Surfing Everest

The two giant Philippine television networks and their respective Mount Everest climbers are racing to get to the peak and hoping to plant a flag of conquest and beam to the world their triumph over height, cold, snow, ice, wind, fatigue. It is not easy for those involved to admit that it is a race to the top. And it is not a question of who gets there first but whether anyone among the hopeful Filipinos there right now could get to the peak at all and come back in one piece. One hears the usual cliché about conquest of self, that is, the Himalayas...

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Elpidio de la Victoria, Earth Day martyr

Things were beginning to grind to a halt on Wednesday of Holy Week when the murderer struck. He chose the time when media coverage would be minimal, government offices would be closed and most people would be in their homes and in church or away somewhere. In fact, news about the murder didn’t come out in the national print media until four days later on Easter Sunday. The Cebu media gave it major treatment though. The Inquirer had a brief account on page 20, part of which read: ``One of the city’s leading crusaders against illegal fishing died...

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Psalm 69 for our times

For this Holy Thursday, here is a variation on the theme of Psalm 69 that I had written for Holy Week in 1992. With a few changes here and there, it still applies 14 years later. Save me, O God, for their diarrhea of words has come up to my chin. I am drowning in their slimy saliva and I slip everywhere I step. Into this depths I have been pushed and I am engulfed by the torrent of true lies and half-truths. I am weary from pleading that they shut up for a while and give my ears a rest. My throat is hoarse and dry. More than the hair in their...

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From aviation to nursing

The previous column piece ``Mayday! Mayday! for the aviation industry’’ tried to bring to the fore the brain drain problem in the aviation industry which is becoming more acute because of foreign recruiters’ poaching expedition in the country. It is so easy for the foreign poachers to entice our highly trained aviation experts with high pay because the foreign aviation industry did not have to invest in long and expensive training. That is what the locals are complaining about. It takes 10 years and more than P10 million in training investment...

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