WITNESS

Blue is the color of a cloudless summer when heat invites people to shed off fibers that cover their skin. She was barely 17, young and innocent. He was 21, almost an inveterate kid in the skills of subtle attraction. Their rendezvous took place in an old aula of behind the Oblation Plaza of the University of the Philippines, a historic building where intellectual footprints and radical souls left their grimes on walls. Continue reading →

by Arnold De Villa
May 16, 2013
In corporate America, among some traditional executives, there is a Machiavellian notion that it is safer to be feared than loved. The power suit with a matching dark tie evokes the sense of serious business in all its rigid structure. Continue reading →

by Arnold De Villa
May 16, 2013
My wife and I belong to the latter batch of baby boomers, the generation for which the future of Social Security pensions is predictably dismal. Our demographics range from the post war oldies through the hippie movement of the 60’s and the Vietnam protestors after that. Continue reading →

by Arnold De Villa
May 1, 2013
We all have pet peeves. Mine is the one that poses itself as a dead ended excuse, a cul-de-sac, and a blocked response. It goes like this: Question: “Why did you come into this situation?” Answer: “I do not have a choice”. Question: “Is there anything else that you could do?” Response: “I do not have any choice”. Question: “Why did you have to pay so much?” Answer: “I have no other choice”. It goes like a pit – ad infinitum, ad libidem and ad nauseam. Continue reading →

by Arnold De Villa
April 16, 2013
Dr. Louann Brizendine, a clinical professor of psychiatry from the University of California (San Francisco) once declared that a woman uses about 20,000 words per day while a man speaks only about 7,000. From that time on, gender related issues on talking sparked controversies across all media with divergent inferences. Three years ago, quite related to this issue, researchers from the Indiana School of Medicine came up with a study suggesting that men only use half of their brains when listening while women used every neuron, implying that women listened more. Continue reading →

by Arnold De Villa
April 1, 2013
On March 3, 2013 Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio took over the leadership of the Catholic Church. It was the first time after so many centuries that a new Pope did not replace a dead one; the first time that a Pope came from the “New World” (Americas, Argentina to be exact) and the very first time that a Jesuit would finally lead the entirety of the Roman Catholic Church. This latter portion sounded like poetic justice, since the Jesuit Order was formed and founded with a special vow of obedience to the Pope at that time. Continue reading →

by Arnold De Villa
March 16, 2013
“Les Miserable” has been on the radar for quite a time, not only because of the many awards it has recently gained, but also because it is truly a classic worth revisiting. Anyone who saw the movie or read the book could easily recognize that the three articles I wrote before this was a poor attempt to duplicate the genius of Victor Hugo. I decided to end it with an open letter, supposedly a public confession of “Fantine’s” misery. Continue reading →

by Arnold De Villa
February 16, 2013
Dear Diary,
There is no one else willing to listen to my woes. Although there are others whose daily bread is nothing less than the bitterness of tears, I have not had the chance to party with their misery. They do not know about my pangs in as much as I am ignorant of theirs. More than often, we who live in misery are selfish to our own pains. There is no good to share our tears when there is no one who could know the depth of suffering except for those who truly suffer Continue reading →

by Arnold De Villa
February 1, 2013
Summer is usually a season when extraordinary youthful things take place. But with this tardy dash of cold spell, it seems that thoughts of warmer times cannot but bring the poignant memories of youthful days, our first romance, the awkward kiss, those frantic tides of hormonal imbalance that brought us the euphoria of naïve decisions and silly spells; those sweet enchanting moments we thought would never end. Continue reading →

by Arnold De Villa
January 16, 2013
The times were hard. Rita was only a child. Her skin, wrinkled and dry clung tightly to her bones like a flimsy thread. Her father just died, ambushed by a misguided bullet in a war on foreign shores. Her mother, terribly ill, barely kept her eyes open. Jim was her mother’s youngest brother. Continue reading →