I Am Buraot

Gone was winter, and summer’s almost here. But despite the southern warmer weather, the northern cold still remains…

Once again, the slightly greenish haze went down the cascades of the everglades, its humid vapor condenses slowly and its frozen tentacles reaching across the hills and straight right through me.

When it’s warm it can get warm, which I am really fond of. But when it’s cold, it gets really cold, carrying an endless shower of bitter arctic breeze and oftentimes shooting those thunderous kinds of bland sarcasms. Continue Reading…

I have a dream. I dreamed of lilies and wildflowers that have begun to spring on the dry desert sands of the gloomy northwest.

The immaculate smell of freshness fills the waterless air that roamed the land for centuries, reinvigorating it with new flavor and crispness like raindrops till the arid wasteland.

I could hear the whispers of the wind as it changes its vibrant colors each and every time it turns. Like an endless array of colorful pageantry, it seems it was trying to shake things up slowly but quite beautifully. Like a high-tech display of natural beauty, it was flaunting its way into the dullness of the scorching hot desert. Continue Reading…

On top of this magnificent hill I whimper.

I was lying on my back, on top of the cool green mass of freshly cut grass. Parallel to my view was the city I have begun to love. So laid-back and quite friendlier than the city of angels, the one I used to call my second home.

Its lights were beginning to fade under the shade of the midnight sun, its vibrant glow started to dim under the enveloping glitter of the early morning fog and the rise of the stars and galaxies directly above it. Continue Reading…

Conclusion

(Previously… Skirmishes In and Out of Sea)

Yes, I was pissed with his article. But I don’t blame Chip Tsao. He who loves to write satire, though his love of it that does not guarantee that he’s good at it, just wanted to make a point.

The way I understood, as I try to grasp the essence of his piece, is that it is mainly about the disputed Spratlys and not about the Filipina maids. It was more of his country’s bullying smaller nations, and less of the plight of thousands of underpaid but well-educated Flipina domestic helpers.

Like what my journalist friend said when I reacted violently to Chip Tsao’s satirical piece, we Filipinos had our own brand of stereotyping ourselves. And we are not less guilty… Continue Reading…

Third Part of a Series

(Previously… The Crude Awakening)

The group of islands called the Spratlys was first occupied by the colonial French at the time when it ruled Indochina. During the Second World War, the Japanese used it as a submarine base. After the world war, the French had it back but eventually had another with occupied Vietnam. While in 1946 the Chinese communist forces occupied the largest of the islands. Continue Reading…

Second Part of a Series

(Previously… Arrogance and Ignorance on the Spratlys Islands)

At least 6 countries, China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, have filed separate sovereign claims on all or part of the Spratlys.

For years, the Philippines and the other small ASEAN member countries claiming the group of small Islands in the South Pacific (or at least parts thereof), have suffered insults from the mighty and powerful Chinese. Continue Reading…

First Part of a Series

I wasn’t keen on reacting to satirical pieces made by journalists as long as it is made with class. A joke sometimes creates something more meaningful than just a dose of laughter. It is art imitating life and thus the creator had nothing to do but become the messenger of what he or she sees.

It is the collective burden of the readers and the society as a whole to distinctively see the social irony that was wrapped in silly soliloquy. Continue Reading…