Hippocampus Attractions

Over at HipEx (cool abbreviation, eh?), Karen is writing about Attraction and relationships: part 1, part 2. (Nice to see that Ben is back in action, too.)

Earlier this year, as I began a tender friendship with the lady who would eventually catch my heart, HipEx’s Male and Female issue was a beacon of wisdom and guidance, especially the perspectives on Josh Harris (1, 2). It’s a constant source of frustration to me that the common terms for a boy-girl relationship, “going out” and “dating,” are such superficial terms, but “courtship” — actually my preferred term for what Amy and I are in — carries so much religious-cultural baggage that to say we are “courting” is more awkward than just telling everyone that “we’re seeing each other,” or the even more ambiguous “it’s us now.”

She’s my girlfriend, and after half a year of being together, we’re considering the possibility of marriage a bit later on in life. What do you call that?

Oh yeah, Dordting!

Write Your Blessed Name

Write Your blessed name, O Lord, upon my heart / There to remain so indelibly engraved / That no prosperity / That no adversity / shall ever move me from your love.

Be to me a strong tower of defense / A comforter in tribulation, a deliv’rer in distress / And a faithful Guide to the courts of heav’n / to the courts of heav’n / Through the many temptations / and dangers / of this life.

O Jesu, my only Savior!

Write Your blessed name, O Lord, upon my heart / There to remain so indelibly engraved / That no prosperity / That no adversity / shall ever, ever, ever move me from your love.

– text by Thomas á Kempis, arr. Dale Grotenhuis

Homeland of the Bizarre

I’m so glad he’s done with the “Filipino Senior Citizen’s European Travel Journal” column series: now, we have another fun Soliven wrap-up, covering the airport tower takeover, Davide impeachment, San Miguel, and Disneyland all in one long-winded breath.

Rerun

While I’m here, I might as well get more Philippine political controversy out of my system before I go back to bed:

I waxed melodramatic when I witnessed President GMA’s inauguration at the end of EDSA 2. We were seeing the start of a new age, I thought, a forceful maturation of Filipino politics. Never mind if we had set a bad extra-constitutional precedent with our dubious street actions, from here on things would get better!

Fast forward to two years later: poorly-performing politician breaks her promises, divides country, cites God. “Plus ca change…” De Quiros summed it up well for me. Don’t miss the clincher ending.

As for the impeachment of Chief Justice Davide, I’m mostly with Antifaust on this one. It’s a sad thing indeed if this upstanding figure in Philippine history is himself not immune to the luxury bug, but equally that so many members of Congress are willing to use it as ammunition against him as a political opponent — pot, kettle, black. More at PCIJ.

Destabilization

I, like so many other Filipinos, am massively disappointed in President GMA and her administration, but continued violent maneuvers such as this and Oakwood make me wonder whether this is someone’s sick idea of a destabilization plot.

Villaruel was trying for an Oakwood. He thought he would get lights, camera, and action for his outrageous bravado in trying to take over Manila’s air traffic. The government, however, learned well from the last time something like this happened; they responded immediately with a zero-tolerance blitzkrieg, as well they should have. Legitimate grievances or no, when someone threatens lives like that, forcing planes away from what may be the only airport for a hundred miles, simple expediency dictates the need to take that person out now.

This clearly isn’t a GMA-conspiracy; she has absolutely nothing to gain from this kind of action, especially considering that these destabilizers publicly air their complaints about her government. No, if it were up to her to hire guns to foment chaos, it’s more likely she would pull a Marcos and conduct something which could easily be blamed on a convenient bogeyman: terrorists or communists — not on the military which helped put her in power.

So was Villaruel a hired destabilizer? If so, by whom? Or was he just destabilized in the head?

Control Tower Carnage

Manila Airport shootout. A former air transport officer tried to take over the NAIA control tower with a team of hired gunmen. Bullets fired, people killed, and the Philippines’ long downward spiral continues. Considering that I just got my holiday tickets in the mail yesterday, this isn’t exactly the kind of news I like hearing.

Update: Panfilo Villaruel, the former air transportation head who was shot down in the takeover attempt, appears to have had some past notoriety: a destructive vendetta against a hotel which would not give him a free night for his being a government official, and allegations of sexual harrasment via Malaya, that ignoble news source for Marcos/Erap apologists. Looks like he ultimately died live on radio, gunned down in the middle of a radio interview.

(Speaking of which, how will the Philippine Obstructionist Opposition Party (POOP) find a way to spin this against the president so they can blame her for more stuff?)

Update 11/08/2003: PDI says he did it because of lack of government support for his projects, while Philstar says he was fed up with politics and corruption. What the PDI omits speaks volumes about their biases. Okay, never mind.