Pala-isip

As one of Japan's last remaining swordsmiths, Korehira Watanabe has honed his craft for 40 years while attempting to recreate the mythical Koto sword. Handmade Portraits: The Sword Maker from Etsy on Vimeo .

1. Your standards for evaluation are limited to "not bad" (bwe-phai) and "good enough" (ham-ham). 2. You count every single centavo that comes in and out of your wallet. 3. You watched the PROC national day celebration on sky/home cable. 4. You watch the old Chinese variety shows on CCTV and the rest of the Chinese channels on cable. 5. You voted/wanted to vote Ping Lacson for president. 6. People have told you, "magaling ka pala managalog.". 7. You're the prime target of 'kotong cops' in Binondo. 8. You make today's rice tomorrow's fried rice. 9. Today's leftovers are tastefully mixed in tomorrow's "bi-hun" or "ma-mi". 10. The only thing you can read in a chinese daily newspaper is the daily's name . 11. Your pinoy friends ask for tikoy/hopia/ mooncake from you, and they're more excited eating it than you are. 12. You're usually not allowed to wear black, although you want to look thin...

This is a great article by Conrado De Quiros in the Philippine Daily Inquirer about our culture of corruption. I READ an interesting story last weekend. In Japan, a 19-year-old was arrested in a case that has become a media sensation, producing all sorts of editorials on the subject. If convicted, he faces up to three years in prison and a fine of $6,000. His crime? Cheating in college entrance exams. The kid was caught using his cell phone to access the Internet to get answers to questions mainly involving Math problems and translating passages from Japanese to English. Someone saw the site postings, noted that the dates coincided with the exam days, and notified the university, triggering an investigation. The kid readily confessed to the wrongdoing. An investigation is underway to see if this was merely an isolated incident or had been done by others. “It’s not a mere cheating case,” Mainichi said in an editorial. “The impact of the wrongful use of the Internet, capable of massivel...