By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

BOY, we love to blow stuff up, don’t we? The firecracker ban that the government says is being enforced every year is like nuns buried in the schoolyard: You hear about it all the time but there is no evidence of it. Though it seems terribly KJ of us, there are Filipinos who genuinely dislike firecrackers, even as children. Fireworks we can get behind—those sky shows with the brilliant shards falling to the ground—and quite impressive. But the noisy stuff? Pass.

Note that not all the items on this list are illegal. Actually only items 8 to 10 are patently illegal. But each form of firecracker (they go pop or boom) or pyrotechnic (they burn bright) has its own pros and cons. Perhaps the best advice for all is to not hold them while lighting them and, even better, to light them from a distance using a really looong stick. Body armor, ear protectors (drummers have these) and maybe fireproof gloves would be useful too.

Then again, I really like just staying indoors and watching the sparks up in the sky. I admit it, the loud stuff makes me go argghh. So here is the scaredy cat’s (that’s me) field guide to paputok and rebentador. [Read the rest of this entry »]

By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

ASIDE from being a name that’s either meaningfully apt or ridiculously ironic, charity is a concept more complicated than you think. From a very young age, we’re taught to be giving, especially to the less
fortunate. But then we’re told that it’s illegal to be giving money to street children, even as we’re taught in college to step out of our campuses and work with the poor. There is no longer anything simple about alms and giving.

Is charity complex?. The most complex part has to do with beggars. In particular, I remember a fantastic poem by Emmanuel Torres about being picky about beggars. It invoked vivid images of preferring the beggars who “work” to earn alms, those who play musical instruments, or compared to those who just sit there, hand outstretched with cup.

This dilemma gets even more pronounced during the holidays when a virtual army of urchins seems to sweep the city streets. So now, one has to choose between different kinds of street children, younger
versus older, one child carrying another, or perhaps holding hands of two even younger children. And what does that mean for the older beggars, or the disfigured ones, or the paralyzed ones?

[Read the rest of this entry »]

By Ruel S. De Vera, Associate Editor
Sunday Inquirer Magazine

REUNIONS sound universally heartwarming in concept: old friends spending time together after years or maybe even decades apart, reliving old memories with a laugh, perhaps even old romances rekindled. The truth is never so easy, of course. This only really works if you enjoyed the previous time to begin with. For anyone who considered high school difficult and college a personal hell, then reunions are nightmares waiting to happen.

Others cannot understand how you don’t want to attend reunions when they had such a good time in college. But, like yearbooks and grades, college is not the same for everyone. There are demons private and public, regrets secret and disclosed, even enthusiasms hidden and unleashed.

The push to attend reunions gets even stronger when the five-year and the ten-year periods after graduations came by. But aren’t there batches who simply don’t want to reunite? Some batches reunite as quickly as five days after graduation, while others won’t even after five decades.

[Read the rest of this entry »]