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I dream bilingually. The scenes morph from my childhood in the Philippines to my life in America — from my mother’s tropical garden to the summer blooms in my Massachusetts backyard. And in these dream locations, I am speaking two languages: Cebuano, which is my Filipino dialect, and English, which I have taught as a […]

If you are a firm believer of Divine Providence, like I am, you will certainly agree that everything happens for a reason, and nothing happens as a result of mere coincidences. If something is meant to happen, then it will happen, barring any unforeseen circumstances at all cost. Such was the undertone surrounding the reason […]

Tuesday, 12 July 2011 22:54 Liling Magtolis Briones / Boiled Green Bananas All public officials love the poor. You hear it in their speeches, you read it in their public statements. They win elections because they proclaim their love for the poor. Last week jaded television viewers were jolted out of their lethargy when video shots […]

Sunday, 12 June 2011 20:44 Liling Magtolis Briones / Boiled Green Bananas (Business Mirror) Yesterday we celebrated our 113th Independence Day. That is, independence from the Spaniards. On June 12, 1898, we declared ourselves independent from the crushing heel of Spanish colonialism, only to fall into the deceptive clutches of American imperialism. We declared ourselves […]

Garbage such as papers, plastics, glasses, bottles, tin cans that a food establishment generates as the results of its activities are not really waste but resources waiting to be reused, recovered, or recycled. There’s money in garbage, if we make use of our  creative minds. When garbage are irresponsibly mixed together and dumped in an […]

Understanding corruption Tuesday, 28 June 2011 19:45 Liling Magtolis Briones / Boiled Green (Business Mirror) Philippine presidents, including the incumbent, have won on anticorruption platforms. Since it has become practically synonymous with governance, Filipinos believe they know everything about corruption. For its part, the international donor-community has poured in hundreds of millions of dollars in anti-corruption […]

Opinion/INTERAKSYON/TV 5  Online News 28 May  2011  11:52 pm | Liling Magtolis Briones Ticao Island is famous for the reef called Manta Bowl which is known for the huge oceanic manta rays with wings that span up to 8 meters. These are drawn to the area because of the presence of planktons. The Bowl also […]

Opinion/INTERAKSYON/TV 5  Online News  16-May-11, 2:25 PM | Leonor Magtolis Briones Understanding the alphabet soup in the bureaucracy Filipinos are fond of abbreviating long words and phrases into initials. However the meaning of these initials change when used in government.  For example, “PMS” in popular parlance means “pre-menstrual syndrome.  In government, it refers to the […]

All families have stories that are passed from one generation to another. The beginnings of some clan stories go so far back in time they have become legends. So it is with the Magtolis clan. One of my favorite family legends is about the earliest Magtolis. My father used to say that one way of […]

Governments, research groups, academics and think tanks have made it their business to determine the status of people in society. They count, sample, classify, group, estimate, develop formulas, run their computers, and voila!—one is rich or poor, healthy or unhealthy, developed or underdeveloped, according to their samples, indicators and other tests. One can even be […]