Manila

The recent fish kill around Manila Bay has been unsurprisingly politicized, used to throw shade against the dumping of sand in Manila Bay. At first, I thought there could be a correlation between the dolomite sand and the fish kill. This may have not been a coincidence, right? Then clearer photos...

Governor General Juan de Silva's mission to go after the Dutch outside Spanish Philippine territory, deep into the Malay peninsula, was not without its critics. "Silva set sail from Manila late in the season, ill-staffed, ill-equipped, under a barrage of criticism from the church, the orders, the...

Feeling a bit under the weather I thought of staying home yesterday. But I was informed by the family of the eminent Chemist and historian Pio Andrade Jr. that Wednesday is the last and only day of his internment. He passed away last December 26. They decided to cremate his remains the next day a...

When the prolific Cebuano writer, Antonio Martinez Abad penned “La Vida Secreta de Daniel Espeña” in 1960 I wonder if he knew it would be the last from his generation. When I heard that the most dedicated advocate of the Spanish language in the country, Guillermo Gomez Rivera, completed his Spani...

I knew it’s not going to be easy to get near Pope Francis but I had to try because in 1995 I failed to see Pope John Paul II. After standing in Quirino Avenue for 5 hours (some had been camping there since Saturday and Friday) near the Papal Nuncio I did saw the successor of Peter---a fleeting gl...