So What’s AI, Anyway? Before we start criticizing the country for not being “AI-ready,” let’s be real—millions of Filipinos aren’t even sure what AI is.No judgment. Our internet’s slow, electricity’s unstable, and life is hard. Nobody’s got time to read whitepapers when rice is ₱60 per kilo. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is tech that mimics human thinking—chatbots, facial recognition, Waze rerouting,
Category: Opinion
“A nation once poised to soar—grounded by the very hands entrusted to lift it.” Once upon a Republic, the Filipino Dream was real. Not the American kind with white picket fences and Disneyland tickets—but the Filipino kind: a home with hollow blocks that didn’t crumble in a typhoon, a job that didn’t require a passport, a country where your vote
— What We Have Is Not a Strategy. It’s a Souvenir. Let’s start with a fable. Once upon a time in the archipelago, a group of technocrats asked the nation:“Where do you want to be in 25 years?” And the people said:We want to be secure.We want to be comfortable.We want to be respected, healthy, together, whole.We want jobs that
I may not always agree with him. Sometimes he veers into “Did he really just say that?” territory. Sometimes I read his tweets and spit out my coffee. Not because I’m shocked—because I understand what he means, and I’m horrified that he’s probably right. Other times, I roll my eyes so hard I see last week. But damn it, the
It always begins the same way. The sky turns gray, the kind of gray that warns—not whispers.The wind stills. The air thickens. And then the downpour. Not rain. Not “ulan lang.”But a wall of water from the heavens, like the entire sky is spitting on us. We rush. We scramble. We elevate furniture like it’ll matter.We unplug appliances. We grab
Do not get me wrong.I laud the Philippines’ independence.I do. Truly.I honor the blood spilled, the bones buried beneath unmarked fields, the mothers who wept and the sons who charged with nothing but bolos and borrowed hope. I thank them.I exist because of them. But let’s not cheapen their sacrifice by pretending that independence is synonymous with liberation.It was a
I left the Philippines in 2013. Since then, I’ve lived in the U.S., discovered the joy of functioning public libraries, and gotten spoiled by tap water you can actually drink. But even after more than a decade away, my screen still lights up with poverty maps of the Philippines—every shade of red feels personal. It’s as if the map knows