Category Archives: General

By Freddie Rabelas Obligacion, Ph.D. The Pasig River, one of the major Philippine river systems, connects Laguna de Bay to Manila Bay. Spanning 25.2 kilometers (15.7 miles), it bisects the Philippine capital of Manila and its surrounding urban area into northern and southern halves. Its major tributaries are the Marikina River and San Juan River. The total drainage basin of Pasig River, including the basin of Laguna de Bay, covers… Read More »

“When we are kind, it makes us happy. It makes us think less about ourselves.” Jonathan Reckford, Our Better Angels, (2019) In the waiting room of a small clinic, where I await patiently for my wife to come out from her yearly medical check-up, I hear a commotion going on in a room designated for blood testing. A… Read More »

By: Hermione Cabie Santos The New Year 2021 focuses on the many victories of the scientific communityas the rollout of authorized COVID-19 vaccines (from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna) will continue to reach designated populations in Ontario. As of December 24th, a total of 10,756 doses of this messenger RNA (mRNA) 2-dose vaccine have been administered and counting.  Based on… Read More »

By: Gemma Chua I would never have imagined that I can be so active and dedicated on keeping myself fit.  True, 2020 was a year of many challenges, the worst challenges the entire world had faced because of the pandemic resulting to a lot of misfortune incidents.  How can I battle this uncontrollable disease that conquered the entire… Read More »

By Edwin de Leon During my parochial high school years, practically everyone was on the same socio-economic level.  This helped us to be less sensitive with our lot. The staff was distant and generally aloof; rapport in an all-boys school with mostly women teachers is not the ethos promoted in Catholic schools. The priests of the day were nothing… Read More »

By Dr. Freddie Rabelas Obligacion Is there evidence showing the coexistence of poverty and optimism, two seemingly incompatible precepts?  Yes, there is and definitively so, according to findings of my study of blighted Estero de Aviles and Estero de Uli-uli communities along the Pasig River.   Notwithstanding a dismally low economic well-being index score of 25% (100% corresponds to… Read More »

Part I In one of my commentaries, I signed my name as a “Recovering Catholic.”  One of the online comments read:  ” welcome back, people do realize the advantages of being on the inside,” to which I replied: “you obviously are not familiar with the phrase. A “Recovering Catholic” is similar to a recovering alcoholic. It is based on the… Read More »

“There are so many things one would like to preserve with words but which are forever lost.” Simone de Beauvoir, The Mandarins (1954) Just like a coin has two sides, so is the word “watering” in this context. One is the washing away; the other is all about nurturing. In the process of aging, the watering of memories… Read More »

“I think that inside all of us…is a devil just dying to break out. Most of us, we know how to keep him penned up. We lock him away in a personal jail with bars of morality. But sometimes, he’s able to pry those bars apart, just enough to slip out. And if he’s been in there for… Read More »

The wishy-washy style of undocumented minutes of meetings, inaccurate and incomplete financial reports, and questionable handling of funds characterize a culture of leadership at the Filipino Centre Toronto (FCT) akin to running a bubble gum store. For example, a scramble for payable invoices ensued to justify the release of $678,000 in 2017 when FCT sold its building in… Read More »