“The Angry Christ” is a play by Floy Quintos that follows the creation of Alfonso Ossorio’s iconic painting – from conceptualization up to the reveal of the finished obra maestra. The story opens with a short background of the painting and a brief summary of Ossorio’s childhood before he came to the family sugar mill […]
Road accidents are the fourth leading cause of deaths in the Philippines. This translates to around 36,000 preventable deaths every year. Reckless driving, cell phone use and drunk driving all contribute to fatal collisions. Here are major factors affecting road safety and what the government can do about it. I have also included some safety […]
Summers in the 1980s were in part spent in my mother’s home province Pakil, Laguna. The last week of our stay was often Holy Week. Good Friday meant visiting the traditional stations of the cross. Except Pakil had its own tradition with the stations of the cross. Towering over Pakil is Mt. Ping-as. Every year, […]
Luningning Tan-Gatue, 86, has kept the Philippine flag flying for decades. Flag-making is her family’s business. And the period leading up to Independence Day is extremely busy for her. Granddaughter Addrianne Marie goes over the orders, which could come in the “hundreds of thousands” during the “peak season” from mid-May to June 12. Addrianne’s twin, […]
The industrialization of Western Europe during the 15th to 18th centuries was one of the driving forces that initiated the development of science and technological innovation in the region. This era saw the emergence of brilliant mathematicians, scientists, and inventors such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei and Andreas Vesalius who pioneered in the fields […]
When our children were toddlers, my cousin in the United States and I sometimes compared notes. There was one hilarious instance when at the laundromat, someone heard my cousin tell her daughter, “Dyan ka lang. Magpapapalit lang ako ng barya.” The Filipina approached the little girl, “Good morning, anong pangalan mo?” My cousin, slightly out […]
Each Chinatown around the world has a unique flavor of its own, coming from how the local Chinese community blends its culture and traditions with those of the host nation. A good example of this is Bangkok’s Chinatown in the Samphanthawong district. I rediscovered Bangkok’s Chinatown on a recent trip to Thailand. I convinced my […]
Early in my medical career, I had a middle-aged male patient who smoked a pack a day. He was an overweight businessman with high blood pressure. Being a neophyte, I constantly reminded him to stop smoking. After his third visit, he told me bluntly, “Hey young man, don’t tell me to stop smoking. I’m older […]
I’m not sure if it has to do with my cousin and me being boys, but as early as 9 years old, our parents would leave us in the province at our aunt’s house for a few weeks during summer. If they were helicopter parents when we were younger, they eventually threw us off the […]
I spent the Lunar New Year and the succeeding month in a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery in the hills outside Kathmandu. There were no fireworks or astrological predictions, no hopeful statements of and resolutions for a good year ahead. It was, in summary, a nine-full-day prayer ceremony to greet the Lunar New Year. Full without any […]