Essays from the Weekend

Photo attributed to pressureUA/istock Headlines this week: congressional probe sought on a COVID-19 research agency. A certain political tandem was announced. With all these fantastically outrageous news and the public outcry they regularly produce, Carrie Bradshaw couldn’t help but wonder: were we this annoyed pre-social media? I read somewhere just this week that posts and articles which have headlines and/or content that rile up readers generate good income. Logically, social media companies make good money from politically-annoyed people. More posts, more user engagement, more eyeballs, more clicks. Logically, if it makes money, there’s an incentive to encourage these kinds of content and to foster irascible characteristics in social media users. Perhaps it’s not too unreasonable to speculate that the more reactive, knee-jerk, denouncing posts you make on social media, the more you feed money into the machine, the more you do your part to keep it going. In other words, the angrier ...

  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. ...

I’m still shaken over the news of former President Noynoy Aquino’s passing. I admired the man and how he operated on pure integrity of character during his term. His appointees all seemed so principled, full of integrity, incorruptible. “Walang wangwang” - who could forget that, when people with connections didn’t really get ahead of the rest of us? The showstopping economic growth of the country? The “do the right thing” mentality that the government and the citizens rallied behind? I didn’t vote for him when he ran for president but he easily won me over, even though he was imperfect.   The Aquino nuclear family accomplished so much — his dad, incendiary opposition senator whose death sparked the EDSA People Power Revolution; his mom, who led the traumatized country out into a new democracy; and PNoy who again shone a light on the goodness of the Filipino people. The newspapers generally stop there but I’d like to add: Kris Aquino, the top individual taxpayer of the country for s...

Hi there! I wasn’t able to write this past weekend. I was too enthralled with where I was. Practically in a rainforest. I love looking at wild birds and there were many different birds where I went. I saw a hornbill (at least I think that’s what it’s called, it has a horn on its bill), lots of crows, a couple of mysterious blue birds. The whole weekend, I felt like I was in a Murakami novel. Many parked cars but no people around. Stray cats everywhere. Weird trees all around. Deserted, run-down, 60s style buildings. I’ll be writing about this place soon. It’s just on Airbnb. I just want to keep it to myself for a little while. There’s a fun video series on Youtube by GQ called 10 Things, where famous people like Shawn Mendes, Finneas, and Trixie Mattel list show and tell their 10 essentials. Here’s Dan Levy, whom I like: Noone asked me, but if I were to share my ten essentials: 1. Phone case wallet. A gamechanger. I used to worry about bringing my phone and my wallet all the time. Wit...