Victor Denis T. Nierva

SA IKA-PIRANG RIBONG PAGKAKATAON, kan Sabado igwa na naman katood na bakong Bikolano an naghapot kun ano man nanggad na an kahulugan kan tataramon na oragon. Sa pirit na pagpapasimple kan komplikadong natura kan tataramon, sinimbag ko an hapot nin sarong simbag na sa hiling ko husto sana sa pagrespeto sa yaman kan tataramon: "Sarong lektyur iyan!" Sabay ngirit. Alagad totoo.

I ONCE ASKED MOTHER to teach me how to cut the coconut in halves. She said I was too young. My hands were still frail for a firm, strong grip of the bolo. I too, she said, was not yet ready for the impact of the bolo hitting the coconut shell. The cutting, no one taught me; I learned it eventually after a few years.

HERE IN BICOL, typhoons were more frequent around the early days of November, just after everyone had gone home from the cemeteries for the All Souls' Day. The storms came with winds rough enough to tear into useless strips fans of banana leaves, which Mother would use to wrap latik or inun'on na dilis. The storms would bring rains that came in torrents of sharp needles so that children and even adults could not go out of the houses.

Like scents, tastes bring us to places, remind us of events and affairs, and conjure within us old feelings. More often, these feelings are heightened because some are of our deepest intimacies while some are of our greatest melancholies and fears. This simple psychology of flavor was, is, and will always be a big part of how we are formed as individual persons.

SA REHIYON NA INI nin mga rito asin simbahan, an Semana Santa sarong panahon nin pagtuninong. Orog na sa mga banwaan na daing gayo nariribaraw kan maribok na parakpaták nin mga traysikel asin ruab nin nag-iirinotan na mga sasakyan, an semanang ini panahon nin pagtenir sa mga harong-harong, signos nin nakatùdan na pag-ontok na may kaibahan pamibi asin paghorop-hórop.

The many times we were with the media in our advocacy works were always tinted and hinted with political malice. There has always been that kind intimation for political leaning-and many times they were not intimations, they were blatant propaganda. One commentator would always make fun of the situation and would tell the reporter interviewing me, pakisabi ngantig ki Dato, buwisit siya ha.

PART 2 of 5. This is a five-part lecture delivered on 28 January 2010 on the occasion of the Ateneo de Naga University's Philosophy Week: Philosophy and Philippine Politics.

In the discussion of media corruption, there are two words necessitating an etymological and contextual scrutinies-first, the term media, and the second, corruption. Such looking up of the origins of these two apellations may give us a deconstructed and definitive clarity of what the fusion of the two, media and corruption, or media corruption, is all about.

BIBIKOLON KO NA SIRING sa nakagawian ko sa kolum na ini bilang pagmidbid kan pagiging unibersal kan satong lenggwahe. Alagad an sakong pag-Bikol ngunyan huli naman sa dakulang kamawotan na masabotan kan mga nanunungdan kan Libmanan-Cabusao Dam Project an mga kahagadan kan mga taga-Lupi huli ta garo dai ninda nasasabotan kun nakasurat sa Ingles.

FACEBOOK HAS BEEN EATING UP many people's schedules lately. Unlike Friendster which had gone boring and stale as an old loaf of bread, Facebook or FB has gotten people's attention including the bosses and the senior citizens in such large scale that I think every computer in the world has in its cache remnants of logging in to and out of FB. In my experience, this didn't spare the Filipino literary writers.