Pacman mania

Unlesss you have totally given up on Filipinos and have decided that there is absolutely no hope whatsoever for the Philippines and its countrymen, you could not have missed the greatest spectacle this country has ever seen since The Estrada Impeachment Trial. The roads were practically empty and when the TV coverage of the fight started, you could hear every television set in the neighborhood tuned in.

What a fight it truly was. Am no great boxing fan but I was suddenly an expert on the game contributing my own two-cents worth into the very heated and animated blow by blow commentary in my household. Everytime PacMan would score a hit, the whole neighborhood would be in uproar. The last time I heard something similar (but not quite close) was many years ago when Jaworski was still playing for Ginebra and a championship match was on.

What a great moment to be Filipino again!

I wasn't surprised that immediately after everyone it seemed had something to say on the matter (yes, including me!). The President immediately called Pacman on the phone to congratulate him and the phone conversation was aired on TV as well. Why, even the stars of ABS-CBN had something to say about the victory as well.

A friend of mine who happens to live in Texas texted me to tell me that Filipinos in that state were feeling so victorious they were streaming out of their houses and driving around waving the Filipino flag in front of the hotel where Pacman was billeted.

I hope that Pacman's victory would bring some respite from all the divisive and childish taunting of our leaders. Let's savor unity for a while, please.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Open Letter To Our Leaders

Dear Tita Cory, Senators, Congressmen, Businessmen, Media people, Leftists, and all Bleeding Hearts Out There: I am angry. And I know that there are many out there who are angrier than I am for the same reason. And that reason is simple. I am sick and tired of all you guys claiming to speak for me and many Filipinos. I feel like screaming every time you mouth words about fighting for my freedom and my rights, when you obviously are just thinking about yours. You tell me that the essence of democracy is providing every citizen the right to speak his or her mind and make his or her own informed judgments, but you yourselves do not respect my silence and the choices I and many others have made. In other words, your concept of democracy is limited to having your rights and your freedoms respected, at the expense of ours. I am utterly flabbergasted that you still do not get it: we already responded to your calls, and our response has been very clear - we chose not to heed your calls to go t
Read more

Farewell, Victor

Image
This is my column today. Renato Victor Ebarle Jr. was at the prime of his life; barely 27 years old and just starting to build his career in human resource management. At the time of his death, he was recruitment manager of the Hotel Peninsula Manila. To say that he still had the whole world ahead of him sounds like a cliché but those among us who actually knew him, those among us who were aware of the kind of passion he had for life and for his work, people like me who had the privilege of having been consulted by him on many professional matters, know this with a certain degree of certainty. I was Victor’s professor in three major subjects when he was in college. In each one of them, he sat at the first row, which said a lot about the kind of person he was. Professors know this for a fact: Bullies don’t sit in front of the class where they cannot annoy anyone. I was his thesis adviser and he and his team spent a whole academic school year trying to break new grounds on the question o
Read more

A pathway towards better clarity of the issues on RH Bill

I have been very, very busy lately. In addition to helping manage a merger between two financial companies on top of my other jobs (managing human capital development initiatives in a major bank, teaching, writing, social development work, etc), I also had to manage a national conference with 1,500 participants. I have not opened all my emails in my yahoo account for weeks. I tried to weed through the tons of emails today and found this gem, forwarded to me by a colleague at the De La Salle - College of Saint Benilde. I don't know who the author is. There are still points about this analysis that I dont agree with, but I think it is a fairly comprehensive take on the issues. Thus, I am reprinting it here. I do agree with many points of the analysis. In particular, I agree that the way to move forward is to focus on agreements and to conduct the debate in a civilized, sincere, and ethical manner. Reproductive Health and the Catholic Faith: The Lagman Bill and the Catholic Moral Tr
Read more