Stories posted 2006

Video

Dire prospects

IT’S hard to predict what the future has in store. When I asked people in Quiapo who they thought the next president would be, many of them replied, “Who’s running?”

Perspectives

The 2010 Vision

UNDER ORDINARY times, 2010 is the year we elect a successor to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. But the Garci scandal changed all that. Since then — or because of it — the Arroyo administration quickly abandoned its reform agenda in favor of short-term survival.

Perspectives

Elections in a depreciated democracy

THE FRAMERS of the 1987 Constitution thought they were doing our democracy a service by abandoning the old two-party system and opening up the electoral process to anything declared a political party. The outcome of that is the elimination of political parties as a factor in Philippine politics.

(Not quite) a great leap forward

‘TIS THE season for year-enders, but it’s also the season to be merry. So we thought we should refrain from getting anyone too depressed (your family can do that for you). Instead of having predictions for 2007, which seem to be already sending some people over the edge, we are going fast forward to 2010. It’s a nice, even number, although it’s also the year when we are supposed to choose our next president. Which is why the predictions we asked people to make for the December issue of i-report focus on politics and how these will have an impact on our lives.

Video

56 pairs… and counting

KITTY Caragay wears a size five and owns over 50 pairs of shoes.

A self-confessed semi-addict to shoes, the 22-year-old Caragay says that she unconsciously began to collect shoes during high school. Her taste is eclectic — bright sneakers with colorful laces sit side by side an array of black shoes, which are arranged next to high-heeled shoes in almost every imaginable shape and style.

Shod through the heart

IN HER article “Shoe Obsession Disorder,” Houston Chronicle writer Kathy Gibson postulated that Cinderella’s stepsisters were badly behaved not so much because they envied Cinderella’s grace and beauty, but because they coveted her famous glass slippers. It’s not an entirely unreasonable theory, since the first known version of the Cinderella story is an Egyptian one, concerning a young girl called Rhodopis; and Egypt, after all, is the first known civilization to have developed, among various other groundbreaking innovations, Really Fancy Shoes.

In excess

SOME MAY be more benign than others, but as Carl Jung once observed, “every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.” Someone else noted as well that too much of even a good thing could have dire results, so chocoholics should stop kidding themselves. Those delicious, lovely morsels may put you in heaven now, but lord only knows what they can cost you in the end. Hippo hips and a very emaciated wallet (if you take a liking for the imported variety) at the very least. All that sugar in your system certainly wouldn’t put you in the pink of health either.

Peeping toms go hi-tech

AND YOU thought you’d already seen it all. From someone who looks a lot like Piolo Pascual in bed with a man, to the diminutive Mahal giggling away in all her naked glory in a palanggana (washbasin), scandal videos featuring celebrities have been multiplying so fast in the last few years, they have been shocking less and less people. But what if the star of the latest sex clip being passed around through cell phones or in cyberspace was a neighbor, a classmate, or a relative? Or perhaps even you?

Crime, punishment, and CCTVs

THERE WAS a time when Pasay was an ideal place to raise a family. But when it was the turn of Paul Hinlo’s generation to call Pasay home, much of the city had already gone to seed. In the evenings, Hinlo recalls, drug dealers would wait for buyers on the street where he lived.

First Person

Gotcha!

AS A teenage prankster with a high voice, I once called up an earnest classmate and pretended I was a girl, a sweetly flirtatious chick (yes, we still used that word back then) our class had just met at one of the dimly lit soirees we used to have with girls’ schools. It was not a great mimicry but it worked, my friend’s gullibility enhanced by roused testosterone. We spoke for over an hour, trading gossip and shy compliments.

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