best that we can be, without listening to what the rest of the world thinks. 3. Beating the world’s number 1 from China in the process, and the contestant from Kazakhstan too! Those countries are known for the strength of their athletes, and 4 foot 11 Hidilyn beat them! 4. She maxed out at 125kg in training but heroically managed the record-beating ...

  It was the strangest week. The weather. It has been gray and stormy for about 8 straight days? I don’t recall Manila being this gray. Reminds me of what I keep hearing about London, that it’s gray and cloudy most of the time, and the locals rejoice when the day is clear. It was the same we experienced in Denmark. I never understood why people declare a certain day “a beautiful day” when I was younger. In the Philippines, it’s either sunny or rainy. Sunny days don’t equal beautiful days, here. It’s just a normal day. When given a choice, I prefer gray and stormy myself. This week should have been a dream, then, but at some point it just crossed the threshhold to being worrisome. How much rain can our countrymen’s houses, dams, rivers, lakes, take? The nation still has a collective trauma over Ondoy and Yolanda, the superstorms which caused so much death and damage in the country.  The newspapers reported today that many crops have been destroyed and that’s the only thing I he...

Image from NYT For the past few weeks, I’ve been taking a sort of course from Ateneo on how to be a global citizen. At least that’s what I’m telling myself the course is really about. So far, we have covered history (Philippine, Asian, Western), Philippine public policies and administration, Philippine culture. I’m also taking French classes from Verb Hive every Sunday.  It’s been an enjoyable experience so far, learning so much every weekend, but it’s demanding to keep up with the readings and lectures. Prior to this, I haven’t been into taking weekend classes. I just read a lot in my spare time, and that’s how I learn. Not that I don’t like the idea of taking classes; I do. But in Manila with the crazy traffic? It’s hard to show up to things. My close friends used to live in Muntinlupa and go to Makati every Saturday just to have German classes at the Goethe Institute. Imagine that drive. I’m too lazy to do it. Enter the pandemic. Extremely unfortunate turn of events. It comes wi...

Yesterday, I watched one of the great classic gay movies for the first time, But I’m A Cheerleader. I knew that conversion camps existed, but I had never given much thought as to how the experience would be. For those in the dark, conversion camps are where LGBTQ+-identifying/acting kids, boyish girls, and feminine boys are taken in attempts to convert them to be straight.  These conversion processes are reportedly extremely damaging to children’s mental health in the long run, not to mention unsuccessful, and it’s not hard to see why. There was (is?) an ex-gay movement promoting the notion that one’s gay or queer sexual orientation can be “cured” if you catch it early and then undergo conversion therapy (or just by sheer old willpower). There are many people claiming to be successful ex-gays on the internet. Most, if not all, are deeply Christian. I respect their choices and beliefs; I also think that children should be given the opportunity to make their own choices and beliefs. ...