Category Archives: lifestyle

Qwertyman No. 182: Artists, Athletes, and Avatars

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Qwertyman for Monday, January 26, 2026

SOCIAL MEDIA was abuzz last week with mainly praises for but also some questions about Hidilyn Diaz’s appointment to teach weightlifting at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. 

I don’t think anyone doubted the Olympic gold medalist’s mastery of her subject. One post that went viral, however, wondered whether the athlete had what it took to teach at UP, considering that all the preparation she would have received was a four-day orientation the university gives all new faculty members. 

To be fair to the questioner, her concern was legitimate, taking Hidilyn the sports celebrity out of the picture for a minute. As I’ll discuss later, proficiency in a talent or profession doesn’t necessarily translate to good teaching. 

To be fair to Hidilyn, unlike many Filipino athletes, she’s no stranger to the classroom, having graduated in 2023 with a bachelor’s degree in business management from St. Benilde, after several interruptions because of her training and the pandemic.

I have no doubt myself that despite her lack of teaching experience, Hidilyn will be a fine, welcome, and indeed a prize addition to the UP faculty roster. Her presence alone will galvanize student interest in her sport, and in UP athletics in general. 

Her teaching, I’m pretty sure, will take care of itself. Having trained with some of the world’s best coaches, she will not lack for topics and techniques. What will probably challenge her the most will be her transition from star to student—as the learner of teaching that she will have to be. Her students will have to get over their awe of her celebrity to imbibe her lessons. 

Her first year will be fraught with both exhilaration and frustration, as the enthusiasm and even the ecstasy of teaching are weighed down by the drudgery of academic bureaucracy—particularly in UP which, despite its leadership in many fields, remains a laggard in the prompt payment of salaries for new hires.

The fact that we’re even talking about this shows how far we’ve come from the past, when a good reputation was enough to get you in front of the blackboard.

The problem here isn’t Hidilyn, and not even just UP itself, but a global academic culture that seems to have been taken over by the accountants and professional managers from the dreamers. 

I have nothing per se against the numbers crunchers, who are central and vital to every modern university’s survival. But the seemingly ceaseless demand for performance metrics to justify budgets, promotions, and bonuses—a mind-numbing exercise for staff already exhausted from their regular chores—can produce a false dazzle that favors consistency of delivery and even of mediocrity over originality, non-conformity, and inspiration.

As a writer and also a professor and former university administrator myself, I can appreciate the peculiar challenges of recruiting and sustaining what we might call non-traditional academics like creatives and athletes in this kind of environment. You need them to identify and develop their successors among their students; conversely, many of them also need the security of a job. 

But teaching is its own art, its own sport, its own discipline—and I know, from sad experience, that not all artists and athletes, no matter how gifted they may be in their fields, can teach. Some lack the people skills and the empathy the classroom requires; the most expressive artists can be woefully inarticulate, the lithest athlete inexplicably clumsy. 

Those who do connect—performers who know their audiences and who value contact and feedback and continuous learning—become the best teachers.

Many of them might not even meet today’s stringent entrance standards. UP’s College of Science, for example and for good reason, now requires a PhD of its teaching applicants. The humanities and athletics obviously can’t enforce that rule, given that there are Literature PhDs who can’t write a decent poem and SportsEd PhDs who can’t swim.

On the other hand, some very fine writers have taught at UP without even a bachelor’s degree because of their extraordinary talent, notably NVM Gonzalez, IP Soliongco, Jose Lacaba, and Ricky Lee. 

This will be self-serving, but no better example of that kind of avatar exists at UP today than my wife June, who has been teaching the very first course in Art Conservation at the College of Fine Arts as a senior lecturer for the past three years.

Now 75, June came into teaching late in life, after a long career in the arts as a graphic designer, watercolorist, and for the past quarter-century as an art restorer and conservator running her own studio. Few people in this country (excuse the proud husband speaking) have her skill and experience, having worked on all the Filipino masters from Luna, Hidalgo, and Amorsolo onward, including the Spoliarium. She had always dreamt of teaching, knowing how few authentic and scientific conservators there are in the Philippines, and the need to train the young.

The only problem was, as a student activist, she had left UP under martial law a few units short of completing her Fine Arts degree. She married me, worked, became a mother, and never went back to school.

But she did train long and hard in conservation and restoration with the Agencia Internacional of the Spanish government, practically every day for a full year, in a program more rigorous than a master’s. On the strength of that training and her experience—she and her team have restored the collections of the Central Bank, the Philippine National Bank, and the GSIS, among others—she was taken in by UP to advise the administration on conserving the university’s vast art collections, leading to her appointment as lecturer (for a subject that, frankly, no one else in UP can teach right now). Aside from her classes, June has been advocating for UP to set up its degree program in conservation and an Arts Conservation Center to serve as both a teaching and service facility. She still runs her own Artemis Art Restoration company for private clients. For a 75-year-old dropout, that can’t be too bad. She complains of fatigue and of being perplexed by the world of AI, and says she wants to stop before dementia sets in, but I know her students love her and wish she would teach forever (because they tell her so).

I myself was a dropout for a decade and had worked as a journalist and screenwriter before returning to UP to finish my degree so I could teach—which I ended up doing for 35 years and still do long after retirement. 

When I think of Hidilyn Diaz coming in to UP amid all the fuss, I want to tell her to just relax, and to enjoy the campus and her students. Teaching in UP will be full of joys and aggravations, but the heaviest lifting will be within her—of doubts, fears, and the catcalls of the rabble in the bleachers. Welcome to the home of Honor, Excellence, and Service—and never mind that it also happens to be a hornets’ nest.

Qwertyman No. 180: Resolutions We Can Keep

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Qwertyman for Monday, January 12, 2026

ALMOST TWO weeks after the New Year, I’m sure many of us are still struggling with the resolutions we made—you know, the same ones we announced a year ago, like losing weight, buying no more (supply the object—shoes, watches, dresses), emptying the closet, and being nicer to (supply the officemate or in-law). I had to think that there must be resolutions we can make and actually keep—not easy or frivolous ones, but resolutions that will make a real difference in how we think, behave, and live. Here’s what I came up with:

1. I will not help spread fake news and hoaxes. Fighting for the truth begins with a healthy skepticism and the patience to verify. There’s no such thing as “harmless” fake news passed on. 

Last year I had to gently warn a score of friends—smart people with outstanding reputations—who posted on Facebook about Meta claiming the rights to their pictures and about pages turning blue (“It really happened!”) It’s a hoax that’s been going around for years, I told them; there was no such thing as the post described. What’s the harm, they said, just wanted to be sure. Well, the harm is in the propagation; every repost expands the space for fake news to grow, and the poster’s credibility only magnifies it further. That credibility also takes a hit, when it’s shown to absorb and help spread falsehood. Next time, visit a reputable fact-checker like http://www.snopes.com to verify a dubious post. The days are gone when you can assume that what you see is true unless proven otherwise; if you have to assume anything, assume the opposite.

2. I will think before I respond. I will reserve judgment until I understand the situation better, with clearer context and trustworthy and verifiable sources. It’s been said that today, especially online and on social media, people don’t read to understand, but to reply. Many of us have trigger itch—the compulsion to react to and comment on anything and everything that crosses our gunsights. And we do that literally without second thought, drawing on little more than scant knowledge and ample prejudice, and the unflinching conviction that we are right. 

The rise of the provocative meme—extremely compact and blunt, digitally manufactured to make a very specific point—has made this even easier, more efficient and more vicious. Memes eschew context, and invite uncritical concurrence. When I see a witty meme, I might smile and even smirk—but I will pause before joining a bashing spree if I have the slightest suspicion that something isn’t quite right. And while I’m at it, I will keep my sense of humor; I will not be baited or feel obliged to respond in anger, and I will remember that forbearance or silence is not surrender, but often victory.

3. I will use AI responsibly. I will use it as an assistant, but not let it do my thinking for me. I will use it to learn, understand, teach, and create. I will not use it to lie, malign, exaggerate, or aggrandize. I will not pretend to know everything AI can do or is doing. I will neither fear nor ignore it, but I will be wary—especially if what it produces is too clean, too good, or too intent to please. Truth often has rough edges that AI could polish out, like it enhances our portraits. 

I was watching a video on YouTube last week that purported to show the detailed production process by which the fashion house Hermes made its hyper-expensive and hard-to-get Birkin bag (am no fashionista, but am deeply curious about that industry’s workings). The video went to great lengths to demonstrate why the company’s bags commanded such high prices—the quality of the leather, the workmanship, the exclusivity—in purposeful contrast to the numerous fakes being made of the popular bag. But there was something about that video that made me uncomfortable—it seemed too luminous, its people too handsome, its tableaux too staged. An outdoor scene, supposedly outside the boutique, gave it away: the large shop sign clearly said HERMEES, with the extra E; it was no mistake—a few scenes later, they showed the sign again. The whole video was AI-driven, and no human seemed to be home and sharp enough to note the error. Now, its content may have been entirely factual, but its implied condemnation of fakery in business can’t possibly be helped by such a clumsy use of AI. 

4. I will not expect of others what I cannot expect of myself. This was something I learned during martial law, when I was imprisoned with all kinds of people—activists and common criminals, from both privileged and impoverished families. There and elsewhere, I saw how people who could speak so boldly and so well about revolution and liberty could break, sometimes so easily, under pressure. I witnessed and understood the marks of torture. I realized that everyone probably has a breaking point. I wondered what mine was. (My dentist would later tell me that I had a high threshold for pain, which surprised me.) But I came away thinking that if I asked another person to make an extraordinary sacrifice, it should be something I would be willing and prepared to do as well. I say this not to excuse weakness in other people, but to demand more of myself.

I will, however, hold public officials to a higher standard. They chose to lead—for which many are also handsomely rewarded—and so they must prove themselves better than the led. I have a right to expect that my President and congressman will act more wisely and more responsibly than me.

That said, I will live as honorably as I can, despite and especially because of the morally degraded environment in which we find ourselves today. I will not abet corruption in any way. This might be the hardest of all to keep, given how we have all somehow been complicit in this crime.

5. I will be more charitable, and share more of what I have. I will rescue “charity”—among the most human of values—from the political dustbin to which it has been relegated as useless and even harmful tokenism. I’ve heard too many people speak loudly and articulately about big themes like “social justice,” “Gaza,” and “anti-poverty” without yielding a peso from their own pockets or actually doing something concrete for the afflicted. Give, or serve. If you can’t change the system, change a life—you might even change yours.

Penman No. 481: Keepers of Memory

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Penman for Sunday, January 4, 2026

MAYBE BECAUSE of the name I chose for it, longtime followers of this column which I began more than 25 years ago will associate me with collecting vintage fountain pens, and they’d be right—partly. That’s because while I continue to collect pens with a passion, I’ve since branched out in half a dozen other directions, including typewriters, blotters, antiquarian books, midcentury paintings, canes, and even silver spoons.

It’s the kind of behavior that drives collectors’ wives crazy (although I’ll have more to say about the gender issue later), and I can only be thankful that my wife Beng has indulged me all these years. Beng collects bottles, tin cans, and pens herself, but nowhere near the intensity with which I check out eBay three times a day, scour the FB Marketplace, converse in geek-speak with fellow collectors, and subject my collections to never-ending cataloguing.

Seventeen years ago, some twenty people who must have thought they were the only ones interested in fountain pens met in our front yard in UP to form the Fountain Pen Network-Philippines. Those twenty have since grown to over 15,000 members on our FPN-P Facebook page. Unusually among hobbyist groups, and despite its explosive growth, FPN-P has remained one of the Internet’s friendliest and safest spaces, thanks to strict moderation and its openness to all kinds of pens and members, whether they come in with P100 pens from Temu or six-figure Montblancs (yes, there are Rolexes in pendom, although pens are far more pocket-friendly than watches). 

One natural offshoot of FPN-P’s expansion has been the emergence of sub-interest groups, among which is the “PlumaLuma” group, which began as one devoted to vintage pens and desk accessories, but which soon evolved into “PlumaLuma Atbp.” as it became clear that pens weren’t our only obsession. 

Some collectors maintain a clear and strict focus, like watches, santos, and tea sets. Others branch out into tangential areas (like other writing instruments and books and ephemera for me). The latter far outnumber the former, as collectors soon realize that one is never enough—not just of an object, but of collectibles. There are also “completists” who must have every single item known to have existed, catalogued and off-catalogue, in every collecting band (among my vintage Parker pens, for example, I have about 80 “Vacumatics” from the 1930s and 1940s—still far short of the hundreds of variants made).

Any serious collector in any field will tell you that a good collection takes more than money—although money surely matters in the rarefied realms. What’s just as important is connoisseurship—knowing what to want and why, and understanding the market. For budget-challenged collectors like me, knowledge and determination help balance out the odds, allowing me to buy low, sell high, and eventually trade up to the best goods without paying MSRPs. That also means taking more risks on places like eBay, but then there’s the thrill and pleasure of the hunt, which stepping into a boutique and plunking down a credit card simply can’t buy.

Those of us who collect vintage and antique items (by convention, “vintage” means at least fifty years and “antique” at least a century old) take even more risks , because what we collect could be damaged, stolen, or even fake. With the rise of auction houses and the allure of parking one’s money in some conversation-piece or status-symbol artifact, the stakes have risen even higher; there have been reports, for example, of forged master paintings sold and of “rare” coins being doctored to acquire more value at the auctions.

None of this has daunted the fatally bug-bitten collector, for whom the bar has simply risen; the Internet and the emergence of collecting groups has enlarged the competition, but at the same time it has opened more markets (I’ve bought pens and rare Filipiniana from as far as Bulgaria and Argentina). 

That explains the amazing range you’re about to see in the collections of four gentlemen I’ve picked out from PlumaLuma Atbp. who exemplify, for me, the finest in collecting and connoisseurship, being virtual walking encyclopedias of their particular specialties. (And to clarify an earlier point, PlumaLuma has many lady members with formidable pen collections—lawyer Yen Ocampo and cardiologist Abigail Te-Rosano among them—but despite what’s been said about women and shopping, they don’t seem to be anywhere near as profligate as most of these men.)

The exception to the charge of profligacy (to which I will readily confess) is Raphael “Raph” Camposagrado. Barely in his thirties, Raph trained in the UK and often travels to Europe as a software and AI consultant, imbibing Old World culture with keen devotion. He is the model of collecting focus and discipline, keeping his world-class collection of vintage fountain pens within clear numerical bounds. The one thing they have to be, aside from being old, is beautiful—as in Art Deco beautiful. No pen epitomizes that more than the 1930s Wahl Eversharp Coronet, as Raph explains:

“Considered the peak of Art Deco within the world of pen collecting, the Coronet is abundantly adorned with the symmetry, sharp angles, and geometric forms that enjoyers of the design movement obsess over. The cap and barrel are gold filled and strewn with longitudinal striations. Triangular red pyralin inserts and the pyramidal cap finial give a bold pop of color echoing the beams of search lights that would have streaked over 1930s Manhattanites. This particular piece is equipped with a slide adjuster that allows the user to change the stiffness of the nib from a firm writer of business letters to one with line variation for calligraphic pursuits. It even sports an ink view letting the user see if the pen is due for a refill. While modern pen making tends toward the large, gilded, and ornate, the Coronet achieves extravagance with just the right amount of restraint. It is golden without being a rococo explosion. It is diminutive and so maintains the dimensions of classic jewelry. It knows just how much to show like many other luxury pieces made in the late 1930s.”

Raph is also known for his sub-collection of exquisite desk pen sets, once the hallmark of executive success. The Wahl-Eversharp Doric sets, in particular, are visual stunners. 

“I personally scoured Ebay to build a mini collection around this model by Wahl-Eversharp called the Doric,” says Raph. “Other than the Coronet, the Doric is quintessentially Art Deco, sporting twelve facets. The marble desk base is supported by a thin chrome bed and has bracing that reminds me of a hawk’s neck and beak when viewed from the front or back. The depth of the celluloid on the various pens looks as if it were of stone as natural as the desk base itself.”

Investment consultant Alexander “Sandy” Lichauco has long been known in the collecting world as a collector of Philippine medals and tokens, having co-authored a seminal book on it with Dr. Earl H0neycutt (Philippine Medals and Tokens 1780-2024). However, dismayed by the rampant commercialism in that hobby (forgeries and malpractices abound), Sandy turned to fountain pens, amassing an amazing vintage collection in less than two years (including many Parkers that I—his budolero—wish I had). 

But aside from medals and pens, Sandy is also one of the country’s foremost deltiologists—that’s “postcard collector” to most of us. “I’m deep into deltiology now and have tracked down nearly 100 private mailing cards (which isn’t much compared to other collectors, but I’ve become very intentional and selective about these cards) from the turn of the century, including these two newly acquired color cards,” he says. “But the crown jewel is my 1898 Pioneer card of the Puente de España. I snagged it at a London auction, and I love the unique watercolor art. It’s postmarked and was used just three months after we gained our independence from Spain. It’s been on exhibit at the Ortigas Library since August.” 

Sandy also maintains the highly informative and interesting blog www.nineteenkopongkopong.com (and he can explain the origin of that word).

When he’s not practicing his trade as a licensed architect and project and construction manager, Melvin Lam—our newest convert to fountain pens—collects historical artifacts and documents such as the silver quill pen given as a prize to the young Jose Rizal, a letter from Andres Bonifacio to Emilio Jacinto, 1st Republic revolutionary coins and banknotes, a photograph of Rizal’s execution, the 1898 Malolos menu, revolutionary flags from the First Republic, the Murillo Velarde map, and an Ah Tay bed, among many others. 

Melvin is also an expert on the anting-anting, co-authoring the Catalogue of Philippine Silver Anting-Anting Medals. “My passion for history and culture was influenced by my father, Robert Lam, who began collecting antiques and artifacts in the 1970s. It has taken my family over 50 years to acquire our current collection. Our collection ranges from early prehistoric Philippine artifacts, items from the pre-colonial, Spanish colonial, American occupation, and Commonwealth eras, up to World War II Filipiniana items. It also includes antique anting-anting, antique santos, Philippine indigenous items, antique furniture, and Martaban jars.”

Not surprisingly, Melvin serves as president of the Bayanihan Collectors Club, known for its webinars, exhibits, auctions, and other historical celebrations, and as a board member of the Filipinas Collectibles and Antique Society (FCAS), which organizes international conventions for antiques and collectibles. 

For sheer collecting range and prowess, few can hold a candle to Augusto “Toto” Lozada Toledo, who retired from banking and insurance broking ten years ago. Never mind his 400 fountain pens (older than Toto by a few months, I have about just half that). It would be more accurate to describe Toto as a collector of collections, which comprise, aside from pens, mainly bottles (vintage and modern, soft drinks, medicines, ink, liquor, perfumes, pomades, insulators, Avon figurals, milk and baby bottles, and kitchen glassware) and Batman (action figures, vehicles, Lego sets, and comics). 

Ask Toto about the history of Parker Quink (no, not invented by a Filipino as the urban legend has it), and you’ll get a half-hour lecture on Quisumbing Ink and Quesada ink, aside from Quink itself—with all the right props, of course. 

A coffee fan, Toto also collects old brewing equipment, coffee cups, used (!) coffee bags, and Starbucks prepaid cards. From his banking and insurance background, he collects old passbooks and checks, vintage fire extinguishers and alarms, metal coin banks, prewar insurance policies, and Zuellig ephemera. (I’m leaving out a lot here, but you get the idea.)

“My main collection is vintage glass bottles—maybe 3,000 specimens—of Philippine products, because of my interest in Philippine history, and how bottles provide clues of their provenance, their makers, their likely users (who actually drank from them), art work (for bottles with paper labels), and the evolution of their logos, which are often tied in to changes in corporate history and ownership,” Toto explains. “The next largest collection is Batman objects—some 2,000 action figures alone. As a seven-year old boy, I read the 1939 issue of Detective Comics No. 27, featuring the debut of Batman, and have always been fascinated by his mental and physical skills that did not originate from alien powers but from his individual training and intellectual prowess. 

“The coffee collection comes from a lifelong affair with the brew. The banking and insurance collection comes from a 40-year career in these professions. My first fountain pen was a Wearever Pennant (still with me), that my father gave me as Grade 1 student in 1960. Briefly interrupted by the emergence of Bic ballpens in the 1960’s era, I picked up the collecting in the late 1970s. The others are a result of my interest in the Art Deco aesthetic, my career with the Zuellig Group, my love for Philippine history, and my longing for a return to the mid-century era. It’s always difficult to choose favorite pieces, but for bottles, it would be the Tansan Aerated Water because of the actual etymology of its name, and the (misplaced) brand association with the crown metal cap. The bottle is also very much a part of the American colonial era (strictly recommended for the US military), and was exclusively distributed by F. E. Zuellig, Inc. I also count the San Miguel Beer bottles, from its ceramic containers (from Germany), dark green bottles (from Hong Kong), and the establishment of its own bottle making plant which produced the now-ubiquitous and iconic amber steinies.”

My own most recent acquisitions beyond pens have been, of all things, paper blotters and silver spoons, which began as I idly searched for items Nouveau and Deco. It didn’t help the budget that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of such baubles to be found on eBay at any given time (220,000-plus for fountain pens this very minute). Like Raph, Sandy, Melvin, and Toto, I can spend sleepless nights sighing over some obscure object of desire that might leave wives and mates suspicious, but which they will accept in resignation over more dangerous liaisons.

I’m well aware that there are people who would consider us insane, but let me put it this way: to a world full of ugliness and discord, we bring beauty and order in the cabinets and cases that home and organize our collectibles, and at a time when people forget things after five minutes, we keep the memories of centuries. 

Qwertyman No. 178: A Christmas Scam Story

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Qwertyman for Monday, December 29, 2025

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ONE OF the great regrets of my college life was that, for some reason or other, I never got to take a formal course in Philosophy, which might have helped me make sense of the moral sordidness permeating our lives today. Like many of you I’ve been particularly captivated by the question of why a presumably all-good and just God would allow so much evil in a divinely created world, and let good people go bad, from petty thievery to massive corruption in the flood-control billions.

I’ll get back to the billions later (I think you know where this is headed), but let me start with me getting scammed, albeit small-scale, on Christmas Eve.

It started with an ad on Facebook Marketplace, where I spend more time than I probably should in search of old pens, books, and the kind of odds and ends that bring joy to old men trying to buy their childhoods back. The item I saw was none of the above, but rather a decent-looking pair of second-hand jeans that I thought would fit me. 

(Yes, because I’m larger than most Filipino males, and because threads today cost a fortune in the shops, almost all my clothes come used from the ukay-ukay, eBay, and FB. I’m a great believer in recycling—my mom used to dress us in B-Meg feedbag cotton, if you remember that—and at my age I have no qualms about wearing some dead man’s shirt, after a good wash.) 

So I messaged the seller, whom we’ll call Mr. T, confirming the price in the mid-hundreds and more importantly the waist size. He promptly replied with a picture of the size tag, which delighted me, and he asked for and got my shipping details, offering to do the booking himself and send me the Lalamove cost, to my great relief.  About fifteen minutes later he said he was having problems finding a rider—entirely plausible, since it was probably the busiest shipping day of the year—and so I offered to add a tip, which he offered to split with me. How nice. 

Mr. T got a rider, I got the total price, and paid him without second thought. He sent me a picture of a rider bearing packages, one of which would have been my jeans, and I waited. I normally ask for the tracking, but this was pretty close and the amount was small so I didn’t bother, and besides Mr. T. very helpfully sent me updates (“He’s just five minutes away”) and even sent me a number to call. Fifteen minutes later, figuring the rider had lost his way, I called the number, and got an “out of reach” message. Holiday congestion, I figured. Thirty minutes, I called again; same reply. I messaged Mr. T on FB; messaged bounced, “Couldn’t send.” Our lively, Christmas-y conversation was over. I’d been scammed.

That wasn’t the first time it had happened to me, online or in real life. I’m no dupe, and know my way around the digital darkness, often warning friends myself about phishing scams and hoaxes, but the problem is, I’m a gambler at heart, and when it comes to small amounts, small bets, I gamble quite freely on the goodness of human nature, even in the knowledge that, at some point, I’m bound to lose. (To be fair, 95% of my online transactions have been problem-free and even profitable, so no, I’m not going back to writing checks and visiting bank tellers like some of my Boomer friends have.) 

Of course, from the scammer’s point of view, those hundreds that trickle in from suckers like me soon turn into streams of thousands. And someone like me, familiar with loss, might afford to shrug it off, but there are kids out there who would be devastated if their P500 toy never came.

What fascinates me here is the tender, loving care with which Mr. T executed his plan, and kept me hoping until the very end. He could’ve shut me off the second he got his money, but no; he kept me hanging on, then dropped me at the very last minute. I can imagine him doing this with practiced efficiency, and I suspect not a little pleasure at being proven right about the gullibility of people. 

Now the fictionist in me imagines that Mr. T wasn’t born with scamming in mind, and didn’t take Scamming 101 at Evil U. He might have studied Accounting or Pharmacy or even Philosophy, and even gotten good grades, until something clicked in his head one morning to try something different, putting self-love at the fore.

This is where I go back to wishing I’d read more of Immanuel Kant and his idea of the “radical evil” rooted in every individual no matter how good, just waiting to be activated. That resonates with me, because I couldn’t possibly do the fiction I do if I didn’t believe that the germ of evil resides in every good person, and vice versa. (In a sense I have to admire Mr. T for being the better fictionist, having put one over the pro.)

And this brings me in a roundabout way to something I’d been thinking deeply about these past two weeks, as I’m sure many of you have—that image of Cathy Cabral on the lip of that ravine, running her life through her head, mesmerized by the ribbon of light in the stream below. She knew what stood behind and ahead of her; only what lay below was unknowable and perhaps comforting. She was here to confront something greater than her fear of heights.

Never much of a conspiracist, even in my fiction, I have often found that the simplest truths and explanations are also the most difficult to accept. One of them is that there slithers a Mr. T and a Cathy C. in each of us, seeking a way out.

Qwertyman No. 177: Another Way to Lose Money

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Qwertyman for Monday, December 22, 2025

NEXT WEEK, after Christmas, my wife Beng and I are flying to a southern city—I won’t say yet exactly where—for a short break from the stresses of the season. (Surely you’ll agree that there’s no time fraught with more anxiety—and the entire gamut of emotion from euphoria to depression—than a Pinoy Christmas, from its tinkly inception in September to its grim, budget-busting conclusion post-New Year. Let’s not even talk about the traffic.)

Beng and I have done this for years now, making it a point to visit some local place the two of us have never been before—among them Balabac, Camiguin, Dipolog, Roxas City, and Virac, destinations usually passed over by tourists in search of thrills and spills outside our septuagenarian menu. 

We’ve done this out of a deep love for and interest in our country and culture, despite all the inconveniences we associate with local travel. We’ve never been first- or business-class-type passengers to begin with, and despite our age can take a few bumps on the road in search of native fabrics, fresh iterations of suman and fish tinola, and a dip under a waterfall.

In other words, tourism-wise, we’re the easy sell, the low-hanging fruit, with modest expectations and demands and a developed tolerance for discomfort (delayed flights, rough roads, no aircon, the occasional mosquito or cockroach).

Not surprisingly, it isn’t people like us who lift up the Philippine tourism industry. We remain heavily dependent on foreign visitors bearing dollars, won, and yuan, and those tourists—typically educated, digital-savvy millennials seeking leisure and adventure experiences—have literally a planetful of destinations to choose from, and the figures clearly show that even within Southeast Asia, we’re hardly their first choice.

A comprehensive report by Zhan Guo on the ASEAN+3 Macroeconomic Office (AMRO) website notes that while Philippine tourism has rebounded somewhat since the pandemic, major structural bottlenecks continue to restrain the sector from achieving its full potential.

The report notes that “Compared with ASEAN peers, the Philippines’ international tourism market remains relatively small. Even before the pandemic, the country lagged regional peers in foreign arrivals—8.2 million foreign visitors—well below Indonesia’s 16 million, Malaysia’s 26 million, Thailand’s 40 million, and Singapore’s 15 million. Moreover, foreign tourists remain concentrated in a few destinations: the National Capital Region and Central Visayas (home to Cebu) account for over 60 percent of total foreign overnight stays. Many promising sites remain underdeveloped or difficult to reach.”

In 2024, foreign arrivals barely reached 6 million. As of November 2025, we haven’t even hit 5 million. 

Completing the picture, AMRO notes that “Tourism has long been a cornerstone of the Philippine economy. In 2024, the sector’s gross value added reached ₱3.5 trillion—7 percent higher above pre-pandemic levels—and accounted for 13.2 percent of GDP. It also supported 4.9 million jobs, or 13.8 percent of the labor force. AMRO’s analysis shows that tourism-related industries—such as hotels and restaurants—can generate higher domestic value-added per unit of production input than the average for all sectors, making the sector a key driver of the country’s post-pandemic recovery.”

Now, these figures are helpful, and AI can spout them any time, but what we really need to hear are ground-level stories from real people—tourists and expats—who’ve been here long enough and who can tell us in all candor what we need to do to catch up with our neighbors. I know we Pinoys can be extremely sensitive to criticism, especially when it comes from white people who fly in from their comfort zones and begin to expect everything here to work just as well as they do back home, and who then broadcast their woes and gripes to the world like the Philippines was the foulest and most benighted place on earth, ever. I’m sure we’ve all met louts like these.

But then there are foreigners who actually and deeply love this country—sometimes more than some of us do—despite everything they and we have to bear with, and these are the friends we need to listen to. It was an online encounter with one such expat last week that triggered this column, when I came across the blog of a European who goes by the moniker “The Lazy Traveler,” who’s been living in the Philippines for over a decade now and has traveled quite a bit around the country and the region. 

Let me quote what he wrote (with some minor edits just to improve the flow):

“Main problem: accommodation is bad and overpriced. I’m planning a motorcycle route in Vietnam from south to north. Almost everywhere there, you can sleep for $3–$4. $10 already feels like luxury. In the Philippines, it’s hard to find anything under $10. The average is $25–$30, and the quality is usually terrible.

“I remember sitting at White Beach in Puerto Galera with a resort owner. He showed me rooms priced at almost $100 per night. Inside, everything was broken—doors, toilet flush, fittings. I told him, ‘Don’t be offended, but who is paying 5,000 pesos for that crap?’ His answer: ‘They come fifteen people, so it’s cheap.” (Sleeping on the floor and everywhere.) I asked why he doesn’t fix the rooms. He said, “It will be broken again in two weeks.” That mindset explains a lot.

“If I ride from Pagudpud to General Santos, the trip will cost me at least thirty times more than Vietnam, with more hassle and less comfort.

“Another big issue: transportation. If you don’t have your own transport like a motorcycle, roaming around the Philippines can be a horror—slow connections, overpriced tricycles, limited public transport, and wasted time. Mobility here often feels like a struggle, not freedom.

“Second issue: domestic flights are insanely expensive. Not long ago, Manila–Siargao was close to $400.

“Third issue: too many restrictions, no real freedom. Hiking? Register at the barangay.

Simple trail? Mandatory guide. Then come the fees: ‘local support’ fee, environmental fee, parking fee, toilet fee, shower fee…. That’s why some foreigners call it Feelippines.

“Not to mention the official Facebook page of the Department of Tourism—it’s full of Frasco and Marcos faces instead of destinations. With 1.4 million followers, their posts get 30–40 reactions. Sayang. (I checked the page, and it’s true—JD)

“I love the Philippines. That’s why I’m still here. But if tourism wants to improve, these problems need to be called out—not ignored.”

I’m sure this isn’t the first time we’re hearing these things, and that the government knows what it needs to do. The AMRO paper lays it all down: better transport connectivity, basic utilities and infrastructure, digital readiness, and visitor facilities. 

Now we need BBM to treat this like flood control: another way to lose a lot of money aside from thievery is not to make it when we very well could.

Qwertyman No. 175: A Lid on a Dream

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Penman for Monday, December 8, 2025

LAST WEEK I used the words “tone-deaf” and “cross-eyed” to describe certain quarters with admirably exact and exacting political positions, people of stature and authority—but who then do or say something incomprehensibly off-the-wall that betrays a fundamental disconnect with reality, or with what most people feel. 

In the wake of last weekend’s huge anti-corruption rallies at the Luneta and EDSA, critics were quick to chastise, albeit politely, Cardinal “Ambo” David for seeming to drive a wedge between the two crowds by declining to ally himself with those calling for a transition council. Was he being unnecessarily divisive? 

I almost thought so (we were out of town and couldn’t attend either rally), until I read the statement from Tindig Pilipinas explaining that “The organizers chose… not to adopt calls for the simultaneous resignations of both the top two leaders of the country, or a transition council, because they recognize how easily such demands can be weaponized by insidious forces waiting in the wings…. There have always been differences because the people… are not homogenous. Unity arrives when a critical mass comes together to effect change, through the open and deliberate discussion of differences between actors of good will.” I think that’s something I can understand and even identify with; difference is not necessarily division, for so long as we share a common overarching goal.

“Disconnect” seems more applicable to the case of Trade Secretary Cristina Roque, who got a ton of bricks dumped on her head on social media for proposing that P500 could be enough for a Pinoy family’s noche buena, or traditional Christmas-Eve meal. What planet is she living on, most comments asked. Doesn’t she know that the current price of (name your ingredient) is X per kilo at (name your public market)? What do they expect us to eat at noche buena, canned sardines? Why don’t the DTI secretary and her undersecretaries stick to P500 for their own noches buenas? And so on. 

Never mind that the government later whipped out its calculators to prove, mathematically, that a P500 Christmas dinner was possible—and here’s the magic menu, if you missed it, from the Philippine News Agency: ham (500g): P170; spaghetti noodles (250g): P30; macaroni (200g): P24; mayonnaise (220ml): P121.30; cheese spread (24g): P12; queso de bola (300g): P211.60; fruit cocktail (432g): P61.76; all-purpose cream (110ml): P36.50. 

Maybe it all adds up when you punch the “equals” sign, but not politically, it doesn’t, because a Pinoy Christmas isn’t a numbers game. It’s laden with emotion and not a little illusion—the fantasy of a family coming together for a shared meal, despite the past year’s tribulations, of a door opening and Papa or Ate making a surprise appearance from Dubai with presents in hand, of sick Junior miraculously rising from his bed, to ask for some sweetened ham.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, I know the DTI meant otherwise, to show possibilities rather than limits. But that P500 figure dropped like a lid on a dream, a clattering reminder of how difficult things are rather than how hopeful we should be. I guess it’s just the old playwright in me, attuned to the urgings of human hearts and minds, that keeps scripting this scenario of mismatched intention and reception.

At the bottom line, it’s never a good idea, whatever the math says, for the well-off to tell the poor to live within their means, and especially to blame them for their poverty (like “You make yourselves poor and miserable because all you do is make babies, you lack initiative, you don’t save for a rainy day” etc.). That just makes them resent you even more, and start asking questions like, how’d you get so rich, anyway? 

Now of course Sec. Roque never said or even suggested any of those nasty things. All she probably really meant was, hey, let’s all have a merry Christmas—look, even you can afford it at this price point, with the economy doing so well. But again—ooops—up goes the red flag, because however the government may argue that the Philippine economy is performing at a faster clip (reportedly 4.0 percent during the third quarter of 2025) than even neighbors like Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, that can’t mean much to consumers grappling with the rising costs of living (in New York and much of America, the “affordability” issue that the Democrats have seized upon as a winning theme, and which Donald Trump of course dismisses as a figment of his enemies’ imagination). 

It doesn’t help that Christmas comes at yearend, a time for stock-taking and reflection, for year-on-year comparisons of one’s well-being. What was 2025 all about? Did it make our lives any better, or give us something to feel better about in 2026? I suppose that depends on whether you’re looking at the problem (can you help it, if it’s right in your face?) or at the solution (which remains largely wishful thinking).

True, it was good that—by design or inadvertently—President Bongbong Marcos opened a can of worms with that speech on corruption, leading to the flood-control exposés and to an explosion of public outrage not seen since EDSA days. But now those worms are all over the place—some crawling back to the Palace—and it looks like Junior’s going to need a nuclear solution to bring them under control, at the risk of some damage to friends and family, maybe even himself. Whatever happens, the people’s awareness and rejection of massive corruption can’t be undone, and will be a major issue come 2028. That’s progress by any standard. We’ve rediscovered our voice, found our footing, and won’t be duped or silenced. 

On the other hand, it’s never good to realize you’ve been stolen from in the crazy billions. If PBBM can only get that money back into the treasury—and toss in a few billion of his own—then we’d have a truly merry Christmas to look forward to in 2026, with considerably more than P500 to budget for the holiday ham.

Penman No. 479: Postscript to Frankfurt

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Penman for Sunday, November 2, 2025

IT WILLl be remembered as one of the largest, most complex, possibly most impactful—and yes, also most expensive and controversial—showcases of Filipino cultural and intellectual talent overseas, and above and beside all else, that fact alone will ensure that few things will remain the same for Philippine literature after Frankfurt 2025: it will be remembered.

Last month—officially from October 14 to 19, but with many other related engagements  before and after—the Philippines attended the 77th Frankfurter Buchmesse or FBM, better known as the Frankfurt Book Fair, in a stellar role as its Guest of Honor or GOH. Accorded yearly to a country with the talent, the energy, and the resources to rise to the challenge, GOH status involves setting up a national stand showcasing the best of that country’s recent publications, filling up a huge national pavilion with exhibits covering not only that country’s literature but also its music, visual art, film, food, and other cultural highlights, presenting a full program of literary discussions, book launches, off-site exhibits, and lectures, and, of course, bringing over a delegation of the country’s best writers and artists. 

It’s as much a job as it is an honor. Past honorees have predictably come mainly from the West, such as France (2017), Norway (2019), Spain (2022), and Italy (2024); only once before was Asia represented, by Indonesia in 2016. Little known to many then, Sen. Loren Legarda—the chief advocate for the arts and culture in the government—had already broached the idea of pushing for the Philippines as GOH in 2015. It took ten years, with a pandemic and two changes of government intervening, but Legarda finally secured the funds—coursed through the National Commission for Culture and the Arts and the National Book Development Board—for us to serve as GOH this year, announced a year earlier.

The Filipino delegates, over a hundred writers and creatives and as many publishers and journalists, took part in a program of about 150 events—talks, panel discussions, demonstrations, book launches, and performances—and ranged from Nobel Peace Prize winner and journalist Maria Ressa and National Artists Virgilio Almario, Ramon Santos, and Kidlat Tahimik to feminist humorist Bebang Siy, graphic novelist Jay Ignacio, poet Mookie Katigbak Lacuesta, and fellow STAR columnist AA Patawaran.

It was my third FBM, having gone for the first time in 2016 and then again last year, when the German translations of my novels Killing Time in a Warm Place and Soledad’s Sister were launched. This year, it was the Spanish translation of Soledad that was set to be launched at Frankfurt’s Instituto Cervantes. 

Those two previous exposures allowed me to appreciate our GOH role for what it was—a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put our best foot forward on the global stage. What began in the 1980s as a tiny booth with a few dozen books—which it still was when I first visited nine years ago—had become a full-on promotional campaign, not for the government (which did not object to outspoken critics of authoritarianism being on the delegation) and not even just for Philippine books and writers but for the Filipino people themselves. 

Six out of my eight events took place outside the FBM—two of them involving side-trips to Bad Berleburg in Germany and Zofingen in Switzerland—to bring us closer to local communities interested in what Filipinos were writing and thinking. Indeed my most memorable interactions were those with local Pinoys and with ordinary Germans and Swiss who asked us about everything from the current state of affairs (the resurgence of the Right in both the Philippines and Europe, Marcos and Duterte, the threat from China, the corruption scandal) to Filipino food and culture, the diaspora, the aswang, and inevitably, Jose Rizal, who completed the Noli in Germany and in whose tall and broad shadow we all worked.

Everywhere we went, in Frankfurt and beyond, the local Pinoy community embraced us, eager for news from home and proud to be represented, to hear their stories told in words they themselves could not articulate. “I’ve been living a hard life working here as a nurse in Mannheim,” Elmer Castigador Grampon told me, “and it brings tears to my eyes to see our people here, and to be seen differently.” 

A German lady accosted me on the street outside the exhibition hall and asked if I was the Filipino she had seen on TV explaining the Philippines, and we had our picture taken. A German author in his seventies, Dr. Rainer Werning, recounted how he had been in Manila during the First Quarter Storm and the Diliman Commune, had co-authored two books with Joma Sison since the late 1980s, and had described the Ahos purge in Mindanao and similar ops in other parts of the islands as the most tragic and saddest chapter in the history of the Philippine Left . A sweet and tiny Filipina-Swiss lady, Theresita Reyes Gauckler, brought trays of ube bread she had baked to our reception in Zofingen (the trays were wiped out). Multiply these connections by the hundreds of other Filipinos who participated in the FBM, and you have an idea of the positive energy generated by our visit.

From our indefatigable ambassador in Berlin, Susie Natividad, I learned about how Filipino migrant workers have to learn and pass a test in German to find jobs in Germany, a task even harder in Switzerland, where Swiss German is required. Despite these challenges, our compatriots have done us proud, as the maiden issue of Filipino Voices (The Ultimate Guide to Filipino Life in Switzerland) bears out. 

The FBM was as much a learning as it was a teaching experience for us, for which we all feel deeply grateful. By the time our group took our final bows on the stage in Zofingen—a small Swiss city that hosts writers from the GOH after the FBM as part of its own Literaturtage festival—I felt teary-eyed as well, amazed by how a few words exchanged across a room could spark the laughter of recognition that instantly defined our common humanity. 

I am under no illusion that GOH participation will dramatically expand our global literary footprint overnight, but it has created many new opportunities and openings for our younger writers to pursue in the years to come. It is a beginning and a means, not an end. The greater immediate impact will be to spur domestic literary production and publishing, to have a keener sense of readership, and to encourage the development of new forms of writing.

Sadly, a move to boycott the FBM by Filipino writers protesting what they saw to be Germany’s complicity with Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza has also impacted our literary community. (For the record, there were Palestinian writers—and even an Iranian. delegation—at the FBM, with whom Filipino writers interacted in a forum. There was also a Palestinian book fair across the fairgrounds.)

I have long taken it as my mission to promote an awareness of our work overseas and had opposed the boycott from the very beginning for reasons I have already given many times elsewhere. Many hurtful words have been spoken and many friendships frayed or broken, to which I will add no more, except to quote the Palestinian-Ukrainian refugee Zoya Miari, who visited the Philippine pavilion and sent our delegates this message afterward:

“I’m on my way from Frankfurt back to Zurich, and I’m filled with so much love that I can’t stop thinking about the love I felt in the Philippine Pavilion. I came back today to the Pavilion to say goodbye, not to a specific person, but to the whole community. This space became a safe space for me, one where I deeply felt a sense of belonging.

“I’m writing these words to thank you and your people for creating a space where

I, where we, felt heard and seen. That in itself is such a powerful impact. I know some people decided to stay in the Philippines to show support for the Palestinians, and I want to say that I hear and see them, and I thank them. And to those who decided to come, to resist by existing, by speaking up, by showing up, by connecting the dots, by being present and by sharing stories, I also hear you, see you, and deeply thank you.

“We all share the same intention: to stand for justice, to fight against injustice, and we’re all doing it in the best way we know how. I truly believe that the first step to changing the world is to create safe spaces where people are deeply heard and seen. When stories are heard and seen, we begin to share our vulnerabilities and showing that side of ourselves is an act of love. Through this collectiveness, this solidarity, we fight for collective liberation.”

Penman No. 478: Best Foot Forward in Frankfurt

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Penman for Sunday, October 5, 2025

ON MONDAY next week, several hundred Filipino writers, publishers, artists, journalists and other workers in the book trade will be flying off to Germany for the Frankfurter Buchmesse (FBM), better known as the Frankfurt Book Fair, running this year until October 19.

Led mainly by the National Book Development Board (NBDB) and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts (NCCA), it will probably be the largest cultural mission ever sent out by the country to an international event—the equivalent of an Olympic delegation—and for good reason. This year, the Philippines is the FBM’s Guest of Honor (GOH), an annual distinction designed to draw attention to that particular country’s literature and culture, chiefly through its books. 

As GOH, the Philippines will have its own pavilion of curated exhibits highlighting our literary history and production, as well as the diversity of our works from historical novels and crime fiction to children’s stories and comic books.

Going back over 500 years, the Frankfurt book fair is the world’s largest gathering of publishers, authors, and booksellers, drawing thousands of attendees from all over the world to what is essentially a marketplace for publishing and translation rights. For countries like the Philippines, far away from the global publishing centers in New York and London, it is a matchless opportunity to showcase the best of one’s work. 

Looming largely over our GOH presence will be the work and legacy of Jose Rizal, whose deep personal ties to Germany—where he studied ophthalmology and completed Noli Me Tangere—continue to inform our relationship with that country. Indeed, our GOH slogan—“The imagination peoples the air”—is drawn from Rizal’s Fili, turning Sisa’s frantic search for her missing sons into a metaphor for the power of words to create moving realities.

There are hundreds of events on the Philippines’ official FBM schedule, both onsite and off-site. They range from panel discussions on “Our National Literature: Filipino Spirit and Imagination” with Merlie Alunan and Kristian Cordero, “Women’s Fiction from the Global South” with Cecilia Manguerra Brainard, Jessica Zafra, and Ayu Utami, and “Dismantling Imperial Narratives” with Filomeno Aguilar Jr., Lisandro Claudio, and Patricia May Jurilla to performances by National Artist for Music Ramon Santos and the Philippine Madrigal Singers, a demonstration of Baybayin by Howie Severino, and a book launch of the German editions of the Noli and Fili with historian Ambeth Ocampo. (For the full program, see https://philippinesfrankfurt2025.com/events/)

I have eight events on my personal calendar, ranging from the launch of the Spanish edition of my novel Soledad’s Sister to readings at the Union International Club and Bad Bergleburg, so it’s going to be a hectic time for this septuagenarian. This will be my third and likely my last sortie into the FBM, and I know how punishing those long walks down the hangar-sized halls can get. 

Practically all aspects of Philippine art and culture will be on display in Frankfurt, going well beyond books and literature into theater, film, music, dance, food, and fashion. In short, we will be putting our best foot forward on this global stage, although there will be no papering-over of our political and social fractures and crises. (Journalists Maria Ressa and Patricia Evangelista will be there to make sure of that.)

As with any large-scale national enterprise, our GOH effort has not been without controversy. A campaign by cultural activists to boycott the FBM—premised on Germany’s and the book fair’s perceived support for Israel in its genocidal war on Gaza—took off earlier this year and gained some traction, leading to the withdrawal of some authors from the delegation. There was spirited and largely respectful debate over this issue, but it was clear to both sides from the outset that a complete disengagement from the FBM—for which we had planned for many years running—was not going to happen. (I argued, like many others, for our critical participation, minding Gaza as one of the foremost issues facing humanity today. Not incidentally, on the Philippine program is a panel on “Writing Through the Wounds: Filipino and Palestinian Literatures in Relational Solidarity” with Nikki Carsi Cruz, Dorian Merina, Tarik Hamdan, Atef Abu Saif, and Genevieve Asenjo, among other initiatives in support of Palestinian freedom.)

Another criticism raised was the cost of our GOH participation—an effort bannered and sustained by Sen. Loren Legarda, the chief and most consistent supporter of the arts and culture in the Senate. Why not just pour all that money, some have said, into publishing and printing more books for Filipinos? There’s no argument that Philippine education needs more support (the trillion-peso infrastructure scam tells us the money was always there) but the targeted exposure that the GOH opportunity provides comes once in a lifetime, and Sen. Legarda wasn’t about to let it pass. 

As she noted in recent remarks, “When I first envisioned the Philippines as the Guest of Honor at the Frankfurter Buchmesse, some felt that it was far too ambitious, that we were too diverse and too complex for the world’s largest book fair to embrace. But I believed then, as I believe now, that our diversity is our greatest advantage, a gift and never a hurdle.

“The Philippines is more than an archipelago of 7,641 islands. It is a vast constellation of ideas and innovation, of ingenuity and distinct cultures and traditions joined together by the tides of hope and resilience. The 135 languages identified and described by the Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino turn into the voices and stories of Filipinos resonating around the world, reaching across cultures, transcending borders, challenging assumptions, and expanding the boundaries of human empathy.”

Let those voices and stories fill the air in Frankfurt, and spread around the planet.

Qwertyman No. 165: Conspicuous Corruption

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Qwertyman for Monday, September 29, 2025

IT WAS during America’s “Gilded Age”—a period that many (not just them Yankees, but also us Pinoys) look back on with borrowed nostalgia—that an economist named Thorstein Veblen wrote a book titled The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions (1899). 

Drawing on Marx, Darwin, and Adam Smith, Veblen went against the grain of neoclassical economics and its presumption of people as rational economic beings seeking utility and happiness from their labors; instead, Veblen argued, they were irrational agents who amassed wealth for social status and prestige. Writing in a scathingly satirical and literary style, Veblen roasted America’s nouveau riche—the robber barons who had built their business empires on coal, steel, and railroads (think Rockefeller, Carnegie, and Vanderbilt), and who then splurged on mansions, yachts, and such other luxurious testaments to their success.

We don’t remember Veblen much, although he cut a sharp impression among his admirers and critics alike as a dour Midwestern misanthrope, a killjoy who saw little economic value in churchgoing, in etiquette, and even in sports (of course, this was way before the MLB, NBA, and NFL). 

What we do remember are some terms that his book bequeathed to our century, most notably “the leisure class” and “conspicuous consumption,” the latter being the purchase and display of goods beyond their practical value for the purpose of manifesting one’s power and prestige—which in itself became a form of social capital, facilitating the accumulation of even more of the same. (Veblen also theorized about “conspicuous compassion” and “conspicuous waste.”)

Dr. Veblen was writing at and about the turn of the 20th century, but his observations were preceded by a history of ostentation as old as, well, Jesus. (And here, being no historian, I’ll acknowledge some help from AI.) The ancient Romans held lavish feasts and circuses to entertain the masses. Their Greek counterparts passed sumptuary laws to curb excess, limiting the gold a person could possess and the number of servants a woman could bring to a public event—which tells us exactly what they were doing. In both feudal Japan and medieval Europe, laws were imposed regulating what people could wear—to preserve social stratification, and visibly distinguish the rich from the poor. 

It didn’t always work—empowered by trade, Italy’s growing merchant class brazenly copied what the old nobility wore. Things got so showy that the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola led an anti-ostentation movement in Florence, culminating in the public burning of luxury goods, cosmetics, and elaborate clothing, a.k.a. the “bonfire of the vanities.”

I’m sure you can see by now what I’m getting at, which is the Philippines’ ripeness for its own version of “Bling Empire” and “Dubai Bling,” Netflix shows both devoured and skewered for their “grotesque opulence” and hermetic imperviousness to such inconvenient topics as Gaza, Ukraine, and Donald Trump. I have to admit to binge-watching both series, fascinated and revolted at the same time—fascinated by my revulsion, and revolted by my fascination.

This is how ostentation holds us in its thrall—by indulging our fantasies while providing extravagant proof and reason to cluck our tongues in disapproval. The logical response should be to switch channels, exit YouTube, or just turn the damned TV off. But no, we watch on, bewildered by our inability to comprehend how a Birkin bag could cost $500,000, and further, how someone could afford them, and even further, how someone could own not just one but five of them, and yet even further, how that someone could be a Filipino senator’s wife (last heard opining, with admirable sensitivity to the public temper, that “Now is not the time to attend Paris Fashion Week.”)

Unlike Veblen, who employed sardonic humor to prove his point, this is no longer even satire or damnation by exaggeration, but outsize reality. The gargantuan figures emerging from the infrastructure corruption scandal now transfixing the nation—almost a billion pesos of public money lost in the casinos, P4.7 billion worth of aircraft in one congressman’s hangar, and so on—not only boggle the mind and churn the stomach, but impoverish the imagination. We are too poor to contemplate these sums. 

And so to Veblen’s terminology, we must now add “conspicuous corruption,” as it seems that even among the corrupt—who are not anonymous to one another, needing to operate as a cozy network of thieves if they are to mutually succeed—there exists a virtual competition over who can get away with more. This doesn’t even involve or require the building of real assets such as trains, skyscrapers, and power plants, like the industrial dynasts did. Why bother, when ghost accounting will achieve as much if not more for one’s bottom line?

For now, the public outrage over the flood-control scandal may have dimmed the lights for the accused and their accomplices and beneficiaries. Facebook and Instagram accounts that once flaunted luxury limousines, exotic getaways, and designer labels have been shut down or turned private, their owners gone mute after sulky disclaimers to the effect that “We worked hard for our billions!” (But not everyone, as that high-flying congressman’s wife was reported shopping with impunity in Paris last week, oblivious to the brouhaha.)

Not incidentally, there’s more than a tinge of sexism to the recent backlash against so-called “nepo princesses”—the daughters of rich, powerful, and presumably corrupt politicians and their business cohorts. Privileged indolence, after all, is an equal-opportunity affectation, and doubtlessly their brothers aren’t wasting their time volunteering for NGOs and teaching catechism.

When they will reappear is anybody’s guess. The EDSA 4 brewing in the streets should hopefully result in decisive action against the guilty parties in this mess, and if only to appease the mob, I’m sure a few heads will roll. But I’m under no illusion that human nature will reverse course and that Thorstein Veblen’s leisure class and its blingy profligacy will vanish into oblivion anytime soon.

Me, I’m in the mood for a bonfire, and it’ll be more than croc-skin handbags I’ll want to toss into it.

Qwertyman No. 163: Redemption and Reversal

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Qwertyman for Monday, September 15, 2025

“Enormity” is a word I rarely use in my writing, because I still take it in its traditional, original meaning, which is that of “a great evil, a grave crime or sin.” I would use it in the sense of “the enormity of the Holocaust, in which Adolf Hitler exterminated six million Jews” as well as in “the enormity of Israel’s genocidal assault on the people of Gaza, employing bombing and starvation to bend Palestinians to its will.”

But it has so often been misused as an alternative to “enormousness,” to mean “very large” or “very big” in relation to size, that most modern dictionaries have relented and accepted that secondary definition.

Last week, listening to Sen. Ping Lacson’s revelations about gargantuan sums of money changing hands and being blown at the casinos not by business magnates or heirs to billions but by subalterns at the Department of Public Works and Highways, I saw no inconsistency whatsoever between the word’s two meanings. It was both one and the other, wrongdoing on such a scale that made you wonder if this was still our country, if we still had laws to fall back on, and for how much longer our people would be willing to endure this kind of abuse before the dam breaks and a biblical flood of justice bursts forth to sweep away the evil in our midst.

The quoted sums were mindboggling enough: five DPWH district and assistant engineers in Bulacan accounted for almost P1 billion in casino losses, as reported by Pagcor to Lacson. A district engineer—there were 186 of them at the DPWH last year, according to the Department of Budget and Management—earns a monthly salary of almost P230,000. It’s nothing to sneeze at (my salary as a Full Professor 12 in UP was half that when I retired in 2019, and Filipino minimum wage earners still make less than P20,000 a month), and you could live very comfortably on it if you lead a prudent existence. But who needs prudence when you have tens of millions of pesos in kickbacks to play with at baccarat or roulette?

The theft isn’t even the real crime, the true enormity here; it’s what that money should have been used for, but wasn’t—the prevention of human suffering through public works projects that have instead remained unfinished or grossly substandard. Those engineers weren’t playing with cash and chips—they were playing with lives and futures, the fortunes of entire families and communities gone with a wrong turn of the dice, followed by a casual shrug and a reach for more of the endless chips. 

Forgive these murderous thoughts, but for this alone, once proven guilty, those miscreants deserve to be hanged, or banished to a prison that floods at high tide. One might add that if Digong Duterte had launched a tokhang campaign against the corrupt—but we all know why he couldn’t have—perhaps he wouldn’t be watching windmills from his window now.

Our righteous indignation aside, it’s clear that the buck should and will stop with no other than President Bongbong Marcos, who after all began all this with his surprising and explosive public revelation of the top contractors’ names. Whatever his initial or ulterior motive may have been, that’s practically been rendered moot by the massive outrage and political drama arising over the past few weeks as a result of his action and of the continuing Senate and Congressional investigations. 

In the immediate future, much will hinge on the independent commission that BBM is organizing to probe the issue and on its efficacy. In an ironic turn of history, its credibility will have to match that of the Agrava Commission, whose conclusion that Ninoy’s assassination was the result of a military conspiracy helped to eventually bring his father’s regime down.

But since irony seems to be a strong and inescapable feature of our political life, it may be the perfect time and opportunity for the dictator’s son to become his own man, to redeem his part of the family name, and to prove his doubters and detractors (this martial-law ex-prisoner among them) wrong. He can do that by finding the courage and resolve to pursue this business of weeding out systemic corruption—just beginning with our public works—to its farthest possible conclusion, no matter who or what gets in the way.

Surely PBBM would not have trumpeted this initiative against corruption if he did not expect the money trail to lead back to some of his closest associates and supporters, and even to his family—who, as no one will or should forget, have long stood accused of plunder in the billions, well before the Discayas and their company discovered the short road to riches. The Marcoses may have dodged payment for those debts through favorable court rulings predictably secured upon BBM’s presidential victory, but he cannot escape this responsibility now.

Any attempt to pause or to mute the investigations into this ugly mess will only backfire on BBM and his presidency and invite suspicions of his complicity in these scandals. His only real option is to seize the moment, press on, and do the right thing even if and until it hurts.

I can see many of my liberal cohorts grimacing at the notion that a man we once derided for his profligacy and lack of discipline could lead such a brave and sweeping reform of our society and government, and I have to admit that I too shall remain a skeptic until I see solid results coming out of these investigations. Dismissals and bans won’t be enough for the erring officials and contractors; we want jail time for the guilty and adequate restitution, we want the big fish to fry.

But I’m a great believer in the possibility and the power of redemption (think Saul of Tarsus and Ignatius of Loyola). Even in this seemingly quixotic mission of reforming government, very few people will come to the table with perfectly clean hands—or remain unsullied to the grave. Ultimately less important than their private faults is their public performance—what they did, over the course of their lifetime, to serve the public good and/or to make amends for their past misdeeds and shortcomings.

BBM may be far from the path to sainthood, but he can still employ the vast powers of his office to strengthen constitutional governance in this country, in dramatic reversal of his father’s legacy. If he fails to do that, then he will merely confirm what we have suspected all along. I pray, for once, that we were wrong.