Next to the South Koreans and the Russians the Filipinos are the world's heaviest drinkers. Yes, Pinoys are heavy drinkers but in the beerhouse no one calls them drunkards or "palahubog" but "palainom".
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There's a difference between the "palahubog" and the "palainom". A beerhouse manager told me once that taxi drivers call the "palahubog" Hoy, while the "palainom" is called Sir.
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Speaking of heavy drinkers, Shakespeare once said: "O God! That men should put any enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains." It's not true that Edgar Allan Poe wanted to see him and prove to him he (Poe) was right.
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It says here that pre-marital sex is on the rise in the Philippines. Has this something to do with our population now hitting 100 million?
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The Internet and the cellular phone are being blamed for this rise in pre-marital sex among your young. "Dapat lang," says my friend and contemporary Noy Temiong.
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Yes, dapat lang. Take this 13-year-old girl who first got in touch with a boy she called cellphone chatmate. She told a newspaper columnist: "The next day, uyab na mi." Shortly after, they had sex in a lodging house.
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Now she's pregnant. She confessed to the columnist that she could not determine who the father of the child in her womb its because she had two other boyfriends who, in her own gutter word: "Nakasawsaw sad nako." Her three BFs were in their mid-20s.
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Someone who has been living abroad for sometime now came home to act as state witness in the multi-billion-peso pork barrel scam. She said she wanted to "live in peace". No, no, not "rest in peace".
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PNoy continues to say "No" to the clamor for charter change. That's understandable. The Constitution or Charter many politicians want to change is known to many as "Cory's Charter" and that's Tita Cory's legacy.
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OVERHEARD: It was shown on TV how slum dwellers in Metro Manila recycled rice leftover they had gathered from some food dumps. A mother was shown washing the thrown-away cooked rice and cooking it back as "lugaw" or porridge. Remarked a teacher who saw this tv news footage: "Kaluoy tawon. Hain naman nang mga tinonelada (tons) nga bugas nga giismagol sa mga negosyanteng kawatan unya gikonpiskar sa Customs?" Reply: "Bitaw hain naman diay nang mga bugasa? Patilawa kuno mi PNoy bisan kinutsara lang."