Manila is beau­ti­ful. Believe it or not. I went on the tour of Car­los Cel­dran and it made me real­ize how impor­tant it is for us Fil­ipinos to have an under­stand­ing of the glory days our past so we know what we were capa­ble of, so that we know what we can be capa­ble of becoming.

This is partly a nos­tal­gia trip. and partly an indict­ment of the things we have done as a coun­try and as a peo­ple over the past fifty years. I hope we are shamed enough to do some­thing about it. We have the capac­ity and the poten­tial to be great once again.

A leader has to be many things to many men. But this is one of the best descrip­tions I’ve ever heard of what a leader is.

About two years ago, I fea­tured a great move­ment called BUY SHOES, SAVE LIVES. It’s great to know that they’re still at it. PREEMPTIVE LOVE is the com­pany behind it.

There are untold thou­sands of chil­dren in Iraq today suf­fer­ing from heart dis­ease that threat­ens to take their lit­tle lives if they do not receive surgery out­side the coun­try. And time is run­ning out because years of war and cor­rup­tion have led to a health care sys­tem that is entirely ill-equipped to han­dle the enor­mity of the task.

I have a secret. I love clean­ing bath­rooms. Back in the Jesuit Novi­tiate, bath­rooms are called JAKES (that’s stuff of Philip­pine Jesuit folk­lore); and it was one of the dreaded man­u­alia assign­ments. But it’s not a prob­lem if I was assigned there.

Now that I have a condo unit, I’m in charged on clean­ing the bath­room myself. My sis­ter takes care of every­thing else in the house (well, the cook­ing and the tidy­ing up of the kitchen), but the bath­room is my king­dom. It’s not a fetish, it’s just some­thing I love doing.

These are music videos that show­case actors or actresses in sur­pris­ing (and not so sur­pris­ing) cameos. There are a lot more, and I’m sure many of you have your own choices, but these are mine. You can sug­gest more mtvs in the com­ments and I’ll come up with a sec­ond (longer) list.