I knew Julianne back when she was still Julie Anne (two words) — or Julie, or Jules — the eldest child of Philip Tarroja and his wife Rica. Her parents are among my best friends in the world, and they were responsible for bringing me here to Davao City back in 1990 — but that’s [...]
By Gerbs R. De Castro (Notes: Gerbs R. de Castro, my next-door neighbor in my hometown of Tugatog, Malabon, has been a true-blue Truefaith fan since 1993. Such is his devotion to the band that he has taken it upon himself to be the administrator of the longest-running unofficial Truefaith forum. He is also the [...]
As a newspaper editor I come across all sorts of articles that mangle the English language to the point of unintelligibility. This is especially true in this political season when politicians’ rah-rah people try to put their names out to the public, and they often send press releases that heap praise on their bosses at the expense of grammar and, well, the truth. Words like “indefatigable,” “outstanding,” and even, “handsome” are employed to describe candidates who would normally be anything but, and the PR people do not seem to care that the press releases they churn out have little semblance to the truth. There’s nothing more I’d like to do than email these agents and quote Voltaire to them: “The adjective is the enemy of the noun.” Or Mark Twain: “When you catch an adjective, kill it.”
If you’re looking for Third World, then you’re in the right place. My blog has been renamed JamBayan and is now located here (jambayan.net). I must thank my good friend Oliver “Blogie” Robillo (yes, that’s his nickname, and he acquired it long before the word “blog” ever came into existence) for giving me the impetus [...]
For me, nothing beats watching a great player create beautiful music with an acoustic guitar. Artists like Phil Keaggy, Michael Hedges, and Eric Clapton (just to name a few of my favorites) make it look and sound so easy: for them it’s an effortless action, the music seemingly magically flowing out of a simple combination [...]
If you open the Google web page these days you’ll be greeted by Sesame Street characters pointing the way to your searches. Some get Cookie Monster or Big Bird, I get The Count (or Count Von Count, to be more formal). It’s a nod to the 40th anniversary of the children’s educational television series, and [...]
Google is celebrating the 40th anniversary of Sesame Street by featuring Sesame Street characters in its main page. Having grown up on a steady diet of Sesame Street back in the 70s (and well into the 80s), I appreciate this gesture from Google. Sesame Street has been one of the most influential forces on my [...]
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” – Aldous Huxley As a musician, I am constantly amazed at how full and, well, noisy today’s music is. It’s a barrage on the senses, note after note and chord after chord of non-stop sound, from intro to stanza to stanza to chorus [...]
MONTEREY, California — I’d like to believe that things can get better for Pinoy newspapers because we can move to the internet in ways that perhaps no US paper can. Here they have been overtaken by online rivals who have taken over much of the information dissemination duties. With internet penetration still relatively low in [...]
MONTEREY, California — It’s a matter of perspective, Laith Agha, one of the Monterey County Herald’s reporters, said as we drove back to the newsroom after making two unsuccessful attempts to find out more about a murder victim. I had gone with him to see how a US reporter works, and as it turned out, [...]
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