A Day in the Life...

There were many talks about the middle class before--- who are they and where are they found. In the Philippine settings, identifying this sector of our society is never an easy task for this idiom, which has found its root in western economic theories, does not easily apply to our own principalities. Who are the members of our middle class? Where are they? How can we identify them? Generally, the determining factor in ascertaining the middle level of our society is primarily the earning capacity of a certain group of people and secondarily their social mindset. In a society like us, where for many centuries we were in virtual serfdom, we are mainly a nation of the rich on one side and the rest of the poor in the other. There is nothing much in between. We had at many times in the past a classless society. We must only remember that even as we speak and while we kept again and again to break away from this stranglehold of unfair distribution of wealth in our nation, we have ...

This is a lament, an elegy for a passing thing—just another passing thing to be more precise. More or less, PPRO, the yet to be incorporated humanitarian aid that I was so deep into has found its own dead-end street where not even a bulldozer could bore a hole into the protruding wall. There were so many struggles that hinder the beginning of what could be a life-long effort to help the poor and downtrodden amongst us (Funny at times how we speak that we are not poor ourselves). The situation was not to our favor and the events leading to the death of a seed is at times too rough even to be mentioned here. I had a major falling out with Tony the other day, the one who invited me to join him to manage the bail section of his father’s insurance company. As a management team hired to resume the bail business (after its bondsman of two years, Mr. Jubay, had resigned for reasons unknown to me), we were smooth as a silhouette in putting the office section on the roll. I went immediate...

Lotlot, our helper, said there was no fish available in the neighborhood flea market. I immediately scoured the weather in my mind and asked if the moon was full last night. I’ve had a lot of relations doing fish vending before. Most of them were uncles and older male cousins that in the past, I could hear them worrying so much that the moon was so illuminating in certain particular nights that there would be a slack of business for them during the week. “Masawa in Bulan”, one of them would say which is the Tausug words for “The moon in full”. So I suggested to Lotlot to buy eggplants from a nearby sari-sari store so that we could dipped them in eggs and fry them in deep oil. I reckoned that she wasn’t used with this kind of meal that she did not cooked the vegetables the way that I have envisioned them. So I made her buy more eggplants and egg and made them by myself. To cook this simple menu, one should need the following: 3 pieces Eggplants, fresh from the garden and sh...

“Hold me now, oh hold me now. Till this hour has come around. We fought for justice and not for gain but the magistrate sent me away.” --- The Edge singing for U2 in Van Diemen’s Land When tomorrow comes to this nation of our birth , what door should open to us and what road shall lead us unto what place? To be certain, we take some little strides forward, and we have gained them, as our exports grow and the remittances of our overseas workers (our modern day heroes) redound into more and more families that are uplifted from the cruel stranglehold of poverty. Yet, as we examine our terrain, our society’s flawed pyramid of wealth, there are still much left to be desired. Like upon a battle, when the smoke clears after the last gunshot is heard and we see the dead and the maimed lying on the bloodied warpath, we know by heart that battles may be won now but the war ain’t over yet. We must seek our future now for if tomorrow comes, we have no regrets to drink to and have no ...

Thursday of last week was the unlikeliest day for me in years , ever. If there is an award giving body for the “Most Eventful Day” in any man’s life, I am pretty certain that the Thursday I had this week would be among the nominees in the running for the imaginably coveted imagined award. The famous phone rang again Thursday morning and guess who’s on the other end of the line. You guessed it right. Tony asked: “How do you see yourself as an insurer?” I responded: “Why not?” Tony was mulling a proposition for a job opportunity at his father’s insurance company and we thought it could open up for us some additional income in our free time. I reckoned his father, Mr. Bong Ramos, operator of Alpha Insurance, wanted his son to learn the craft of the business and Tony had the thought of taking me on the ride. Before lunch, Mr. Bong Ramos was contemplating on expanding his bail and surety bond unit and saw me as a bondsman if that day comes. I pictured myself as that bondsman and I fou...

“ You can’t always get what you want ” – The Rollingstones It was a warm Sunday afternoon yesterday , when the famous phone rang again and Tony was on the other end of the line. It was time for a marathon movie trip once more. We started with Harry Potter: “The Prisoner of Azkaban”, then “Super Size Me” and lastly, “Spiderman 2”. The Potter movie was of course another tour de force of an adventure movie, just how we want them made. The latest Spiderman series was just that, another superhero movie. The Spidy movie tried its darnest to season itself with the love angles around Peter Parker but failed to match the tenacity of Clark Kent’s whirling and swirling affair with Lois Lane in the “Superman” series shown a couple of decades ago. It only shows that even superhero movies need someone like Mario Puzo to reign over what the characters have to say and live up to. “SuperSize Me” is not a movie in the regular sense of the world but it is. I mean it was a true-blue documentar...

Yesrterday, we celebrated Yuri’s second birthday at the old but still chic Country Chicken Restaurant near the famous Pasonanca Park. The place hosted a-many events for our family primarily because it gave us the best deal we could ever get in town; affordability, the food is great and the place is just so wide that parents could just leave their kids running around without having to worry about passing cars or unworldly strangers prowling around. We had a grand time and the party was lively enough even though it was on a strictly family and close friends basis. I’ll put some pictures here in the coming days if they come soon. As it was always it had seemed, like mostly what happens, like in the years that passed, Yuri’s birthday was celebrated not on the very day he was born due to scheduling factors. If the day falls on a working day, we have to move it to a weekend date in order that the invited guests may be able come. So much fuzz ain’t it? Ha.ha.ha. I would laugh at myself th...