Medium Rare

Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2019 18:10:59 +0000

  SINCE we were rookies – How is journalism like crime? Like crime, journalism doesn’t pay – colleagues have been diabolically fantasizing about founding a re­ligion as the only way to amass wealth in a hurry. Every centavo you made would be tax-free, not to mention the state may not interfere in your evangelizing, recruiting […]

Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Tue, 11 Jun 2019 10:10:36 +0000

  EVERYONE and his sister-in-law have something unsavory to say about Smartmatic, everybody in­cluding President Duterte, Sen. Koko Pimentel, even opposition Sen. Kiko Pangilinan. Do they count as the majority? Apparently not, because Smartmatic has yet to be heard from – whatever for, if the Comelec spox sounds like he’s speaking for Smart­matic? Now a […]

Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Fri, 07 Jun 2019 23:30:21 +0000

  THE appeal of a US visa hasn’t changed much between the time of Hitler’s reign of terror and the age of selfies in the Philip­pines. When Hitler began exterminating Jews in Europe, the Philippines under President Manuel L. Quezon was the only country that offered them safe haven – provided the US would issue […]

Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Thu, 06 Jun 2019 01:09:38 +0000

  HOW can we teach our children to love discovering the world through their books and their teachers’ eyes when packing them into poorly ventilated, jampacked classrooms is a daily punishment? The school-age population has grown another 2.5 percent – and it’s no coincidence that the figures are almost identical with the annual birth rate. […]

Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Tue, 04 Jun 2019 03:28:05 +0000

  GARBAGE as metaphor? Tons and tons brought into our beautiful once-pristine islands by merchants without a conscience – what’s a clean con­science against dirty profits? At no time in the history of smuggling has there been a more noxious tsunami of trash dumped on our shores by “rich” countries such as Canada, Aus­tralia, Korea, […]

Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Fri, 31 May 2019 16:10:43 +0000

  MANNY Sison owns a price­less collection of Chinese blue-and-whites. The collection has grown to museum size, which he keeps in his hometown in Isa­bela. Manny is rarer than you and me in another sense, i.e., he has made it his life’s business to “make reading affordable.” Notice he doesn’t say affordable books, but to […]

Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Wed, 29 May 2019 16:10:58 +0000

  BENEATH the spreading boughs of the fire tree, its flowers aflame and spreading like wildfire, the city sizzles in the heat of a long dry summer. So hot, so humid, so little rain dur­ing the rainy season. Comes now the incoming sea­son – back to school, kids! – and our heroic teachers, fresh from […]

Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Mon, 27 May 2019 16:10:56 +0000

  FOR my friend and ex-future senator of the realm, losing the good fight was both a relief, physically and psychologically, and a great life experience. He went places where he’d never been before. Met characters he’ll never see again. Learned stuff a Ph.D. would sniff only in virtual re­ality or book knowledge. Now that […]

Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Fri, 24 May 2019 16:10:35 +0000

  A GLAMOROUS grandmoth­er several times over, with nary a line of a wrinkle on her face. A former justice of the Supreme Court. Former chief of the Office of the Ombuds­man. And now, adding to her distinguished c.v., the most eyecatching title of them all, suspected security threat. How Conchita Carpio Morales is going […]

Credit to Author: Tempo Desk| Date: Wed, 22 May 2019 16:10:19 +0000

  IF you were Mayor Isko Moreno, where do you begin? A true-blue Manileño, a genu­ine Tondo boy who knows the city from the ground up, garbage dumps included, he’s got a lot on his plate or, shall we say, in his trash bin. But it’s a disservice to connect so much of the “basura” […]