This one I got from the Busi­ness Mir­ror. My work con­stantly reit­er­ates how there are really no such things as acci­dents. “Acci­dents”, as we know them, are really due to many man-made fac­tors: lack of train­ing, a lack of sys­tems, or pro­ce­dures to fol­low, and/or plain old stu­pid­ity. This is one of those things. 32 years ago, there was a study that showed how Marik­ina is unsuit­able for development.

This one is from a Daily Tri­bune arti­cle by Armida Siguion-Reyna. Love the JPE anec­dote of his first ele­va­tor ride!

I was born at the tail-end of Mar­tial Law. I have very vague mem­o­ries of it. I would have to say that i did not have a first hand infor­ma­tion of it. I heard sto­ries from my dad, but that was about it. I dis­tinctly remem­ber see­ing the images of Ninoy Aquino being shot on the tar­mac of the air­port that will even­tu­ally bear his name (poetic jus­tice!). Oh, as an aside, I am writ­ing this while I’m in Ninoy Aquino Inter­na­tional Air­port! How appro­pri­ate!

This is an email cir­cu­lat­ing around now that Ninoy Aquino is run­ning for Pres­i­dent of this coun­try. I read this for the first time sev­eral years ago; so I think it’s gen­uine. It sure sounds like Ninoy. It’s a beau­ti­fully writ­ten piece. And we could learn a lot about the man and his son from how this piece was written.

The past few months, I’ve taken a spe­cial inter­est on Philip­pine cul­ture, pol­i­tics and soci­ol­ogy. It’s an inter­est­ing topic. It really started when I was work­ing with the youth in my “pre­vi­ous life”. I had to immerse myself in what they wanted, their desires, their fears, their prob­lems, in the hope of becom­ing more effec­tive in my work with them. I also had to study pol­i­tics, cul­ture, media and soci­ety for sev­eral MA classes in Ate­neo de Manila.