Maniolas

Dra. Thelma Navarrete-Clemente founded the Capitol Medical Center in 1970. It isn’t every day that one can wish someone a Happy 93rd Birthday, so I’m glad to exercise that privilege this week.  On Saturday, Oct. 11, Dra. Thelma Navarrete-Clemente, one of the most accomplished ladies in our country, marks her natal day; the throwback doffs a cap to her birth at the Philippine General Hospital in 1921. Only fitting, too, as she went on to study, graduate from, and serve with distinction in that institution — which she still continues to support with her organizational skills, leadership, and philanthropy. “Thelma was the first of ten children born to Ursula (Frank) and her husband, Nicolas Navarrete of Panjulo (now Panghulo), Obando, Bulacan. At the time of her birth PGH was 11 years old, fairly new by building life-span standards, having opened its doors on Sept. 10, 1910. “… The newborn baby girl had not the slightest inkling then that 24 years later, she would do her parents proud by graduating from the UP College of Medicine, on her way to affixing that precious letter-suffix — MD — to her name.” Those paragraphs come from the first chapter of a coffee-table biography cum corporate milestones, titled Thely and Her Legacy: The CMC. The book will be launched at 2 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 8, at the Capitol Medical Center founded in 1970 by Thely, the nickname that stuck after the initial Thelmy. Illustrious guests are expected to attend this advance celebration of Read More …

State of affairs: De Chavez symbolically uproots and turns over the Statue of Liberty, uncovering a shanty crammed with billboards, a statement on how our notion of freedom is coupled with capitalism. (Carlomar Arcangel Daoana is the inaugural winner of the Purita Kalaw-Ledesma Prize for Art Criticism in the 2014 Ateneo Art Awards. He has written catalogue and exhibition notes for various galleries, including Finale Art File, Avellana Art Gallery, Crucible Gallery, and Galleria Duemila. As a poet, he is the author of four collections, the most recent being Loose Tongue, a gathering of his uncollected poems written between 2001 to 2013, published by the UST Publishing House. In 2012, he won the grand prize in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in the English Poetry category for his collection, The Elegant Ghost. Daoana will write a regular column for The STAR’s Art & Culture section. This is his winning piece.) In the video installation “Sisa,” the artist Ea Torrado translates the frantic, anguished search of the beleaguered Noli Me Tangere character through a series of sharp, uncoordinated movements, brutal spins, and resistance and submission to gravity. Rather than the names of her lost sons Crispin and Basilio, Sisa howls those of the desaparecidos, men and women who, because of their political leanings, were abducted during the Marcos regime, never to be seen again. It is this sense of loss that haunts and electrifies “Complicated,” which has just recently wrapped up at the Lopez Museum and Library in Pasig Read More …

One, the term sounds like testicles. Which can only recall for us, quite sordidly, that chapter in Philippine impeachment history when a lawyer kept pirouetting with his perorations on the tes-TI-mony of a Madame Wetness. Two, the number involved keeps getting arbitrary. From good old 10 (… Spectacular Philippine Beaches You’d Best Bring 20 Bitches To) to the equally solid if expanded 30 (… Ways to Leave Your Lover), now the number can be anywhere between single-digit (except for 2 or 3 or 4) to double digits, prime or not. Which leads us to the next reason… Three, whichever number you use, it will always take you to ye olde association game. The prime 5 is dynamic and a basketball team’s first contingent oncourt. When the La Salle Green Archers play the Ateneo Blue Eagles, they’ll always be at “sixes and sevens” with us; the 6 of course also reminding us of the Star of David, which has one point more than our trad parol, while 7 isn’t just luck with the dice but also partners and rhymes with heaven. Eight suggests infinity, thus the number requested by wealthy Chinese for repetition on their car plates, 9 is the number of lives of that arrogant animal that we now find to have been misrepresented by a false icon we’ve been greeting Hello Kitty. Ten is the usual cardinal demarcation for a top-something list. Eleven is another prime number, usually partnered with fellow-prime and rhyming, dice-y 7. Twelve would be the Read More …

In my other role as an editor rather than a writer of books, I take raw manuscripts from clients and friends and transform them into something publishable and popularly readable. I’ll write more about editing as a profession one of these days, because it’s an art unto itself that bears all the challenges but very little of the glamor and rewards of authorship. In the meanwhile, I’d like to talk about one of my most recent editing projects, a book about travels around the world by someone who has to be the most happily peripatetic  (that’s a fancy word for “footloose”) person I know. Julie Hill was a client before she became a friend. We were introduced to each other more than 10 years ago by Jimmy Laya, who knew Julie and her late husband Arthur back from when the Hills lived in the Philippines, where Arthur represented the Ford Foundation. Then based in Southern California, Julie wanted to write a book about her life and travels with Arthur, who had just died of cancer; together, the couple had journeyed around the world, from Australia to Afghanistan, from Bangkok to Minnesota, from Samoa to China. Julie — born an Alexandrian Greek, trained in chemistry, and later a telecommunications executive — had all these stories to tell, and she needed an editor to help her tell them. Jimmy put us together, and Julie’s first book, Promises to Keep: The Travels of Arthur and Julie Hill, came out in 2003, published by Read More …

Eskaya Beach Resort & Spa’s Presidential Villa offers top-of-the-line luxury plus a viewdeck with an infinity pool merging with the Bohol Sea. Ahh, R&Rs. While I accept and love being MetroManileño through and through, from cradle to likely grave, like most of you of course my long tooth gnashes itself, all by itself, whenever confronted with insufferable traffic. Especially when this is largely caused by the left hand of government challenging the right hand to a wrestling match. As has been the case of late, given the eyeball contest between the MMDA and LTFRB. Oh, that last agency happens to also fall under the DOTC, yes. So what’s with the DOTC, when most of the complaints that have mounted against government service appear to involve this humongous, powerful agency — which seems to be ever mired in a bog of analysis-paralysis? Our terrible airport terminals. The MRT. The LRT-MRT connection desideratum. The continuing deficiency with regard LTO’s issuance of vehicle plates sans that extra process of meting out conduction stickers — which are of course produced for a fee. And the LTO/DOTC heads have the gall to say they’ll soon issue a “No Plate No Travel” edict, because they say the prob is that vehicle owners and distributors don’t get the plates when so many are ready already? And now the LTFRB releases 8,000 colorum vehicles on our congested avenues and streets? Jeez, it’s when I wish all the anti-PNoy voices would start to also choose the battles we really Read More …