Today’s Views

It was the feast of sacrifice that the Muslim world were celebrating on Friday, September 1, and traffic was heavy…

People in Claveria Street, Leoncio Deriada’s second novel, is far from his best work of fiction. But it nevertheless demonstrates the value of this living literary legend to Davao and its people.

Before Buwan ng Wika ends, I published through my social media account “tokhang ang daigdig,” a poem rendered from Alejandro Abadilla’s “ako ang daigdig.” In every illuminating moment of replacing each of Abadilla’s ako with tokhang, the new work gradually forms and reveals itself as something relevant in these dark times, yet conscious of the limits of its being. I leave further reading and thinking up to those who want to dissect the derivative work, which, hopefully, has its own merits. So I can devote enough space to translation. Along the way, what Hans J. Vermeer calls skopos (aim) and/or commission (definition) shifted accordingly, that ended with the translatum (target text), “tokhang the universe.”

Kristel Tejada was forced to file a leave of absence from the University of the Philippines in Manila after she failed to pay tuition on time. Out of despair, she committed suicide on March 15, 2013. She was 16.

I was, for the longest time, (and still am, to a certain extent) considered an ingglesera, an epithet that I did not particularly mind. In my mind it was, as I was growing up, an unavoidability. As a child I loved to read (and still do), but aside from the delightfully written and illustrated Ibong Adarna books (which I adored but eventually outgrew), there were almost no non-English books for young readers back in the day. My family also had the middle-class predilection for American TV shows and movies, encouraged in no small way by local programming dominated by noontime shows and melodramas.

The Tres Sawahes lick the mouth fluids that trickle down their jaws to savor the satisfaction they feel for having reached a consensus. Their tails twine as an expression of contentment. They seem to envision the future scenario they want for the world they belong to. And above all, they relish the thought of commendation and applause by their Big Boss Bakunawa.

Filipinos may be the most judgemental people in the world.

June, July and August are both meaningful and sad moments for me. June is the birth month of my little brother and in the same month this year, my mother died. July is my birth month and on the same month my son died ten years ago.

Our children, especially from the age zero to nine, imitate the things that adults do. They copy the actions, the manner of speaking, and even the feeling of the adults who surround them. Whether we like it or not, we teach them who we are. Not what we know.

Haribon soars to extra heights in the sky to avoid being detected he is observing the activities below. Hovering above the Lake he can clearly see what goes on in the ground. There seems to be a grand joint martial exercises involving mobilizations of long columns of dogs and snakes, including scorpions, centipedes, wasps and bees. Even big red ants are made to participate in this rare show of force of biting animals and stinging insects exhibiting their respective skills in fighting maneuvers.