Opinion

Featured at Blogspot on June 16, 2011

ONCE UPON A TIME in Banilad, Cebu City in September 2009, I meet two foreigners inside the Gustavian Restaurant. Both were very amiable and they look like veterans of sleeping more than a thousand nights under the stars. One is an American who goes by the name of Thomas Moore and the other is Welsh, William Rhys-Davies. Both are old-school outdoorsmen in the purest sense of the word.

Over swigs of beer, we were talking about ...

Featured at the Warrior Pilgrimage Blog on May 14, 2011

IN MY PRIME, DURING the early '90s, I have climbed the Babag Mountain Range four times. I laugh at the thought as I reminisce. That's a far cry from what I am doing now as a mere old man: twenty-four times a year. That's twice a month!

Do I feel good? Obviously, YES! I not only perspire a lot but I have increased my resistance to cold and heat and fatigue threefold. Besides I could do it alone. Rain or shine... ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on February 22, 2010

HAVE YOU NOTICED Cebu City's map or have tried walking upon its city streets or, better still, have ridden around the suburbs of this Queen City of the South? Chances are you would see street names where you would least expected it or getting curious as to how city planners of the past label such streets in a roughshod manner? Sometimes, if not, most of the time, you'll get confused.

Take for example V. Gullas ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on November 6, 2009

I SAW TODAY, November 6, 2009, the felling or the sentencing to death, so to speak, of a jackfruit tree and a mango tree, both full grown and in the prime of their existence, because it gets in the way of a hotel rising in Cebu. Too bad, I wished I have trees as big as those in my lot.

I have tasted their sweet fruit only this year because this is the year that they have started to bloom well, thanks to the ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on October 15, 2009 and during Blog Action Day 2009

THIRTY-FIVE SUMMERS ago, I lived in Cebu City when there were wide open spaces, few people on the sidewalks, fresh and clear air all around, clean seas to swim and tap water was still drinkable. I still live in the same place but I am now in a crowded neighborhood, sidewalks that are difficult to navigate, breathing polluted air, shying away from murky seas and forced to drink bottled water. ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on October 6, 2009

SUNDAY, JULY 26, 2009. I went to the Mandaue City Reclamation Area to watch an ongoing airsoft battle on an open lot nearby the Cebu Doctor's University. It is my first time to see an airsoft event. I saw grown-up men running; their rattling plastic weapons spewing off plastic pellets at opponents. The ground is very muddy but they were very serious with their game. I was quite amused and I shook my head unable to believe ...

Featured in www.pinoyapache.blogspot.com on August 12, 2009.

TIBET IS NOT CHINA. Neither is it part of the latter. This I know when I began to read history books in the '70s.

There's a whale of a difference between the two! Tibet is a theocracy while China, officially the People's Republic of China, is a socialist state. The finest form of Buddhism is practiced in Tibet. The PROC have, long ago, shelved the spiritual aspect of its citizens by the Cultural Revolution ...