Media – Page 4 – PATHLESS TRAVELS

2013-09-292013-10-01

Four years with no television, and thankful for it

What I did was something long strived for but not really premeditated, like when I stopped smoking nearly 20 years ago. I mean, the fact that I have now passed four years without any television at home, was an event as natural as the breaking dawn. It simply happened, almost without my even noticing it. It was not the result of a formal decision and setting a phaseout schedule or cut-off date. Continue reading “Four years with no television, and thankful for it”

2012-10-212022-12-25

The summer radio kid grows up

radio microphone — Much of our working hours were spent at the DZME radio station along Roosevelt Avenue in San Francisco del Monte district, where we maintained two block-time programs. This was mostly due to our good alliance work with the station owner and manager, Joey Luison. I remember we maintained a talk show around lunchtime, and another talk show just before midnight. We also gave extra time at the DZUP radio station, which was then housed in UP Diliman’s Palma Hall, and where I sometimes joined the MDP radio staff for its late-night radio program.

Tamad na burgis na ayaw gumawa,
Sa pawis ng iba’y nagpapasasa.
Pinalalamon ng manggagawa,
Hindi marunong mangahiya (Walang-hiya!)

Bandilang pula, iwagayway.
Bandilang pula, iwagayway.
Bandilang pula, iwagayway…
Ang mga anakpawis ay mabuhay!

It’s near midnight, and the sign above the radio booth door reads “ON AIR.” Imagine a small group of youthful men and women, including a lanky bespectacled 15-year-old boy. He is sporting shoulder-length hippie hair, an oversized Vietnam-era GI fatigue shirt, faded denims, and non-descript rubber sandals.

It’s his turn inside the booth, and he is playing a vinyl record of a protest song in Tagalog, Bandilang Pula, which is derived from PCI’s Bandierra Rossa. As the red-flag anthem wafts onto the airwaves, he is singing along with clenched fist punching the air in time with the marching beat.

Can you imagine how he got there? Continue reading “The summer radio kid grows up”

2012-06-152022-12-25

Why settle for fun? We could gun for awesome instead.

Boxer Codex image — Why settle for fun when our country, in presenting itself to tourists and other countries in general, can scale up to "great and awesome."

Whether for the right or wrong reasons, whether in all sincerity or tinged with irony, many Filipinos have cheerfully taken to the official tourist slogan, “It’s more fun in the Philippines.”

I don’t doubt that some kinds of pleasures or pleasantries are partaken in the Philippines with a lot more fun than elsewhere. We seem to offer a lot of them with a helping hand, a song and dance routine, a fiesta smile, and endless tables of sumptuous banquets. Centuries of foreign colonial rule made sure to erase the fierce looks of Lapu-Lapu and Bonifacio from our faces, relegating them to stone-cold statues weeping alone in the rain. Continue reading “Why settle for fun? We could gun for awesome instead.”