Category: Opinion

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…

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…

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…

It was like receiving a letter from the past. Weirdly enough, it came in the form of an email. Some few weeks ago, I had a brief correspondence with our first editor in chief (EIC) Polo Pantaleon. I asked him to write a special column for this month’s equally special anniversary issue. Too bad he…

Well it’s not even a house to begin with. It certainly doesn’t have a roof, which is why patches of grass have been indifferently washed away by time like an old man’s receding hairline. It most certainly doesn’t have a name. It’s simply called “the football field.” No walls either; only a several-meters high fence,…

I have been green-minded for half my life. I was in the same institution for 17 years of my life because, much like my family’s receding hairlines, studying in La Salle was a family legacy. Green had been hard-wired into my DNA.  I am a Lasallian three generations deep and damn proud of it. My…

This verbally manifested thought bubble from Despicable Me’s villainous main character, Gru, whenever he had a revelation – or at least whenever he thought he had a great idea – accurately described many moments in my life at The LaSallian. Some schemes turned out to be great; some, epic fail; and some, weirdly enough, both.…

This past year, I became particularly conscious of my age. I never really gave it much thought before (then again, I was younger), but when you realize you are the dinosaur at The LaSallian’s acquaintance party, you are bound to give your age some attention. The LaSallian, in all its glorious 50 years, has seen…

Our batch of staff and editors at The LaSallian belonged to an era that we may now describe as an infant in technology. As a staffer of the Menagerie section for two years, I submitted my articles in print-out and diskette. In 1998, when I became University editor, I carried more diskettes from my reporters.…