Control lost! By Emmanuelle The Muslims, the Moros, the Ilagas, MILF, Bangsamoro, ultimatum, lost commands, terrorists, murderers, pillagers, bodies beheaded or decapitated, defiled. Of late, these words have the capacity to chill the spine of the most ordinary of citizens, but especially those who live in the Mindanao areas most…

Last words! By Emmanuelle There are tales too short but so true to life I just can’t let them go. These, too, are seeds from which rice or wheat grows. She said: I will wait for you till the end of time. For two years, her voice and her pink,…

The least said By Emmanuelle Eight and in the third grade is not a good age and a good year to find one’s self. One is too young and too old all at once. She had swept the floor twice. She had fluffed the dust. She had stocked the books…

The watched pot By Emmanuelle This study was carried out by psychologists, just to make a point: Two groups of the same number of people were introduced to a pot sitting plumply on a hotplate. The pot was shown to be half-filled with water. Then the hotplate was switched on…

Beauty! By Emmanuelle YOUR friends call you Beauty or Ganda, but your boyfiend’s former girlfriend and her barkada tartly describe you as Pangit or Bruha. Who is the more believable harbinger of truth? Makes for more material behind the saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, di ba?…

Quartered! By Emmanuelle Many had lamented that justice is such a slowpoke in coming, if at all. It takes deliberately small measured steps, and it simply refuses to be hurried along. Interminable is a mild describe of the years it takes before the presiding judge harrumphs a pronouncement. By that…

Halved! By Emmanuelle So, there really is an ending to this, after all. Concluding a non-ending is not as easy as one might think. Might as well un-Chinese a Chinese, but that would still be better than speculating on a spatula. The first is near impossible but probable. The second,…

Pozorrubio SOMA: Of infrastructures and sectoral priorities By Emmanuelle It was supposed to be a formal legislative-executive function. In reality, it turned out to be a getting-to-know-you-more party for all – for the town leaders and their people. The SOMA started exactly at nine in the morning of July 2…

Quartered! By Emmanuelle Rarely, actually almost never, do I write in the first person. This is one of the rare, actually almost never times. Not for the sole reason that the moment calls for the intervention of the first person, but. The moment calls for the intervention of the first…

Halved! By Emmanuelle It does not take an old proverb to remind us that half the world doesn’t know how the other half lives. Nor where it lives. Cutting it close, 10% or one half of society cannot begin to imagine how the other half of 90% lives. As mathematician,…