A Business Graduate's Reviewing History Blog

I guess the rainy days really can make me remember the Chiong Sisters' sudden disappearance, right? Right now, Jeepney TV on YouTube hasn't uploaded the Chiong Sisters episode. I watched Give Up Tomorrow where one blatant opponent of constitutional reform, Mrs. Solitas G. Collas-Monsod, was there. I could think about her colorful descriptions that helped the video. Mrs. Monsod did present a lot of valid points such as the late Judge Martin Ocampo's colorful imagination of how Francisco Juan G. Larranaga aka Paco could just hire a plane, land in Cebu, do the dastardly deed, and fly to Manila like nothing happened. I could agree with Mrs. Monsod's statements but I'm still appalled at one thing--she's very anti-reform! The video I'm sharing was most likely not included due to time constraints. However, it's a good thing that Michael Collins uploaded some of those scenes. These scenes included the owner of the house where the rape supposedly happened, the ...

Having grown up in the Philippines, I could remember some discrimination even if I'm a natural-born Filipino. There's the word "huan na" (spelled as 番仔 and known as fān zăi in Mandarin) which Chinese-Filipino call Filipinos to be. However, a deeper meaning of the word huan na may simply mean "foreigner" or "outside the Chinese race. It's very often seen that the Chinese tend to migrate, build communities, and become very exclusive. I wonder what's the point of leaving China (for freedom reasons) and then trying to live as if they're still in China? That's what's often portrayed by Amy Tan of the Joy Luck Club and Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by a Chinese-American lawyer, Amy Chua-Rubenfeld who was born to Chinese-Filipino parents. I remembered how often Filipinos of non-Chinese origin are called huan na. Yet, huan na can also mean, "The native of the land where Chinese are immigrants." Filipinos of either Malaysian or ...

I remembered writing some time ago about why the Marcos Sr. Regime couldn't be a parliamentary government . Yet, there are some people (and I assume many of these are boomers who were in their 20s during the martial law era, so they're old men by now like a certain irrelevant dancer) that the Marcos Sr. Years were a parliamentary system. It would be interesting to raise up again the very speech of the late Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. himself. January 17, 1984, was what some call the fake uplifting of martial law. It was also on that day Marcos Sr. himself revealed why the Marcos Sr. Years was still presidential even with his parliament taken from The Official Gazette :  The adoption of certain aspects of a parliamentary system in the amended Constitution does not alter its essentially presidential character . Article VII on the Presidency starts with this provision: ‘the President shall be the Head of State and Chief Executive of the Republic of the Philippines.’ Its last section ...

Right now, I feel like revisiting Chinese with a new understanding. Back then, we only memorized without understanding. Teachers, no matter how good he or she was, were forced to conform to a system that only taught how to memorize long sentences but not how to understand them. I felt the approach of reading in both Mandarin and Amoy can be distracting to one thing--learning Mandarin. Talk about not allowing vernacular to be spoken in Tagalog class. However, Amoy is spoken in class (and I got into trouble many times for breaking that rule) to learn Mandarin. I took basic Mandarin at the University of San Carlos (since a foreign language elective is required ), learned pinyin, and later one of my Chinese language teachers spoke to me in Amoy, "Now, you see how important Mandarin is. Good." She used the word 华语 (huá yǔ). Just because I had bad grades back then doesn't mean I'm unable to learn new things, right? We have seven ways to say Chinese? Many times, it's ver...

  As a person born in the 1980s, I would say I saw a significant amount of technology and methods develop, I remembered typing my high school thesis stuck with a very old PC , working on my college group paper with a better PC, and finally had a laptop during my graduate school days. Back then, I remembered when Chinese schools taught Zhuyin (which I really dislike), I didn't pass my Zhuyin subject (good thing, the Chinese language teacher didn't make me take summer since I should be applying for college), and how pinyin was barely taught. It was pretty much like how some older Taiwanese folks had a bad attitude toward pinyin. Barriotic people do exist and I'm afraid that pinyin's potential was never explored back then. It's going to be obvious that names in Chinese will be written in pinyin in the history books. I really thought there was a typographical error when Mao Zedong was spelled as such. I was used to hearing Mao Zedong as Mao Tse Tung. People read the z a...

As today is Rizal Day, I was thinking about how it's easy to mock him for what he did. Some say he should've just left the country and never returned. Some people tell me, "If you want to become a hero, why not get shot?" I always said, "Well, if Rizal didn't get shot then our predecessors will not get their freedom!" The Filipinas Heritage Library shares this information about Rizal: While awaiting trial in 1896, Rizal wrote a manifesto that expressed his disapproval of the armed revolution against Spain . He cleared his name, which he said was being used by some revolutionaries to espouse certain ideals. He said that he has always opposed, fought, and made clear that armed revolution was impossible, absurd, and disastrous. He explained that reforms must “also come from above,” because reforms that “come from below are upheavals both violent and transitory.” He emphasized, however, that like any Filipino, he desired our country’s freedom; and that educ...

Today is Rizal Day and I feel like revisiting a high school lecture. It was all about Noli Me Tangere meaning Touch Me Not . It would be interesting that, while in college, I did notice the parallelism between two books-- Noli Me Tangere and Notre Dame De Paris (Our Lady of Paris)  which is more popularly known as The Hunchback of Notre Dame . My first exposure to the story was the Disney version (in 1996) and later some adaptive versions. The Disney version changed Frollo from a priest to a judge, in contrast to the original novel. Later, we had Noli Me Tangere where   Padre Salvi lusts after Maria Clara, who unknown to him was really Padre Damaso's biological daughter. Both Frollo and Salvi are bound to celibacy by their professions.  The term Kastila in Filipino may come from Castile or Castillian. Castile is a place in Central Spain. I bet a lot of Filipinos of Spanish descent may be of Castillan descent. Above is the song "Hellfire" by Disney in Castillian Spanish. I...