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Opinion

State of smiles

Before the holiday break began, a foreigner friend told me that I smiled too much and that I should at times refrain from showing my cavities to the world. Much to the outsider’s dismay, I widened my grin instead and told him that there is just a lot to smile about. In the Philippines, the…

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Opinion

Memento Mori

I will not mince words or lie to you; I am dying, and so are you. Each day brings with it death for us all. No, I am not trying to sound pessimistic (nor sound like a doomsayer; you have the Book of Revelation for that). Scientifically speaking, the human body regularly “dies” since the…

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Opinion

Everyone’s an expert

You wake up and you have this really bad coughing spell. You ask anyone around the house for help, and they offer you much more than that. The next thing you know, someone is making tea out of the leaves of this plant (whose rust-colored product is not exactly visually appealing) while another is trooping…

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Opinion

Presenting… our USG officers!

Shirts, ballers, and bag tags for sale! That’s the most popular University Student Government activity (USG). This year though, they’ve added a new touch to make their projects more appealing. They decided to use their own faces and bodies as publicity materials. I had the opportunity to sit on one of the Legislative Assembly’s (LA)…

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Opinion

A baptism to yuppie-hood

In 2003, a clownfish named Nemo swam his way from the Pixar Animation Studios to the hearts of millions—but this is not about him. It is about the friends Nemo made in the aquarium of P. Sherman—those who were placed in plastic bags of water and who rolled over the streets of Sydney, only to…

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Opinion

A toy story

I love Lego. I grew up building the likes of impossibly cool cars and sleek, but rather bare, spaceships. All of my creations would be piloted by a plucky astronaut, whom I still keep to this day. The concept of building your own toy still amuses me to this day–Lego’s tagline being “A new toy…

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Opinion

What is plagiarism here in the Philippines anyway?

What’s the value of intellectual property rights if we Filipinos are allowed to omit the acknowledgements of our citations? Supreme Court (SC) dismissed the plagiarism case of Associate Justice Mariano Del Castillo because of several lame reasons. The SC said that the decision Del Castillo made from the case of Vinuya et al vs. Executive…

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Opinion

I don’t want to die

Over the course of 28 years, from 1980 to 2008, more than 31,000 people died of 310 cases of fire, according to a survey of EM-DAT, the international disaster database of the Center for Research and Epidemiology of Disasters. A couple of weeks ago, classes and student activities were disrupted at Br. Andrew Gonzales Hall…

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Opinion

It’s a family affair

A friend once told me that in governance, the last name’s the charm. It is a well known trend that has not lost its luster throughout Philippine history. A less popular idea, however, is that this family affair does not necessarily equal pursuits of tyranny. It is assumed by common folk that this trend is…

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Opinion

The dress code matters

I’m the type of person who has random things on my head. I usually have what we Filipinos would call “trips” or rather crazy ideas. One of my “trips” is the dress code. It has been tried, tested and revised for a couple of terms already and this is an issue we can all relate…