October bears the suffix “-ber” as many of our folks would have it expressed as the Christmas season is fast approaching. In the Christian world, it is a time to enjoy the year-long hard-earned income for a time meant to be spent with family, friends and loved ones; and of course for many others, drinking buddies “beer-days.”
In my maiden article for this column I made mentioned of a fishing village in Kesennuma, Miyagi prefecture, Japan. One of the villages we went to was Karakuwa. In the book, “Mindanao Muslim History: Documentary Sources from the Advent of Islam to the 1800s,” which I co-authored and published this year at the auspices of Ateneo de Davao University, Caracoa is repeatedly mentioned along with other indigenous warships which sorts of “challenged Western gunboats by sheer maneuverability and speed” in navigating the seas of Visayas and Mindanao (2017, 76). Caracoa or Karakuwa was a large boat, the fastest at the time and equivalent to the battleships in modern times. These ships were largely employed by Muslim polities (e.g. Sultanates of Maguindanao and Sulu).
As soon as I step afoot the tube that separates the “medium” between sky and ground, I know this is the Philippines. It was last year, summer time, and 11…
Our esteemed national heroes once envision of an impossible dream in their quest for a united Filipino nation. Since then, our national leaders valued the importance of building a “national…
In July this year, I received a fellowship grant to join the 2017 Japan Foundation Summer Institute along with other researchers from the USA, Japan, and Southeast Asia. Part of…