Late last year, a video popped up on my social media feed. It was an interview with Dame Judi Dench on The Graham Norton Show. Normally, Shakespeare isn’t something I seek out. I’ve always respected his work from a distance, the way you might admire a grand old cathedral without necessarily wanting to step inside.

But in this very charming clip, Ms. Dench wasn’t just talking about Shakespeare - she was performing it, delivering a sonnet with such clarity that, and I really don’t know why, floored me. So much so that when the new year rolled around, I decided to make a resolution: I would memorize at least one Shakespearean sonnet (obviously, Sonnet 29 which was what she recited), and learn as much as I could about his work.

Some Things I Learned About Sonnet 29

Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 is basically an emotional rollercoaster. It starts with the speaker at rock bottom: broke, lonely, and full of self-pity. He looks around, envies everyone else’s success, and even complains that heaven won’t answer his cries. Classic Shakespearean drama.

But then, something shifts. Just thinking about someone he loves completely changes his perspective. Suddenly, all that misery fades, and he feels richer than a king.

Structurally, I learned that the poem follows a usual Shakespearean sonnet form: three quatrains (a fancy term for a four-line section in a poem; like small paragraphs in poetry), followed by a couplet (just two lines that wrap things up). The three quatrains set up the contrast between despair and joy, and the final couplet delivers the emotional punch.

Shakespeare also played around with rhyme (each quatrain has its own set of rhyming words, with every other line rhyming) and rhythm. If you read it aloud, you’ll notice a pattern, though some lines break it. I’m inclined to think that those breaks are intentional, because this Shakespeare fellow is said to have known what he was doing.

Sonnet 29 (the AI-enhanced version)

Over the past several days, I played around with Midjourney to create illustrations for each line of Sonnet 29.

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,

Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate;

For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

One Resolution in the Bag

Anyway, a week into 2025, I had Sonnet 29 tucked away in my memory.

I think it’s good to have a few of these skills or bits of knowledge that serve no immediate purpose, like the time I spent a year studying Klingon on Duolingo.

It’s a weird, nerdy kind of accomplishment, I admit. I like the idea that I carry around a few of these little secret abilities that are completely unnecessary and useless, imagining that some random moment in the future might reveal their unexpected purpose.

Wala lang.

P.S. In Case You Need This

About a year after Ama passed away in 2022, a friend contacted me out of the blue.

She told me that, sometime in the 1990s, Ama had given her ₱300,000 to help her and her sister start a textbook publishing company. Unfortunately, the business did not thrive.

She had managed to pay back a small portion of the amount as interest, although she said Ama accepted it only reluctantly. He had always considered the money an investment, not a loan, and so he fully understood and accepted the risks.

Still, she wanted to return the entire principal. Would we accept it?

I told her immediately that I knew Ama would have refused. He had probably even forgotten about the whole thing. And if we accepted the money, I said, he might just come back to haunt us.

I assured her that Ama would have understood and appreciated her gesture.

If she truly wished to “return” what she considered a business loan, I suggested that she pay it forward instead—perhaps by using the money to support the studies of one or two disadvantaged students. Ama and Ina had previously supported two scholars from Pisay, and I knew that had given them both great satisfaction.

But it was entirely up to her, I told her. There was no need even to tell us what she ultimately decided to do with the money.

She wrote back shortly afterward. Since I was leaving the decision to her, she said, she had chosen to donate the money to CANVAS for our bookgiving programs.

I spoke with my brothers and sister, and we all agreed that it was a good compromise.

The following year, CANVAS published Hanapin ang Sagot: Ano ang Batas Militar? by Aldy Aguirre, Margarita Santos, and Ergoe Tinio.

A nonfiction activity book, it introduces young readers to the history and realities of Martial Law under Ferdinand Marcos. Through historical facts, poetry, artworks, and visual-search activities, it encourages readers not simply to memorize the past, but to look closely, ask questions, recognize propaganda and abuses of power, and think critically about what happened.

Illustrated by Aldy Aguirre, the book explores dictatorship, corruption, resistance, accountability, and hope. It reminds young readers that understanding history begins with the courage to search for answers.

I think Ama would have been particularly happy with the book we chose to fund. He had always been a dreamer and, in his own way, had always been part of the broad struggle against the Marcos dictatorship.

The following year brought an unexpected epilogue: Hanapin ang Sagot was named one of the five Best Reads among all books published in 2022 and 2023 at the National Children’s Book Awards.

Giving and service without expectation or publicity is a great virtue that I wish more of our leaders have. This would then surely be a far better world.

We never knew about Ama’s loan/investment in that publishing business. We certainly never expected the money to be returned. Ama had already passed away, and our family had assured his friend that there was no reason to give it back.

Ama gave without expecting his money to return. His friend nevertheless gave it back without asking for anything in exchange. Together, those two acts of generosity set in motion a chain of events that, I think, will continue to ripple outward.

I like to imagine that if even just a handful of the children who receive the book are moved to learn more about our past and its lessons, then perhaps Ama’s contribution to this world will continue for generations.

Ama would have turned 90 years old today.

We remember. We rejoice. We celebrate.

Happy birthday, Ama!

P.S. In Case You Need This

I understand the criticism. I can confidently say that had I been in their shoes, I would not have gone as they did. But, I am less comfortable with the self-righteous shaming and condemnation that quite a few have heaped on them.

So, at the risk of triggering people on both sides, here are ten thoughts on the issue.

1. I have always been clear about where I stand on Gaza. I believe that what Israel is doing there is genocide. I believe Israel should be held accountable for it. And increasingly, I believe that Israel should be treated as a pariah state, much as apartheid South Africa eventually was, until it changes course. So if the Israeli government invited me on an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel today, I would say no.

2. The scrutiny and criticism being heaped on the journalists for accepting the trip to Israel is predictable and not necessarily undeserved.

This was not neutral hospitality. They participated in an Israel-funded trip, and the criticism that such trips are intended to “whitewash” Israel’s conduct in Gaza is valid. It is naïve to pretend that the Israeli government isn’t trying to influence what journalists see and consequently how they understand Israel. That’s what government-sponsored media tours do.

3. Moreover, an all-expenses-paid trip creates a conflict that an independently funded reporting trip doesn’t. They gain access precisely because their host has an agenda. It is the journalist’s job is recognize the agenda.

4. That said, it is an unreasonable jump from saying “Israel is trying to influence you” to saying “Therefore, you are doing Israel’s propaganda by going.”

Journalists interview dictators. They embed with armies. They attend government briefings. They travel to authoritarian states on officially facilitated visits.

It is an intellectually respectable argument to say:

I know Israel wants me to see its side. I want to see it anyway. I will listen critically, ask difficult questions, disclose who paid for the trip, seek Palestinian perspectives independently, and make up my own mind.

5. Journalists could, for example, say that their interactions with the Israeli government do not prevent them from challenging Israeli claims, even if they also acknowledge that there is a reasonable perception of conflict.

I may or may not agree with the distinction or excuses that they make, but I cannot simply dismiss it and claim that they are behaving immorally in making that choice. And certainly, it does not automatically make them apologists for genocide.

6. Because, if we believe journalists shouldn’t accept access offered by governments accused of terrible crimes or even self-serving lies, where exactly does the line fall? Where would we stand on visits to China given, say, its campaign to claim ownership over the West Philippine Sea, or atrocities committed in Tibet or Tiananmen Square? What about the United States in Iraq, and even today against its own people in its own borders? What about Russia vis-a-vis Ukraine?

Or closer to home, what about during Duterte’s war on drugs? Would we have wanted foreign journalists to refuse Philippine-government invitations because of the Duterte’s government of human rights violations, and crimes against humanity?

I’m not sure we would or should have.

7. To be sure and transparent, I have been on the other side of something similar.

Last year, there were serious calls to boycott the Frankfurt Book Fair because of its position on Israel and Palestine. CANVAS went anyway.

We thought about the boycott seriously. We understood the arguments for it. In the end, though, we decided that participating did not mean endorsing everything the Frankfurt Book Fair had said or done. Rather, we decided that the value in being there outweighed the costs of staying home.

We could talk about the things we believed in. We could create space for conversations about Palestine, human rights and children’s rights. We could engage with people who might not otherwise hear those perspectives.

And in the end, I came home glad that we had gone.

8. Nonetheless, I also did not think those who boycotted were wrong. They made a different calculation. They believed that their absence would speak more powerfully than their presence. And, I could respect that position. Boycott was undeniably a legitimate, principled expression of solidarity with the Palestinians.

We simply didn’t see it as the only legitimate expression.

My experience at Frankfurt actually strengthened that view. There, I saw Filipinos using their presence to talk about Palestinian suffering and human rights. Palestinians who were there even described the Philippine Pavilion as a unexpected but most welcome safe space.

9. In other words, people can occupy the same moral ground while choosing different ways of acting on it. So, rather than shame, if not condemn the journalists wholesale: we should perhaps wait to see what they actually produce.

If someone returns and writes uncritically about everything Israeli officials showed them, ignores Gaza, fails to disclose the sponsorship, or repeats claims contradicted by independent evidence, then that would be the time to criticize the hell out of them.

But, imagine a journalist accepts the trip, interviews Israelis whose families were murdered or taken hostage on October 7, talks to Israeli officials, sees the country’s trauma firsthand—and then comes home and writes:

“I understand Israelis better now. And having heard their case, I remain convinced that what their government has done to Palestinians in Gaza is indefensible and morally wrong. It is genocide.”

Would accepting the trip then be unethical?

10. To be clear again, I believe that Israel as a state has committed and continues to commit crimes that amount to genocide. I believe it is time for the international community to treat it as a pariah state, much as it eventually isolated South Africa over apartheid. If our government were to impose sanctions, prohibit official engagement, or adopt other lawful measures to isolate Israel, then those would be matters of state policy with which we would all be expected to comply.

But until then, individual choices remain individual choices.

I can decide that I would not accept an Israeli government-sponsored trip. I can argue strongly that others should make the same choice. I can support and respect those who choose to boycott as an act of solidarity. But I should be careful about turning my own moral judgment into an obligation that I have neither the authority nor the right to impose on everyone else.

That, I think, is where legitimate criticism can too easily become moral absolutism.

It is one thing to question the judgment of journalists who accepted the trip, or to scrutinize their reporting more carefully because they did. It is quite another to declare that their decision to go makes them apologists for genocide, or that refusing the trip was the only morally acceptable choice.

Moral clarity about Gaza does not require moral certainty about every question that follows from it.

I will always be suspicious of, and careful about adopting a worldview in which one moral conclusion automatically demands a single correct response to every subsequent issue.

P.S. In Case You Need This

Rudy Quimbo — one of my best friends — and I used to team-teach a course on “Contemporary Issues in Information and Communications Technology Law” at the UP College of Law from 2003-2011. A lot has changed since then, and I have sometimes imagined how we would teach it today. Even the boring title of the course itself seems pretty dated.

We banned the use of cellphones in class, not because we did not want students relying on Google (matagal pa bago dumating si Claude), but because we did not want to be interrupted by an ill-timed call or text message. And frankly, it was simply annoying to see students looking at their screens when they had two perfectly handsome teachers in front of them.

It’s been a while, but I was reminded of that time because the UP College of Law just adopted a new policy on the use of artificial intelligence by students.

Beginning this school year, first-year core subjects will return fully onsite.

For core subjects, students will not be allowed to use laptops, tablets, phones or other electronic devices during class. Major examinations will be conducted offline and in person.

For writing assignments, the rules are even stricter. No student is allowed to use generative AI at any stage of the research and writing process. Not for initial queries, brainstorming, outlining, writing or even to simply check for lapses in grammar or typos.

The idea and concern — which I fully understand — is that law students must first learn how to think before they begin using tools that can think for them.

AI, after all, can produce a case digest in seconds. It can propose arguments, summarize decisions and write convincing legal memoranda. But it can also invent cases, miss important distinctions and present weak arguments with complete confidence. In other words, AI can sometimes be the sad and tragically comic Robin Padilla: a clown who thinks that when arguing a point of law, confidence is all you need.

The problem is not that AI may be wrong. I think anyone who regularly uses AI — especially students — already knows that. Or at least they should. But even if they do not, I am not really too worried. They are easily called out, and are unlikely to escape the consequences of their incompetence.

The real and bigger problem is that a student who has never learned to do the work independently of AI will never be a genuine, independent and creative thinker.

In that respect, the UP College of Law is right to insist on fundamentals.

There is value in requiring students to sit in a classroom without laptops or cellphones. Numerous studies confirm that taking handwritten notes helps people learn and remember better. There is also real value in teaching them to listen closely, to think on their feet when called unexpectedly, and to work through an answer without immediately turning to ChatGPT or Claude.

These are not minor classroom habits. They are critical skills for any future lawyer. AI makes it very easy to avoid developing them.

Still, I think the policy has gone too far. I wonder how it was debated, and how much support it has from all the members of the faculty, especially the younger ones.

There is a substantial difference after all between asking AI to write a paper and using it to check grammar. There is a difference between letting AI construct an argument versus asking it to challenge an argument that a student has already written.

The policy seems to treat all these activities as the same.

I am also uncomfortable with the provision that says the mere possession of a digital device during an examination would be treated as an academic integrity offense. A switched-off phone forgotten inside a bag is not the same as cheating. The College can simply require students to surrender or properly store their devices without immediately turning accidental possession into a disciplinary case.

Most importantly, learning to practice law without AI is only half the task.

The lawyers graduating in the next few years will enter offices where AI will definitely be used for research, drafting, document review and client service. They will need to know not only how to work without it, but also how to use it responsibly, verify its work and understand when not to trust it.

Hence, the absolute ban on the use of “research or law databases that are principally reliant on AI” for writing assignments strikes me as too blunt, short-sighted and, frankly, a bit of a Luddite move.

The challenge for UP Law should not be to keep AI out of legal research — because it should be obvious that is increasingly impossible — but to teach students how to use these tools critically, responsibly, and with sound legal judgment.

Perhaps the better approach is sequential.

During the first semester, require students to research and write entirely on their own. Then test whether they have developed the necessary foundations. After they have demonstrated those skills, teach them to use AI under supervision.

Ask them to compare their own work with an AI-generated answer. Require them to locate its errors, question its assumptions, check every authority and explain which version is better.

The goal should not be to prevent students from using AI. The goal should be to produce lawyers who are capable of thinking independently, and who therefore know when AI is useful, when it is wrong and when it should simply be set aside.

UP Law’s policy begins from the right place: before we let AI help students think, they must first learn to think for themselves.

But it misses the mark at the end because the second part is just as important.

Once students have learned the fundamentals, UP Law must also teach them how to use these new tools effectively and responsibly without surrendering their judgment to them.

That part is largely missing from the policy.

It does include a provision that “faculty may introduce principally AI-based research technologies and tools to their classes only if consistent with the intent of this policy, with the endorsement of the Legal Research Cluster”, but that only feels like an afterthought. It reads more like a reluctant exception to a prohibitory policy than a recognition of an affirmative duty to develop students’ competence in using AI effectively and responsibly.

The College is right to be concerned about students becoming dependent on AI. But should not focus so much on preventing its use. It should also embrace its equally important responsibility to produce lawyers who are able to use AI critically, ethically and well.

Otherwise, it will not be teaching law in a grand manner, and it will not produce great lawyers.

My name is Gigo Alampay, and Rudy Quimbo is my AI.

Obiter: I also am not fully convinced by the premise. The policy says the College observed a “considerable decline” in students’ reasoning and argumentation, and that these coincided “with the regular use of AI by students”. Feedback from employers, it continues, points to the same conclusion.

That may well be true.

But saying the decline coincided with the regular use of AI is not the same as showing that AI caused it. Many other factors could be at work such as the disruption caused by the pandemic, changing study habits, the long-term effects of online learning, or even changes in how students are assessed. If the College believes AI is the principal culprit, it should share the evidence. The claim deserves more than anecdotal justifications.

P.S. In Case You Need This

It occurred to me the other day that while I’ve written extensively about CANVAS, and even about my other lives — as a policy consultant, and about my five years studying in the United States, and even peripherally of my private side as a father and a husband — I’ve never really organized my thoughts about an earlier chapter of my life that laid the foundations for who I am today.

Much of who I am — as a person, as a lawyer, as an entrepreneur, and as a leader — was shaped during my years as a student activist at the University of the Philippines in the mid-1980s.

Those were extraordinary and heady times.

The country was in turmoil. Marcos’ dictatorship was beginning to crack. Campuses across the country roiled with debate, resistance, and political organizing, taking their cue for the most part from what was unfolding at the University of the Philippines.

For a young college student in his late teens and early twenties, it was exhilarating. Ideas mattered. Principles mattered. We could often feel history unfolding in real time, and without arrogance or self-absorption, we genuinely believed that we were helping to shape it.

I found my political home in two organizations: UPSCA or the University of the Philippines Student Catholic Action, and, almost simultaneously, Nagkaisang Tugon, the democratic student political party that UPSCA formed and which would eventually take its turn leading the UP Student Council.

Between them, they taught me lessons that have stayed with me for four decades. UPSCA grounded me in service, reflection, and values. Tugon threw me into the rough-and-tumble of campus politics, where ideas had to be defended, coalitions had to be built, and leadership meant making difficult choices under pressure.

It was my first encounter with ideology. With genuine political disagreement. With activism. And with the realization that principles are easy to proclaim but much harder to live by.

And then, of course, there was our nemesis: SAMASA.

At the time, they were our fiercest rivals. We fought bruising election campaigns and clashed over some of the defining sociopolitical questions of that era.

Years later, I would have the opportunity to work closely with quite a few of the SAMASAns. And I would come to know — and deeply respect — some of the very people we once opposed. Time does have a way of softening certainties while deepening understanding.

Between the two parties are stories that deserve to be remembered. Some are riveting. Some are hilarious. Some are grand. Many are absurd and, in hindsight, memorable precisely because they seemed so important at the time but were anything but.

I want to gather and share as many of those stories as I can, not because I want to indulge in nostalgia, but because they still have something to teach us. About democracy. About leadership. About friendship across ideological divides. About winning and losing. And about what it means to hold onto principles in complicated times.

And this is not a new effort.

Back in 2013, I bought what was then a rather expensive digital audio recorder (ngayon, that would probably just be a smartphone, haha) to begin a personal oral history project. I invited the founders and several of the early personalities of Tugon to CANVAS Gallery, asked a few questions, and simply let everyone talk.

The result was a three-hour conversation filled with anecdotes and revelations that, fortunately, I never lost.

The other day, I suddenly just remembered it. I found the recording easily in my archives, and listened to the entire thing again. It was fascinating — and a little bittersweet. One of the voices on that recording is Chito Gascon, who is no longer with us.

Still in 2013, I lent the recorder to SAMASA’s Susan Villanueva so she could do the same with their side of the story. They shared their recordings with me so I have them too, although I was made to promise that they would remain only for my ears until they decided otherwise.

Listening to both sets of recordings, I realize I’m sitting on a small goldmine.

Half of me wants to ask everyone involved if we can simply upload them to the internet and let them become the start of something much bigger — a sort of open-source oral history project where others can add their own recollections, disagreements, corrections, and treasured memories.

There are surely many more stories that deserve to be preserved and shared. We already have some of them, but they need more fleshing out. And, like most important stories, there is more than one side to each of them.

How were these two parties formed? Who founded them? What did they hope to achieve? Were they really student-led? Were they funded from outside? How did the things happening inside the university connect with what was happening outside it? Did we really influence history — including the events leading to EDSA 1986 — or are we just full of ourselves? Where are the members all now, and how did they turn out?

Then there are the smaller stories.

How statements were written. How campaigns were run. How each side reacted to what the other did, day to day, if not hour by hour. “Rapid response,” now standard practice in national politics, was something we were already doing back then.

There is even a story involving dwarves (the mythical kind) whose truth, even today, I still cannot fully explain.

And beyond the stories we’re proud of are the ones that people may prefer to leave untold for now. Stories about mistakes we made. Mistakes others made. Loves that got away. Paths not taken, for good or bad. Former comrades who’ve lost their way and who we now detest.

So, I’ve decided to give this project another push.

I’ve already sent private messages to several Tugonites, and to Susan as well. After all, we don’t know how many of us, and especially the people whose voices we most need — like Chito and Clark Soriano on Tugon’s side — will remain around to tell their stories.

The least we can do is preserve the memories that remain.

No one remembers the past in exactly the same way. Time reshapes memory, softens edges, and like AI, sometimes invents details that never happened at all.

And that’s precisely why it’s time to take this oral history project seriously again.

Let’s see.

Abangan.

P.S. In Case You Need This

Peer pressure. Wala lang.

1. We only know the broad idea. The United States wants to build a supply chain for artificial intelligence and semiconductors, covering everything from critical minerals and electricity to advanced manufacturing, computing infrastructure and AI models. In joining Pax Silica, the Philippines intends to use a 1,600-hectare industrial hub in New Clark City to process minerals, manufacture high-technology components and accommodate major AI infrastructure.

2. We’ve heard the promised benefits: investment, jobs, new industries, technology transfer, increased tax revenues, and an opportunity for the Philippines to move beyond exporting raw minerals and assembling low-value components. If properly designed, Pax Silica — supporters say — will help us claim a valuable place in industries that will shape the world economy for decades.

Those are not trivial benefits. The Philippines has spent years talking about industrialization while repeatedly missing opportunities to build the infrastructure, skills and industries required to achieve it.

3. Still, we should not accept Pax Silica blindly merely because government officials and foreign investors describe it as transformative. There are counterarguments that are equally, if not more, convincing.

For one, the government says the project will not endanger local water supplies because it will rely on rainwater, dams or impounding facilities. Environmental groups respond that facilities associated with AI and semiconductor manufacturing will consume extraordinary quantities of water, and verbal assurances are no substitute for scientific data — data that has not yet been provided.

Then, the government says Pax Silica will not burden the electricity grid because the project will develop its own power sources. Again, that is an assertion, not necessarily a fact. The only thing that all sides can agree on — or at least no one denies — is that it will represent an enormous addition to the country’s power system.

Building separate generation facilities does not automatically resolve the issue. What kind of power plants will be constructed and will they be enough? Will its power contracts affect electricity prices elsewhere? What happens during shortages, droughts or periods when these facilities fail?

“Generating its own electricity” sounds reassuring, but those are just words that haven’t been backed by actual plans that experts can independently validate.

4. The same uncertainty surrounds the nature of the hub itself. Some say it will mostly have AI data centers, while others say that the main activity will be manufacturing components rather than operating data centers.

This is not a minor distinction. A semiconductor assembly plant, a mineral-processing facility, a chip fabrication plant and a hyperscale AI data center have very different requirements, environmental footprints, employment profiles and economic benefits.

5. Nor is there a clear picture of the communities that will be affected. Environmental and community groups claim that Aeta communities and farmers may face displacement or disruption. BCDA says the land belongs to the government, that no ancestral-domain title covers the site, and that only a small number of farmers will be directly affected.

But whether people possess a formal title is not the same question as whether their homes, livelihoods, water sources or traditional use of the land will be affected. These questions should be answered through baseline studies and open public consultations that are conducted before the important decisions become irreversible.

I have not seen evidence of a consultation process proportionate to the scale of what is being proposed. Where are the development plans, the independent cost-benefit analysis, the water studies, the power studies, the fiscal incentives, the environmental baselines, and the legal framework that will govern the zone? And have they been vetted by independent experts?

6. This does not prove that Pax Silica is harmful. But it does prove — at least to me — that no one yet has enough information to decide whether its benefits outweigh its costs.

That should be the starting point of any honest discussion, and the onus of making the case should lie with the government.

Before commitments are finalized, the government should commission credible environmental and economic assessments, not studies produced solely by the project’s proponents. These should be open to public scrutiny, along with any and all agreements, proposed incentives, land arrangements, and other relevant information.

And, again, the communities surrounding New Clark City should be genuinely consulted while they can still influence the project — not after the essential terms have already been settled.

Simply put, we do not know enough to form a position on Pax Silica, so we should not be rushed into making a decision.

7. Then, there are the two questions hardly anyone is asking: Whose AI strategy are we joining? And is it in our interest to do so?

Pax Silica is not merely an investment program. This is obviously a play by the United States to forestall the rise of China as an AI power. While most of what I’ve read say the US is still in the lead, the impression is that this lead is tenuous, and that China is on the rise not only in AI, but also in other technologies of the future, particularly renewables.

Is it in our interest to cast our lot with the US, and will joining Pax Silica still keep our options open with regard to similar projects or collaborations with China?

The United States may have the most advanced chips and many of the strongest AI companies. But China possesses scale, manufacturing capability, abundant energy infrastructure, critical-mineral processing — and momentum.

8. The relevant question then is not whether the United States or China is the more sympathetic power. The question is what arrangement best advances Philippine development, sovereignty and long-term technological capacity.

Joining Pax Silica may give us access to American investment, advanced semiconductor technology, higher-value markets and a trusted supply chain that many Western companies may prefer.

If so, those would be enormous advantages. But at what cost?

Will membership require us to exclude Chinese investors from particular industries? Will we be expected to adopt American export controls, investment-screening rules or procurement restrictions? Will Filipino companies be prevented from using Chinese AI models, telecommunications systems, batteries, solar equipment or industrial technology? Will critical minerals extracted in the Philippines be effectively reserved for a US-led supply chain?

Will the arrangement limit future partnerships before we even know what China may offer?

We must therefore distinguish between joining Pax Silica and surrendering our freedom to cooperate elsewhere.

9. Of course, “playing both sides” is easier said than done. We should not imagine that the Philippines can endlessly collect benefits from both powers without making difficult choices. We should expect the United States to condition access to its most advanced technology on tighter alignment. On the other hand, China can be expected to retaliate economically or offer better terms to countries that reject American restrictions.

We should be clear and transparent — both to ourselves and to the other parties — about our interests in negotiations.

We are not exactly without leverage.

The Philippines possesses things both sides want: a strategic location, mineral resources, a large, young and skilled English-speaking workforce, and political influence within Southeast Asia. We should not give them away simply in exchange for an uncertain promise of investment and technology transfer.

10. We should expect both sides to compete — not merely over how much money they will invest, but over who will provide greater technology transfer, more jobs for Filipino engineers and managers, stronger environmental protections, better infrastructure, more local processing, fairer revenue-sharing, and fewer restrictions on our present and future choices.

We should work with the United States where American cooperation advances Philippine interests. We should work with China where Chinese cooperation advances Philippine interests.

The question before us is not whether America or China should win this competition.

The question is whether the Philippines can emerge from it stronger than before.

We should welcome investment from any country prepared to advance Philippine interests. We should reject any arrangement that asks us to sacrifice our long-term options for short-term gains.

Our interest should be our interest.

P.S. In Case You Need This

Wala lang.

A recent Pulse Asia survey places Sara Duterte far ahead of the field for the 2028 presidential elections. Forty-nine percent of respondents chose her as their preferred candidate. Leni Robredo was a distant second at 26 percent, followed by Raffy Tulfo at 14 percent.

It is far too early to treat this as a prediction. The field remains unsettled, and Leni has repeatedly said that she is not interested in running again, which presumably depressed her numbers.

Moreover, surveys are, of course, just snapshots. Political conditions can change quickly.

Still, we have to assume that the survey was properly conducted and the results are broadly credible, and that therefore, deserve to be taken seriously.

And they raise a difficult question: What do so many Filipinos see in Sara Duterte?

Let me begin with my own bias.

I believe a Sara Duterte presidency would be an unmitigated disaster.

Her performance as vice president and secretary of education demonstrated neither competence nor seriousness of purpose. Her tenure at DepEd will be remembered largely for the controversy over confidential funds, and for the absence of any clear vision or administrative response to the country’s profound learning crisis.

She now faces an impeachment trial involving serious allegations of corruption, misuse of public money, unexplained wealth, and threats against public officials.

And if she is to be judged by the company she keeps, her most prominent defenders include the Cayetanos, Harry Roque, Robin Padilla, Bong Go, and other personalities whose actions and conception of public service I do not respect — and that is an understatement.

And yet millions of Filipinos look at the same person and see something else.

It would be easy to dismiss them as uninformed, irrational, manipulated, or simply wrong.

That may provide some emotional satisfaction. It will not explain anything.

Are we asking the wrong questions?

Those of us who oppose Sara ask: How can people support her despite the confidential funds? Despite her performance at DepEd? Despite the impeachment charges?

To me — and, it seems, to nearly everyone in my social-media bubble — these are obvious and reasonable questions. Except that these questions assume that her supporters evaluate her according to the same standards we use.

Her supporters may be asking different questions: Is she strong? Is she willing to fight? Will she stand up to “Imperial Manila” and the political establishment? Can she protect people like us? Is she loyal to her father and to those who supported him?

Measured according to those standards, the qualities that make Sara unacceptable to us may make her attractive to others.

Her anger becomes courage. Her aggression becomes strength. Her refusal to explain herself becomes defiance. The attacks against her become evidence that powerful people are afraid of her.

This does not mean that I accept the reasoning of her supporters. But it does imply that they may be reasoning from a different understanding of what the country needs.

Sara is more than a candidate.

This is especially important in understanding Mindanao.

Sara’s support there cannot be reduced to a judgment of her qualifications. It is also, I believe, tied to regional identity, loyalty, and resentment toward a Manila-centered political order.

For many Mindanaoans, the Dutertes are not merely another dynasty. They are their dynasty.

Rodrigo Duterte made many Mindanaoans feel politically central in a country whose power, media, and cultural life have long been concentrated in Luzon.

An attack against Sara can therefore be heard as something larger than criticism of one politician. It can sound like another judgment from people in Manila who believe themselves more educated, sophisticated, and qualified to decide what is good for everyone else.

This is why insulting Duterte voters is not merely unkind. More crucially, it is politically destructive.

When people are told that their support for Sara proves they are stupid, immoral, or easily fooled, they are unlikely to reconsider their choice. They are more likely to conclude that Sara’s critics despise them.

If choosing Sara becomes a way to reject people who look down on them, criticism will likely only strengthen their loyalty.

Good vs. Strong

There may also be a more basic perception at work: Leni is good, but Sara is strong. This may be unfair and inaccurate, but voters who feel frightened, ignored, or angry may value force and decisiveness more than restraint. In such an environment, decency can be mistaken for weakness, and consultation for an inability to act.

The impeachment may reinforce her story.

It is not difficult to understand, then, how they might see the impeachment as an attempt by the Marcos administration and its allies to eliminate the strongest possible rival in 2028.

The credibility of her accusers is also part of the equation, after all. They see politicians with questionable records accusing another politician of corruption. They ask why Sara is being pursued while so many others escape scrutiny.

This does not make the allegations false. Accountability can be both politically advantageous and legally justified. But in a country where justice is often selective, it is easy for the accused to portray accountability as persecution. Once voters accept that story, every new allegation can become further proof of the conspiracy.

Perhaps they simply cannot believe us.

This would be the most unsettling possibility: that Sara’s supporters have heard everything her critics are saying, and that they simply can no longer believe the people saying it.

Many Filipinos distrust Congress, the Senate, mainstream media, universities, civil society, and the professional classes that dominate political discussion online.

Some of that distrust has been cultivated through disinformation. But not all of it.

Our institutions have often failed. Politicians invoke accountability selectively. “Educated” Filipinos can be condescending toward people who vote differently from them.

When institutions widely viewed as compromised accuse Sara of corruption, her supporters ask: Why should we believe you? Why are you investigating her and not the others? Why do you suddenly care about public money?

Those questions should not absolve Sara. But they expose the credibility problem of those trying to hold her accountable.

Facts do not travel by themselves. They travel through messengers. When the messenger is distrusted, even strong evidence can fail to persuade.

What message are we failing to convey?

The problem is not that the message is unclear. The problem is that our message is not answering the questions her supporters are asking.

Who will protect us? Who understands our anger? Who will stand up to the powerful? Who will make government respond? Who will fight for people like us?

Telling voters that Sara Duterte is bad does not answer these questions.

In other words, it is not enough to discuss confidential funds in the language of accounting rules and audit findings.

The issue must be connected to ordinary life.

While teachers bought classroom materials using their own money, why did the secretary of education need hundreds of millions in confidential funds?

While children struggled to read and schools lacked books, chairs, and toilets, what educational problem did those funds solve?

The point is not merely that rules may have been broken. The point is that Sara Duterte was entrusted with power and money that should have served ordinary Filipinos — and she failed. Not only can she not point to meaningful improvements in their lives or to the future of their children despite having all those resources — she cannot even explain where those funds went.

Our alternative must offer more

There is therefore a danger in making the next election entirely about stopping Sara Duterte.

A campaign built only around fear may consolidate those who already oppose her. But it will not attract those searching for strength, belonging, security, and hope.

People need a reason to vote for someone, not merely against Sara. Our alternative candidate must respond to the anger that made the Dutertes powerful in the first place.

He or she must acknowledge that many Filipinos feel abandoned by government, that the justice system protects the powerful, and that people are tired of leaders who speak beautifully while daily life remains difficult.

He or she must promise not merely cleaner institutions, but institutions that ordinary people can actually feel working for them.

Democracy cannot be only about rules and restraint.

Democracy must also deliver.

The survey results ultimately tell us less about Sara Duterte than about everyone opposing her.

They tell us that we have presented evidence without always explaining what it means in the daily lives of ordinary Filipinos.

We may have explained how she violated the law, but not who suffered as a result.

We may feel that we are defending democracy, but have failed to connect its tangible importance to people who feel unseen and powerless.

And too many of us have treated Duterte voters as a problem to be corrected rather than as fellow citizens whose choices need to be respected and understood.

So perhaps the question is not simply: Why do so many Filipinos still support Sara Duterte?

The harder and more useful question is: What does Sara Duterte promise — emotionally, culturally, and politically— that no democratic alternative has yet learned to provide?

Until we answer that, we can continue listing all the reasons she should never become president.

Her supporters may hear every word.

And they will vote for her anyway.

P.S. In Case You Need This

Wala lang.

A non sequitur happens when someone responds to an argument with something that sounds forceful, emotional, or clever — but doesn’t actually respond to the point being made.

Years ago, Senator Risa Hontiveros called for an investigation into alleged irregularities and corruption in the funding of the 2019 Southeast Asian Games.

Upon hearing this, Sen. Pia Cayetano grew livid and countered that the allegations undermined the significance of our athletes and that raising them was like slapping the athletes in the face.

Pia Cayetano’s response was a non sequitur. It did not follow.

Using the plight of athletes to try to prevent a legitimate investigation into the handling of the SEA Games was a stretch. To the contrary, making sure that funds allocated for athletes are properly used and accounted for is one of the best ways to honor them and ensure that future athletes are even better served.

Pia’s confusion — or, more likely, her attempt to change the subject — was and still is understandable. It was probably borne of love and perhaps fear for her more vulnerable brother, then Speaker and now Senator Alan Peter Cayetano, who stood at the center of the controversy.

Alan Peter Cayetano notoriously headed PHISGOC, the private foundation that organized the country's hosting of the Southeast Asian Games. He was also instrumental in routing billions of pesos in public funds through the Department of Foreign Affairs and into PHISGOC itself.

By channeling public funds through a private entity, PHISGOC was not subject to many of the procurement and auditing rules that ordinarily govern government agencies.

Given its huge budget and the glaring conflict of interest, legitimate questions about governance, accountability, and the safeguards that should accompany the spending of billions of pesos in public funds were inevitable.

Those concerns were only amplified by the embarrassing incompetence and mishaps that accompanied the Games— from Muslim athletes struggling to find halal food, to the Cambodian team sleeping on a conference room floor, to football matches beginning without a functioning scoreboard, and construction crews still painting and pouring cement at venues that were supposed to have been completed weeks earlier.

Cayetano’s infamous P50-million Caldero became the symbol of his hubris. Alan Peter fiercely defended it as a priceless work of art, but instead, it is now the defining image of the Games’ misplaced priorities.

Pia’s response back then made for compelling news, and like so many things in this country, the furor eventually settled down and was replaced by whatever scandal or celebrity story came next.

Unfortunately for the Cayetanos, the issue did not die completely. It is now back and biting them where it hurts.

Against the backdrop of the impeachment proceedings, the NBI has announced that it is launching an investigation into the anomalies surrounding the 2019 Southeast Asian Games. Predictably, the Cayetano siblings now accuse NBI Director Melvin Matibag of trying to intimidate them and distract them from their duties as senator-judges through these investigations.

And, for good measure, Alan Peter says he welcomes the investigation — provided that he and his allies in the Senate minority are likewise allowed to pursue a parallel investigation into the flood control scandal.

In practical terms, it is a meaningless and toothless dare. He has virtually no leverage to make these demands. But politically, it is a reminder of just how adept he and Pia have become at the art of the non sequitur — or, if you prefer, the art of changing the subject.

Alan Peter Cayetano is now saying, in effect:

“Investigate the SEA Games. We’ll investigate flood control.”

To his most loyal followers, this will sound like consistency. After all, he’s saying that no one should fear an investigation.

But look more closely. If the issue is whether billions of pesos allocated to flood control were properly spent, then the appropriate response is either:

“Yes, investigate,” or “No, here’s why the allegations are wrong.”

Instead, what we get is “Sige. Pero kami rin mag-iimbestiga.”

Whether the SEA Games should be investigated has absolutely no bearing on whether flood control projects should be investigated. The truth of one does not depend on the truth of the other.

It’s like asking whether a student cheated on an exam and getting the reply: “Well, what about the other student?”

To be fair, the Cayetanos are just two of the most visible and shameless practitioners of this political art.

Corruption allegations are often answered with memes about patriotism.

They are not the first to respond to questions about public spending with counter-accusations of political persecution.

In the Philippines, every issue is an excuse to talk about some other issue.

Once you learn to recognize a non sequitur, you start seeing it everywhere. And once you do, political discourse becomes much easier to understand.

In our politics, many debates aren’t really debates at all. They’re simply opportunities for each side to change the subject and divert attention.

So as you watch the impeachment proceedings, or the next time you hear a politician respond to a difficult question, ask yourself a simple one:

Did he or she actually address the issue?

Don’t be surprised if the answer is no.

And more importantly, if we want genuine accountability, refuse to let anyone — least of all the Cayetanos — change the question.

P.S. In Case You Need This

What’s your excuse?

I’ve been following the World Cup while traveling through Germany. I could not help but think: Why can’t we do that? How do countries much smaller than the Philippines produce football teams that compete with the best in the world?

We ask the same thing when we watch international basketball. Basketball is supposedly our national obsession. There are courts everywhere. Children grow up playing the game. Yet countries with much smaller populations regularly compete at a level we still struggle to reach.

We often assume it’s biology. That other countries simply produce taller, stronger, more athletic people. But I remember a few years ago watching Gilas defeat Latvia, then ranked sixth in the world, and thinking the opposite. We looked bigger and every bit as athletic as they did. That tells me it is possible, except that we haven’t been able to do it with any kind of consistency.

Sometimes we blame other things. Coaching. Politics. Corruption. Lack of money and support. All of these may be part of the answer.

But they still do not explain why other countries repeatedly produce world-class athletes. Their children did not suddenly become elite footballers or basketball players at the age of eighteen. Long before that happens, they already built a system around their children.

They don’t necessarily have more places to play. But they have more coaches who know how to teach children at different stages of development. There are more local clubs, leagues and schools where young players can compete regularly. There are people who know how to identify talent early, and pathways that allow promising athletes to keep improving.

Simply put, they’ve built infrastructures that take their children’s potential seriously.

So by the time we see their athletes playing in the World Cup or the FIBA World Cup, we are looking at the visible result of an enormous amount of work that began many years earlier.

We see the teams. We do not see the infrastructure and systems that made their players possible.

As these two weeks of travel and learning in Germany comes to a close, I’ve found myself thinking about another kind of infrastructure — an infrastructure for imagination.

We normally use that word to describe roads, bridges, airports, power plants and telecommunications systems. These are the structures that allow people, goods, energy and information to move.

Here in Germany, I realize that they’ve also invested in the things that allow ideas to move.

They have many places where children can become curious, encounter stories, experiment, play, make mistakes and imagine lives beyond the ones they already know.

They have well funded libraries, museums, theatres, parks, art schools, community centers, book fairs, and affordable spaces where artists can work. It sometimes felt as though every city we visited had a museum designed specifically for children.

We met someone who started a children’s book fair in a small neighborhood more than thirty years ago. Today it attracts tens of thousands of families every year.

We walked through a former industrial complex that has been transformed into a creative ecosystem occupied by galleries and hundreds of affordable studios where artists are able to work and thrive. Hundreds of thousands of tourists now visit it every year.

And, we are here because a German cultural fund believes it is worth paying for two people from the Philippines to travel, meet institutions and just explore the possibility of a partnership that may take years to develop.

None of these things, taken alone, will produce a great artist, writer, scientist or inventor. Just as a basketball court is not guaranteed to produce a world-class player. The court simply gives the child somewhere to begin.

That is what infrastructure does. It does not guarantee an outcome. It creates the conditions that make the outcome possible.

So, what kind of infrastructure do we need that can make ideas, art, music, sports, and culture flourish in the Philippines?

Note that we are not starting from scratch. Despite all our limitations, we are a country that produced Lea Salonga, Manny Pacquiao, BenCab, Alex Eala, the Philippine Madrigal Singers, to name a few. We just haven’t produced enough like them relative to the size and potential of our nation.

This brings me now to books, and more importantly, the art and stories they contain. For the past twenty plus years, the central work of CANVAS has been to create children’s books and give them away.

We have done many other things along the way. We have organized exhibitions, worked with artists, held writing competitions and have now started building a children’s museum.

But books have always been at the center of what we do.

Sometimes, particularly in a country with so many urgent problems, it can be difficult to explain why this matters.

A picture book does not feed a hungry child. It does not build a classroom, prevent a flood or create a job. It will not, by itself, lift a family out of poverty.

But that would be the wrong way to look at it.

More football fields will not necessarily get us to the World Cup. A more systematic basketball program that identifies and nurtures talent will not necessarily produce Olympic medals. More science laboratories will not guarantee scientific breakthroughs.

But, they will make those results more possible.

A book does something similar.

A book allows a child to enter a place that does not yet exist. It introduces people the child may never otherwise meet. It allows the child to see the world from another person’s point of view. It presents problems that can be solved, injustices that can be resisted and futures that can still be changed.

Before a child can become a scientist, an artist, an entrepreneur, a teacher or a leader, that child must first be able to imagine becoming one.

Before people can build a better society, they must first be able to imagine that the society they live in is not the only one possible.

This is why access to books matters. It is not only about literacy. It is also about possibility.

Children who grow up surrounded by art, stories and books are repeatedly reminded that the world is larger than what they can immediately see. There are other places, other lives, other ways of thinking and other endings.

For children born into difficult circumstances, that may be one of the most important things a book can offer: the permission to imagine that their present situation is not their inevitable future.

Seeing what we’ve seen over the past two weeks, I am beginning to think of CANVAS and its place in the world a little differently.

Perhaps we are not simply an organization that gives away books. Perhaps Tumba-Tumba is not simply supposed to be a museum. Perhaps the books, exhibitions, artworks, writing competitions and the museum we are building are all parts of the same effort.

We are trying, in our small way, to contribute to building the Philippines’ imagination infrastructure.

There is still a tendency in the Philippines to treat culture, books, museums, sports and the arts as extras. They are worthwhile when money is available, but easy to cut when there are more urgent priorities.

I understand that impulse. We are a country with limited resources and enormous needs.

But countries do not become excellent only by addressing emergencies. They also become excellent by steadily investing in the systems that allow people to discover what they are capable of becoming.

This is what countries like Germany with strong artistic and sporting cultures understand.

They do not merely wait for an extraordinary athlete to appear and then celebrate that person as proof of national greatness. They create thousands of opportunities for children to play, train and compete.

Most will never become professionals. That will not make the investment a failure.

The purpose of the system is not to guarantee that every child becomes exceptional. It is to ensure that exceptional potential is not lost simply because there was nowhere for it to grow.

The same should be true of imagination.

Not every child who reads a book will become a writer.

Not every child who visits a museum will become an artist.

Not every child who encounters a story about the stars will become a scientist.

That is not the point. The point is to create a country in which children encounter enough stories, ideas and possibilities to imagine for themselves what they might become.

So, when we ask why the Philippines struggles to produce world-class athletes, scientists, artists, thinkers — not to mention genuine leaders — perhaps part of the answer is that we spend too much time waiting for extraordinary Filipinos to emerge, and not enough time building the conditions that allow them to develop.

We can’t be satisfied with celebrating the occasional flower. We need to start nurturing the soil from which an entire field of them can grow.

P.S. In Case You Need This

Listen as one of the world’s most beloved nursery rhymes, Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star, is performed, beginning with a simple rendition and gradually unfolding into seven increasingly complex variations.

We’re here only for a couple of days. Based on my research, it would benefit us greatly to visit the Spinnerei — a vast former cotton mill that has organically evolved into a thriving ecosystem of galleries, artist studios, workshops, and cultural spaces — and, if we still have time and energy, the Grassi Museum, which is supposed to have excellent exhibitions on design, craft, decorative arts, and material culture.

Beyond that, I didn’t really know what to expect.

Leipzig was really just a stop before Kassel, where we have a meeting with the folks at the Brothers Grimm Museum.

It also happens to sit somewhere between Berlin and Kassel (though not in a straight line), and when I casually asked ChatGPT whether it was worth spending a couple of days here, it replied:

“Leipzig is more relaxed and livable than Berlin, and remains deeply artistic and intellectual. Its mix of industrial history, canals, studios, and cafés makes it especially interesting.”

It also recommended both the Spinnerei and the Grassi Museum.

Good enough for me. The train ride from Berlin took only a little over an hour, so we arrived around lunchtime with the entire afternoon free.

The city immediately felt different.

Compared to the neighborhood where we stayed in Berlin, Leipzig felt more livable. It was more abuzz with quiet activity, and there seemed to be more independent shops and cafés within walking distance. The weather cooperated too — cloudy but bright, with a cool breeze that made wandering around quite pleasant. Everywhere we looked, people were walking, talking, sipping coffee or wine outdoors.

It had a very relaxed and pedestrian-friendly feel.

So we walked aimlessly.

Eventually we came upon this large building that looked like a church. We had absolutely no idea what it was. It certainly looked old, although these days you never really know. Maybe it was actually a modern building designed to look medieval.

I told J, “Let’s test ChatGPT.”

I took a photo and asked, “I am in Leipzig. Can you tell me what this is?”

Almost immediately it replied:

“Yes. This is almost certainly the St. Thomas Church (Thomaskirche), one of Leipzig’s most famous landmarks.”

It continued:

“A few reasons it’s so important:

Johann Sebastian Bach spent the last 27 years of his life in Leipzig as the church’s cantor (1723–1750).

Bach is buried inside the church, in front of the chancel. His remains were moved here in 1950.

It is home to the world-renowned St. Thomas Choir (Thomanerchor), one of the oldest boys’ choirs in the world, founded in 1212. Bach himself directed this choir.

The present Gothic church was largely built in the late 15th century, although a church has stood on this site since the 12th century.

From your photo, you’re standing along the south side of the church, which is why you’re seeing the long row of tall Gothic windows and the steep slate roof rather than the famous front tower.”

I was almost embarrassed that I even had to ask.

Bach has always been one of my favorite composers, behind only Mozart and Georg Philipp Telemann. He wrote one of my favorite pieces of music, Air on a G String.

One would have thought that, having planned to visit Leipzig, I would already have known about St. Thomas Church. Instead, we stumbled upon it completely by accident.

Had it not been for AI, I might never have realized what we were actually looking at.

We found our way to the other side, and went inside.

I paid my respects and, as I always do whenever I enter a church for the very first time, quietly made my three wishes — a completely baseless superstition I learned as a child that every first visit to a church comes with three wishes.

On our way out, we noticed a small exhibit.

Once again, ChatGPT became our guide.

I pointed my phone at what looked like an ancient book and asked, “What does this say?”

It explained that it was an old German church lectionary (Kirchen-Buch). The open pages were for the Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity and contained Matthew 6:24–34 from the Sermon on the Mount, beginning with the well-known passage:

“No one can serve two masters... You cannot serve God and Mammon.”

It translated and interpreted the rest of the page, but what fascinated me most was this unprompted observation:

“The typeface is Fraktur, the blackletter script that was standard for German books until the early 20th century. To modern German readers, it’s often as challenging to read as Shakespearean English is for many English speakers.

Given that you’re at St. Thomas Church, there’s a good chance this book would have been very similar to those used during Johann Sebastian Bach’s time in Leipzig. Bach would have composed cantatas specifically for Sundays like this one, based on exactly these Gospel and Epistle readings. In other words, these are the texts that would have inspired the music heard in this church more than 300 years ago.”

A little farther on was another document, pressed between two sheets of acrylic.

Again I asked.

Again ChatGPT answered.

It explained that this was a handwritten church announcement from the early eighteenth century, written in German Kurrent script. It identified the deceased as Christian Weise — or more accurately, probably Christian Weiß — the senior pastor of St. Thomas Church and inspector of the St. Thomas School.

It announced the funeral arrangements, noting that the funeral sermon would be held at St. Thomas Church and inviting the congregation to attend. The notice was dated the Third Sunday of Advent in 1736.

It then told me

“At first glance, the name looks like Christian Weise, but the famous Leipzig pastor associated with St. Thomas at this time was actually Christian Weiß (or Weiss) (1671–1736). The spelling in these old manuscripts often varies, and ‘Weisse/Weiße/Weiß’ were used interchangeably.

So what you’re looking at is essentially an original funeral announcement for the senior pastor of St. Thomas Church, issued in 1736.

This makes the document particularly significant because Johann Sebastian Bach was serving as cantor of St. Thomas Church in 1736. Bach would almost certainly have known Pastor Christian Weiß personally and may well have directed the music at the funeral announced in this very notice.

You’re not just looking at an old piece of handwriting—you’re looking at a document from the same church, during Bach’s lifetime, announcing the funeral of one of his closest ecclesiastical colleagues.”

What would otherwise have been an indecipherable piece of faded handwriting behind glass suddenly became a human story.

We ended up spending almost an hour inside that relatively small church and museum. Of course, we also bought the obligatory souvenirs from the shop before leaving.

That single hour alone already made this stop in Leipzig worthwhile.

The experience also had me thinking.

People often talk about AI replacing jobs. But sometimes they miss a more interesting question: what kinds of experiences does AI make possible that simply weren’t possible before?

This wasn’t about asking AI to write an email or summarize a document.

Instead, AI was our art historian, translator, tour guide, musicologist, architectural expert, and local historian, all within the span of an hour.

We didn’t have to book a guided tour. We didn’t need to search for anything online. We didn’t even know enough to ask the right questions beforehand. We simply looked at whatever caught our attention and asked, “What is this?”

Now, I don’t think that traditional guided tours are necessarily going to disappear. The best guides do much more than recite facts. They tell stories, answer unexpected questions, read the room, and they are able to share something AI can't: their own passion for a place.

Still, for independent travelers like me today, AI can also become an extraordinary companion. It gives context on demand. It satisfies curiosity immediately. It allows me to wander without an itinerary because I know that whenever something catches my eye, there’s someone — or rather, something — I can ask.

Standing in a fifteenth-century church, reading a funeral announcement from 1736 and learning about the people who lived there nearly three hundred years ago, I wasn’t experiencing less history because AI was involved.

I felt like I was experiencing more because my understanding was being deepened by technology sitting quietly in my pocket — technology that’s now available to almost anyone.

This 21st century technology is able to make the past feel more present.

It’s something that I want to think about some more, and will probably write about in a later post. For now, it just feels like there’s something weird and wonderfully ironic about that.

Wala lang.

P.S. In Case You Need This

The purpose of the trip is both simple and ambitious: to find a cultural institution that could become CANVAS’ long-term partner as we build the Tumba-Tumba Children’s Museum of Philippine Art.

The grant is part of Germany’s effort to strengthen cultural relationships with organizations in countries that have not traditionally been the focus of German cultural cooperation. If all goes well, we hope to identify one museum whose vision closely matches ours. Together, we would then attempt to design a four-year program of artistic collaboration that could be supported by German funding from 2027 to 2031.

We’re particularly interested in children’s museums whose work brings together art, storytelling, participation, and sustainability.

Some of the possibilities are exciting to imagine. We could co-design permanent interactive installations for both our museums. We could organize staff exchanges so our teams learn from one another.

Or perhaps most interestingly, we could spend the next several years asking the same question together: How do museums intentionally cultivate imagination in children?

To begin our two-week visit, I arranged a special walking tour with Maggie McMenamy, or simply, Maggie The Tour Guide, who came very highly recommended. I wanted our first day simply to ground us and give us the context we would need to better understand the people and places we would be encountering.

So, prior to coming, I emailed Maggie and requested that she design a walk just for us, and to show us not simply Berlin’s famous landmarks, but the places that reveal how Germany chooses to remember its own history.

Among the places she took us to was the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma.

Most people know about the millions of Jews murdered during the Holocaust. Far fewer know that hundreds of thousands of Sinti and Roma — often referred to as Gypsies — were also systematically persecuted and exterminated by the Nazis.

The memorial itself is remarkably understated.

At its center is a still reflecting pool. Floating in the middle is a black triangular stone holding freshly cut flowers. Beyond the line of trees, framed almost perfectly by a gap that seems deliberately carved into the landscape, stands the Bundestag — Germany's federal parliament — with a direct view of the memorial.

The black triangle was not chosen for its aesthetics. During the Nazi regime, black triangles were sewn onto the clothing of Sinti and Roma prisoners, marking them as people the regime considered inferior and unworthy of life.

Around the memorial are stone tablets bearing the names of extermination camps where countless Sinti and Roma were murdered.

Every day, at an appointed hour, the black stone slowly descends beneath the water.

A member of Germany’s parliament then walks from the Bundestag, only a few hundred meters away, and places a fresh flower at its center.

Every single day.

When we build memorials, who are they really for?

The obvious and easy answer is everyone. They are for future generations. They are for visitors. They are for anyone willing to learn from history.

But standing beside this memorial, another answer became clear.

They are also, and maybe should primarily be, for those who hold power.

By requiring a member of parliament to perform this quiet daily act of remembrance, Germany is making a statement.

This memorial is meant for you.

For the people who make laws.

For the people entrusted with power.

For the people who must constantly remind themselves of what can happen when governments stop seeing some human beings as fully human.

Memory cannot be allowed to remain passive.

It has to be part of governance.

Later that day we visited another place with a very different lesson.

This was where Adolf Hitler spent his final hours before taking his own life.

There is no monument. No grand marker. No shrine.

The site is now just a parking lot. And, the precise location of where he shot himself is reportedly this parking space reserved for the building’s janitor.

History records what happened there. Books and schools teach it.

But Germany has deliberately chosen not to memorialize the man himself.

That's the second lesson I took from this walk: remembering is not simply about preserving the past. It is also about choosing who and what we honor with memorials— and who and what do not deserve a place in our public memory.

In the Philippines, despite a law — one that even provides a substantial budget, I should add — requiring its establishment, we still do not have a museum dedicated to the years of martial law.

Not as a monument to politics, and not to reopen old wounds.

But as a place where our children can learn what happened.

A place that reminds: This happened. It can happen again. And that is why we must #neverforget.

It is for this reason that we have long planned to include I Am What We Remember, a section on human rights and memory at Tumba-Tumba. We already have the plans, artworks and artists lined up, and we believe that we can create the unique and meaningful experience that visitors — especially children — will remember.

This tour gives us even more lessons and reasons to push forward.

Day 1 was a wonderful start to this study/partner-seeking tour.

P.S. If you find yourself in Berlin, we can’t recommend Maggie highly enough. You can find her here. Thank you, Maggie!

P.S. In Case You Need This

Berlin is also known for its graffiti. It is the visible expression of several forces coming together: a history of rebellion, the reunification of the city after the fall of the Wall, and a long-standing culture that sees street art less as vandalism and more as part of the city's identity — one that values creativity, diversity, and the freedom to express both.

For the last part of our tour, Maggie took us to one of Berlin’s neighborhoods to give us a glimpse of the city’s famed street art.

Whenever a child commits an unspeakable crime, this proposal inevitably resurfaces. If children are old enough to kill, the argument goes, they should be old enough to be treated as criminals.

I have always disagreed.

Not because these children should escape accountability. They absolutely should not. Three children are dead, and several others are injured. Other students, teachers, and families will carry the trauma of what happened for the rest of their lives. Justice demands that those responsible answer for what they have done.

But accountability and criminal liability are not the same thing.

When a fourteen-year-old commits murder, something has already gone terribly wrong long before the trigger is pulled.

Children are not born with fully formed moral judgment. They are shaped by their families, their schools, their communities, the internet, and the examples set by the adults they see around them, including our country’s leaders.

That does not excuse what they do. It does, however, mean that every child who commits a violent crime is also evidence of adults who failed.

Parents who did not or could not intervene. Schools that may have missed warning signs. Institutions that failed to provide support. And a society that often notices children only after they become headlines.

Lowering the age of criminal responsibility does nothing to address any of these failures. It simply shifts our attention to the easiest person to punish.

Nor is such a proposal to make criminals of younger offenders likely to affect all children equally.

The children most likely to find themselves in the criminal justice system are not those from wealthy families with access to lawyers, psychologists, and private schools. They are children from poor communities, where support systems are weakest and opportunities are fewest.

Lowering the age of criminal liability will only become yet another policy that falls most heavily on the poor, while leaving untouched the conditions that produced the tragedy in the first place.

There is another dimension that deserves attention.

For years, many of our political leaders, led by former President Duterte, normalized violence.

We watched them speak casually about killing. We heard them defend violence as strength. We saw them applaud Duterte, who promised to solve problems through force. We also saw them normalize not just violence, but even language that would once have been considered unthinkable from those entrusted with public office.

I am not suggesting that Duterte or any one of them is solely or directly responsible for what happened in Tacloban. But neither can we pretend that children grow up untouched by the culture they helped to create.

If children repeatedly see violence rewarded, applauded, or excused by the people they are told to admire, should we really be surprised when some begin to see violence as a legitimate way to solve their own problems?

If our first instinct is simply to imprison them earlier, we may satisfy a mob’s anger. But we will have solved nothing.

The starting point should be the law as it actually exists, not as it is often portrayed, especially by those seeking to take advantage of the emotional situation.

Children who commit heinous crimes do not escape accountability simply because they are below the age of criminal responsibility. The law does not say that they will walk free. Rather, it provides mechanisms to ensure that they answer for what they have done.

So it is absolutely false to suggest that their age places them beyond the reach of the law.

Moreover, let us not make the mistake of believing that punishing children more harshly is the same as protecting children more effectively.

The real question is not how young we should allow ourselves to imprison children. The real question is why we keep producing children who grow up believing that violence is an answer.

And the answer is not to imprison children earlier. The answer is to intervene earlier.

Take bullying seriously before it turns into violence.

Give schools the resources to identify children in crisis.

Expand access to mental health services.

Strengthen families that are struggling.

Keep firearms out of the hands of children.

Ensure that every child who commits a serious offense undergoes meaningful rehabilitation while being held accountable for the harm they have caused.

Most of all, demand better of the adults.

Children do not create the moral climate in which they grow up. We do.

These steps are not new and unknown ideas. What’s missing, as always, is the political will to invest in genuine solutions that take time, patience, money, and continued support to bear fruit.

The measure of a society is not how harshly it punishes its broken children, but how seriously it accepts responsibility to help ensure they never become broken in the first place.

P.S. In Case You Need This

Because it’s Father’s Day tomorrow, I thought it would be apt to talk about Chel Diokno’s proposed bill which would increase paternity leave from the current seven days to a total of 105 days.

Let me state at the outset that I have not seen the actual bill. I tried looking for it on Congress' website and, not surprisingly, finding anything there is a challenge. One would think that making proposed laws accessible to the public would be among the most basic responsibilities of a legislative body. Instead, Congress has created an online experience that seems designed to discourage curiosity.

But anyway...

Among its key provisions, the bill would increase paternity leave to 90 days, add another 15 days of parental leave, extend coverage to informal workers and alternative caregivers, and have the SSS reimburse employers for benefits advanced during the leave period.

And from what I can see, the proposal has generally been met positively. After all, who could object to fathers spending more time with their newborn children?

Research has shown that fathers who spend substantial time with newborns tend to remain more involved in childcare later, mothers return to work more easily, and children often show better developmental outcomes.

The logic behind the proposal is therefore not merely to “give fathers a vacation” but to encourage shared parenting and reduce the unequal burden traditionally placed on mothers.

And, speaking as a father, seven days is clearly inadequate. Anyone who has ever welcomed a child into the world knows that the first few weeks can be overwhelming. Mothers need support. Fathers need time to adjust to a completely new reality. Children definitely benefit when both parents are present and engaged.

Simply put, the current seven-day leave entitlement is far too short.

But the fact that seven days is inadequate does not automatically mean that 105 days is optimal.

So the question for me is not whether fathers should receive more leave. The question is whether 105 days is the right number.

That may sound like a technical distinction, but it is an important one.

Public policy is ultimately about choices. Every benefit has a cost. Every entitlement requires someone to pay for it. Before expanding a benefit fifteen-fold, it is reasonable to ask what the expected benefits are, what the costs will be, and whether the proposal represents the best use of limited resources.

Because so far, much of the discussion has focused almost exclusively on the social benefits.

What about the economic costs? Who pays for the additional leave?

Under the current law, employers bear the cost of paternity leave. Under the proposed measure, benefits would apparently be funded through the SSS, with employers advancing the payments and later being reimbursed.

If that is indeed the case, then the next questions should be obvious.

• What will the impact be on the SSS? How much will the program cost annually?

• How many workers are expected to avail themselves of the benefit each year?

• Has an actuarial study been conducted?

• Will contribution rates eventually have to increase? Will taxpayers ultimately shoulder part of the burden?

These are not minor details. They are fundamental questions that should accompany any proposal involving a major expansion of benefits.

And even if employers are fully reimbursed for salaries, the costs for them do not disappear.

• When an employee is absent for three months, someone else must do the work.

• Projects may be delayed. Workloads may be redistributed. Temporary replacements may need to be hired and trained.

For a large corporation, that may be manageable. But for a small business with ten or fifteen employees, the disruption can be significant. Imagine a small law office losing an associate for three months. A small engineering firm losing a project manager. A manufacturing company losing a supervisor.

These are not arguments against the bill. They are simply the kinds of questions we routinely ask whenever government proposes a major new benefit.

Questions that right now seem largely absent from the conversation.

Then there is the number. Why 105 days?

The proposal appears to have been designed to mirror the 105-day maternity leave law. But maternity leave and paternity leave do not exist for exactly the same reasons.

A woman who has just undergone pregnancy and childbirth faces physical and medical realities that fathers do not. That of course does not automatically mean that fathers need less leave. It does mean that the rationale for the two benefits is not necessarily the same.

So what exactly is the objective of the bill?

• Is it primarily intended to support mothers during the postpartum period?

• To strengthen father-child bonding?

• To encourage greater sharing of caregiving responsibilities?

• To improve child development outcomes?

• To promote gender equality within families?

All of these are legitimate goals. But the answer matters because the optimal leave period may differ depending on which problem we are trying to solve.

The goal of public policy should not be to maximize benefits without regard to cost. Nor should it be to minimize costs without regard to human needs. The goal is to find the point where the benefits justify the sacrifice required to provide them.

Would thirty days achieve most of the intended benefits? Would sixty? At what point do the benefits begin to level off while the costs continue to rise?

I do not know the answers. But I think that Chel and other proponents should be challenged to present evidence showing that 105 days is the point at which the benefits justify the costs.

Again, I am not against the bill. But I am not yet for it either.

To get there, and before we celebrate the proposal, these are the questions that should be answered first:

• What problem are we trying to solve?

• What alternatives were considered?

• How much will it cost and who will pay?

• What impact will it have on the SSS?

• And why is 105 days the appropriate number?

These are reasonable questions to ask before rewriting the rules for every employer, worker, and parent in the country. Until those questions are answered, I can't decide whether Chel's proposed amendment is a much-needed reform or a well-intentioned idea that might later prove to be an expensive mistake.

P.S. In Case You Need This

Because it’s Fathers’ Day, and also because it’s Pride Month. Wala lang.

A painting cannot end a war. A story does not rebuild a town after a typhoon. A song does not feed a hungry child.

But over the years, I have seen enough to believe that art changes the world in a different way. It changes how people think. It shapes how they imagine what is possible. And occasionally, it sets into motion a chain of events that nobody could have predicted.

In 2012, we published our children’s book Nadia and the Blue Stars.

The book emerged from our Romeo Forbes Children’s Story Writing Competition. The competition, as many are aware, works a little differently from most writing contests. Instead of asking writers to submit stories on any topic they choose, we invite them to create stories inspired by a work of art.

In this case, the inspiration came from this painting by artist Liv Vinluan.

Writer Francesca Nicole Torres saw the artwork and imagined the story of a young girl, Nadia, who is forced to flee her village when war breaks out. Nadia later returns to find her home damaged and changed. Rather than giving in to despair, she begins the slow work of helping heal the land around her.

Her story won and eventually became the book Nadia and the Blue Stars, illustrated by Liv herself.

It is a simple story about resilience, hope, and the power of a child to make a difference.

The following year, conflict erupted in Zamboanga, displacing tens of thousands of families. Many children found themselves living in evacuation centers, separated from their homes and communities.

Because Nadia’s story dealt with displacement, loss, and recovery, we approached professors from the Psychology Department of Ateneo de Manila and asked if they could develop psychosocial modules that would allow parents and teachers to use the book to help children process trauma.

They created the modules, and together with thousands of copies of the book translated into Chavacano, these were sent to Mindanao. We partnered with another nonprofit, Project Banig, which then trained parents and teachers to use them in evacuation centers.

One evening, a few months later, I received a call from a former student. He wanted to let me know that he was seated in a small theater in Mindanao, watching a musical version of Nadia and the Blue Stars.

And years later, in 2019, another nonprofit organization, Black Canvas (no relation to CANVAS), adapted Nadia and the Blue Stars into a second musical. It was staged at the Cultural Center of the Philippines as part of the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

A painting became a story.

The story became a book.

The book became a tool for psychosocial support.

And eventually, the same book was turned into two separate musicals.

Along the way, it reached tens of thousands of children, helping many of them process and deal with their experiences of displacement, conflict, and disaster.

None of that impact came from the book alone. It came from the people who encountered it and imagined new possibilities for it.

This is the clearest example I know of what we mean when we talk about the ripple effect of art, stories, and books. It is like tossing a pebble into a body of water. You never really know how far the ripples extend.

CANVAS itself was the product of such a ripple.

I have shared the story before, and you can read my full version here.

The short version is that, back in college, I encountered The Man Who Planted Trees by the French writer Jean Giono. The story moved me so deeply that years later, I created CANVAS as a vehicle through which I could adapt it into a Philippine setting.

That adaptation was possible only because Giono had given the story away. He allowed it to be translated, reproduced, and shared freely because he wanted it to belong to everyone.

In a 2005 commencement address at Stanford University, Steve Jobs famously observed that you cannot connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. He was urging the new graduates to follow their interests and passions, even if off the beaten path, and to trust that experiences along the journey will connect and prove vital in the future.

I think about that often when I think about our books and art. Can they really change the world?

It is not easy to answer that question without sounding trite.

But perhaps the better question is this: How many invisible chains of influence begin with a single work of art?

We rarely know at the beginning. We discover them only years later, when enough time has passed for the dots to connect.

There is no way Jean Giono could have imagined that his singular act of generosity would lead, decades later, to the creation of a small nonprofit organization in the Philippines which would give away millions of books to children.

Nor could he have imagined that some of those books, like Nadia and the Blue Stars, would be creating ripples of their own.

When Liv Vinluan painted her artwork and inspired Francesca Nicole Torres to write Nadia and the Blue Stars, surely they too would not have imagined where that would lead.

Giono’s art changed the trajectory of my life, not dramatically, but unexpectedly and slowly over the course of the past twenty years. I did not see it then when I founded CANVAS in 2005.

But looking back now some 20 years later, the connections — the dots — are obvious and traceable. I can see them clear as day.

It is for that reason that we continue to give away books and mount art exhibitions for children. We trust that they can somehow lead to good outcomes in the future.

We will never witness most of them. But we believe that they are there — real, unpredictable, inevitable.

We are happy to see the seeds leave our hands long before we might know what they will become.

P.S. In Case You Need This

Wisdom from David Hockney (July 9, 1937 - June 11, 2026)

Last June 9, together with fellow donors and partners including Adarna House, Rex Education, Lampara Books, and The Asia Foundation, we were invited by DepEd to Taytay Elementary School for the ceremonial distribution of school bags and the donated titles. During the event, it was also confirmed that the printing of the 1.7 million copies of Message in the Sand is already underway.

For CANVAS, this is a significant milestone.

Since 2005, we have donated a little over 515,000 books. With this single project, the reach of our books will grow to more than 2.2 million copies.

It gives us hope that it just may be possible to meet the scale of the challenge that has, all this time, seemed far larger than our ability to respond.

For years, our work has largely depended on the generosity of donors, partners and most important of all, engagement with some of the finest writers and artists of the country. We raise funds, produce books, identify communities, coordinate logistics, and distribute copies as widely as our resources allow. It is a model that worked well enough to have allowed us to reach hundreds of thousands of children.

Yet when one considers that there are more than twenty million learners in the Philippine public school system alone, it becomes clear that even a half-million books, while meaningful, represents only a small fraction of the need.

This is one of the central challenges facing literacy advocates in the Philippines.

The country continues to struggle with learning poverty and low reading proficiency. Too many children have limited access to books at home. Many schools operate with constrained resources. Teachers are often asked to do far more than what should reasonably be expected of them. Parents themselves may not have had the opportunity to develop strong reading habits or literacy skills.

The problem is not a lack of effort. It is scale.

How do we help to ensure that quality books reach not hundreds or thousands of children, but millions? How do we move from isolated success stories to systemic impact?

These are questions that have occupied us for some time. And the answer, we are beginning to realize, may lie in working more closely with the institutions that already operate at national scale.

The Department of Education reaches every province, every city, every municipality, and almost every community in the country. Its reach is unmatched. If our goal is to help place stories into the hands of children, then it makes sense to explore ways of working with the system rather than only around it.

That is why this Message in the Sand project feels different. This one project with DepEd will accomplish what would otherwise have taken us many more years to achieve on our own.

More importantly, it demonstrates a pathway toward something larger.

We are now working with DepEd on other book projects, including two books for young parents designed to help prepare their children for lifelong literacy and learning. We are also exploring creating — or using existing — titles and resources to further support learners in the public school system throughout their educational journey.

If these projects proceed as envisioned, they too will be printed and distributed in the millions. For a small nonprofit that began with a single children’s book two decades ago, that is both exciting and humbling.

It represents a new chapter for CANVAS — one that challenges us to think not only about creation and distribution, but also about impact.

At CANVAS, literacy has never been an end in itself. Reading is important not simply because it helps children perform better in school, but because it helps them make sense of themselves and the world around them. Stories build imagination, empathy, curiosity, and critical thinking. They allow children to encounter people different from themselves, imagine futures beyond their immediate circumstances, and develop the habit of asking questions.

In that sense, every book is also an investment in citizenship. A society that reads more deeply is often one that thinks more deeply, participates more thoughtfully, and imagines more boldly.

That said, one of the frustrations of our model for the creation of new and original books has always been the difficulty of measuring success. Sure, we can count how many books we have printed and given away. We can collect stories and testimonials. We can see the enthusiasm of children during book readings and community events.

But, at the most basic level, how do we know whether a book changed reading habits? Whether it encouraged a child to read another book? Whether it contributed, even in a small way, to better learning outcomes?

Working with the public education system creates possibilities for answering some of these questions. It allows us to think more seriously about evidence, measurement, and long-term impact. It allows us to ask not only how many books we distributed, but also what difference those books made.

There is, of course, another issue worth addressing.

It would be naive to ignore the concerns that many people have about government institutions, including the Department of Education. Like many Filipinos, we are aware of the stories and allegations that have circulated over the years regarding inefficiency, waste, and corruption in various parts of government.

At the same time, I should also say that in our own dealings with DepEd, I have never personally encountered or experienced anything that would suggest improper conduct. The officials and staff we have worked with have been professional, committed, and genuinely concerned about improving outcomes for Filipino learners.

Nevertheless, partnerships of this scale require a high standard of accountability.

For our part and for the record, CANVAS is committed to conducting this collaboration in the full light of day. We will continue to approach it with transparency, proper documentation, clear reporting, and strict adherence to the rules that govern both public institutions and nonprofit organizations. Public trust is earned through openness, and that trust is too important to take for granted.

While challenge ahead remains enormous, we have reason to hope.

When nonprofits, publishers, educators, donors, communities, and government institutions work together, it becomes possible to operate at a scale that none of us could achieve independently.

Twenty years ago, we started with one book.

Today, we are helping place millions into the hands of young readers.

And for the first time, we can see a realistic path toward matching the scale of the challenge itself.

P.S. In Case You Need This

Here are some personal thoughts, observations and rants about the state of our nation, given what we are seeing in the latest Senate telenovela written, directed and starring Alan Peter Cayetano.

1. We Have a Leadership Vacuum

The most underappreciated yet crucial feature of the current political moment is not what anyone is doing.

It is what the President is not doing.

A president does not have to comment on every controversy. But he does have to set direction. He does have to project leadership. He does have to make it clear where the country is headed and what principles guide his administration.

Instead, what we have from BBM is silence and drift. This absence of leadership is primarily responsible for the vacuum that Alan Peter Cayetano is only too eager to fill.

For all of Duterte’s failings and flaws, can you imagine anyone from the legislature openly disrespecting and defying him in the same way that APC is doing to BBM?

2. Alan Peter Cayetano Has Always Been Alan Peter Cayetano

None of this should surprise anyone.

The man who shamelessly defended Duterte's drug war as a human rights campaign is the same man who incompetently (and that might not even be the worst of it) led the conduct of the Southeast Asian Games only to become embroiled in the Caldero controversy. He is the same man who caused, and continues to preside over the latest Senate meltdown.

He will see the Senate go down in flames rather than yield for the greater good of the institution, and the country.

His politics have always revolved around a single, consistent theme: What is best for Alan Peter Cayetano?

3. Chiz Escudero Deserves Credit. But Not Amnesia.

Chiz Escudero did the right thing yesterday when he joined the former minority to help create a twelve-senator bloc capable of challenging Cayetano's control.

But let’s not pretend that none of this happened because of choices he himself made. If he had not joined forces with Cayetano in the first place, the current mess might never have materialized.

Nor should the various allegations of corruption and plunder that hang over his head magically disappear just because he finally made one correct decision.

4. Sara Duterte Is Not Going to Be Convicted

Even if the senator-judges are presented with evidence that is incontrovertible, comprehensive, and politically devastating, I still do not see a conviction.

Too many senators - not surprisingly, most if not all of them with Cayetano - have interests that extend beyond the evidence itself.

For them, the calculation is simple.

If Sara Duterte becomes president in 2028, can they expect her to protect them from their own political or legal problems?

Because the answer is yes, the facts will become secondary.

5. The Trial Must Proceed Anyway

That does not mean the impeachment trial is pointless. Quite the opposite. I believe it should push forward as quickly and transparently as possible.

There are really two courts involved. The first is the Senate. The second is public opinion.

The latter matters far more.

The impeachment trial is not merely about conviction. It is about exposure.

The sooner the proceedings begin, the sooner the public can see the facts and the evidence for themselves. And the sooner and more widely her stink will be uncovered and revealed.

Cayetano and his ilk know this of course, hence their desperation to control the impeachment trial.

6. Will the Supreme Court Save Us?

So we are at an impasse. The Senate currently is split twelve to twelve.

Under normal circumstances, thirteen votes are needed to constitute a majority.

But, with Bato in hiding and Jinggoy behind bars, the new majority, led by Sherwin Gatchalian, says they now constitute a majority of those effectively available. And that the Supreme Court case of Avelino vs. Cuenco supports this claim.

But is 12 really the magic number?

Numerous facebook analysts — many of them non-lawyers who just in the past week were suddenly revealed to be constitutional law experts — cannot seem to agree if the Avelino precedent indeed applies.

Ultimately, only one institution can resolve the question. The Supreme Court.

We don't really know how the SC will decide. But, the longer this uncertainty continues, the worse it becomes for the country.

That’s the irony here. We have no choice but to take that leap of faith in the Supreme Court, and that the system — for once — will work.

7. We Need Constitutional Reform

Everything that has happened over the past few weeks only reinforces a conclusion I wrote about earlier.

We need a Constitutional Convention. And we need to ask ourselves whether the Senate has outlived whatever justification once existed for it.

A chamber originally intended to provide wisdom, stability, and institutional memory has instead become a national stage for dynasties, self-preservation, and theatrical grandstanding.

Just look at Alan Peter Cayetano. He is the embodiment of what the Senate has become, and how low it has sunk.

Of course, there are still good, decent senators who are trying to do the right thing.

But institutions should be judged by the outcomes they consistently produce.

And lately, the Senate has only been producing an awful lot of reasons to seriously question whether it should continue to exist at all.

P.S. In Case You Need This

An old one, but still a good one. :)

I have never been someone who shuns or is afraid to try new technologies.

I sometimes point out to friends to just look at my email address: alampay@gmail.com. It is simply my last name — no first names or numbers — because I got into Gmail early enough to claim it. This was back when joining required an invitation from an existing user. I no longer remember who invited me, but I do remember how astonishingly generous it felt that Gmail offered 1GB of storage when Yahoo only gave 5MB.

Even earlier than that, during an 8-week internship at The Carter Center in 1995, I remember being surprised that most people at the Center were not yet familiar with email. I vaguely recall that they had something like SquirrelMail or a similarly primitive system, and at one point early in the program, I found myself teaching some people on the Human Rights team how to use it.

I am not an engineer, programmer, or scientist. But over time, I became increasingly curious and comfortable with emerging technology issues — especially compared to most lawyers here — and naturally drifted into information technology law and policy work.

The breakthrough moment in that part of my legal career came in 2001 when I was asked by a program officer of USAID if I could write a consultative document for the Department of Trade and Industry which was then contemplating the issuance of rules to govern electronic signatures and digital authentication.

I told him honestly, “I don’t know anything about that.”

And he said: “Well, who does? As far as we know, nobody here does yet. Think of it this way, you would be paid to become an expert on this.”

Put that way, it was one of the best deals I made in my life. It eventually led to decades of consulting work with organizations like USAID, the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank, and others on issues involving telecommunications, internet governance, competition policy, and emerging technologies.

So when ChatGPT and generative AI suddenly exploded into public consciousness a couple of years ago, I did not hesitate to try it.

Many people around me then were skeptical, cautious, or even dismissive. Some still are. I understand the concerns, especially at the start when the technology hallucinated constantly and invented facts with seeming nonchalant confidence. But even then, it was obvious to me that something significant was happening.

One of the first things I tried to build was a personal GPT focused entirely on CANVAS. I fed it organizational documents, project histories, notes, reports, and other materials.

My thinking was simple: beyond functioning as a searchable archive — answering questions like “When did we first hold the Outdoor Banner Project?” or “When did I first meet this artist?” — perhaps it could also help draft grant proposals and letters with proper institutional context already built in.

At first, it was simply terrible.

Despite repeated instructions to rely only on the materials I provided, it would casually invent names, events, and partnerships whenever it could not find the answer. Asking something as basic as “Who are the members of the CANVAS Board?” produced a mix of correct names and completely fictional people.

So I abandoned it for a while.

But when I revisited it just three months later, the improvement was startling. The difference was not incremental. It genuinely felt like interacting with a much more disciplined and reliable system.

Today, my personal GPTs are far more accurate and useful, and when information is unavailable, they simply admit it instead of fabricating answers.

I now use a mix of AI apps — ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini — to help draft letters, organize grant proposals, summarize long materials, brainstorm themes, and tease out possible project ideas. It has become genuinely useful in ways that save me enormous amounts of time.

I also use AI when working on these Wala Lang posts. But very, very intentionally.

I don’t use AI until I’ve written an initial draft myself because I care deeply about voice. I have always liked writing, and I like to think I am a decent enough writer. But most importantly, I enjoy thinking through writing.

Writing is actually the easier part.

The difficult part is the thinking: the brainstorming, the wrestling with an idea, the slow emergence of an original insight that feels worth saying out loud.

So the process matters to me.

On Facebook, I can tell when something is likely to have been written heavily — or entirely — through AI. Certain words, rhythms, and transitions now appear repeatedly across very different people’s writing. Posts are cleaner, smoother, more polished, but are strangely similar to one another.

The output of several friends is noticeably better, too — and frankly, that’s great. In many ways, AI democratizes expression for people who may have ideas but struggle with structure, grammar, or confidence. I also don’t doubt that AI has improved what I myself put out there.

But sometimes, after reading their posts, I realize that despite sounding sophisticated, many pieces do not actually say anything particularly new or creative.

And that worries me a little.

Is creativity — at least as reflected in online writing — slowly becoming homogenized?

Are we outsourcing not only proofreading and editing, but also surrendering the harder and more valuable work of brainstorming, sharpening ideas, discovering insights, and developing a distinctive voice?

It is an easy trap to fall into because the tools have become extraordinarily good. And when they produce intelligent-sounding observations, it is easy to feel that we arrived at those thoughts ourselves.

But did we really?

So when I write, I try to use AI in a very particular way.

I write first. I complete the draft. I reread it. I rewrite.

Only afterwards do I use AI to check for typos, grammatical lapses, readability, and flow.

And occasionally, at that stage, it surfaces an observation or angle that I had overlooked or only partially explored. That then becomes an opportunity for me to rethink the piece and perhaps expand on an idea that deserves more attention.

In some ways, this is not entirely different from how I used to write before ChatGPT.

Back then, I would draft something, leave it alone for several days, then revisit it later with fresh eyes to see whether new thoughts emerged. The distance often helped.

AI simply accelerates parts of that process.

What once took days of stepping away and returning can now happen much faster through dialogue with a system that functions partly as editor, partly as sounding board, and partly as an unusually well-read research assistant.

And to me, at least, the essential parts remain human:

The initial ideas.
The creative choices.
The voice.
The decision about what remains.

And most importantly: the responsibility for the words and ideas that I eventually share with the world.

P.S. In Case You Need This

If at first you don’t succeed…

If elections were held tomorrow, Sara Duterte would probably still be the favorite for president. She retains a strong political base. Duterte populism, despite everything that has happened, remains very real. The family continues to command loyalty, emotional attachment, and a sense among many voters that they represent strength, decisiveness, and anti-elite politics.

The opposition, meanwhile, has often looked fragmented.

Leni Robredo remains, to my mind, the clearest moral counterweight to Duterte politics, and IF she runs, she immediately becomes competitive. Raffy Tulfo occupies a different but equally important space in the landscape: populist, media-savvy, ideologically difficult to pin down, but possessing enormous reach and undeniable electoral viability.

Still, while some recent surveys have been encouraging, neither Robredo nor Tulfo — nor anyone else currently being floated as a possible candidate — can honestly be described at this point as strong enough on their own to comfortably stop Sara Duterte in 2028. Even more so if several opposition or anti-Duterte candidates end up running simultaneously and splitting the vote.

Which is why the Senate minority walkout is politically interesting.

While the walkout itself was ostensibly about rules — electronic participation, procedure, institutional integrity — underneath was a visible attempt by senators from different political tendencies to draw a line together around shared anxieties about accountability, institutional stability, democratic norms, and exhaustion with impunity.

Simply put, intended or not, rightly or wrongly, the minority’s positioning projected principle.

It also presented a sharp contrast to the blackened image of the Senate majority.

Most if not all of the personalities associated with the current majority carry political baggage ranging from corruption allegations to opportunistic party-switching to open defense of some of the most controversial policies from the Duterte years. Some remain tied to unresolved scandals. Not a few project hypocrisy, arrogance, and unabashed mediocrity.

There is, in other words, a visible moral asymmetry between the two camps.

Not perfection versus corruption — Philippine politics is never that clean and there are figures in the minority who have character flaws themselves — but at least the appearance of one side anchoring itself on institutional principles, while the other is held together by a shared desire for power preservation, patronage, and mutual political protection.

This distinction obviously matters, but even more so as things heat up for 2028. Because, despite all of the current majority’s insistence that the Senate coup they mounted was not about the impeachment, it was really all about that — as well as protecting themselves from the corruption and plunder charges that are coming.

In Sara Duterte, the majority see their strongest path toward retaining influence, protection, and relevance. Which is why it is in their interest not merely that she survives impeachment, but that the proceedings conclude quickly and with as little reputational damage as possible.

Prolonged proceedings will risk eroding Sara’s apparent lead by reminding the public of the broader controversies surrounding the Duterte years: the ICC issue, extrajudicial killings, attacks on democratic institutions, corruption allegations, and the normalization of impunity as a governing culture.

Unfortunately for the majority, their margin is razor-thin. And the walkout demonstrated just how limited their control over the impeachment process will ultimately be.

More than that, they also can no longer paint Sara Duterte’s path to Malacañang as inevitable. Because now, it is plausible to imagine a coalition broad enough to stop her.

Of course, enormous risks remain.

Coalitions built primarily around opposition to a single dominant figure are often fragile. The moment questions of power-sharing, candidacies, and ambition arise, unity becomes much harder to sustain.

It is one thing to rally behind Sherwin Gatchalian for Senate President as a tactical institutional move. It is another thing entirely to persuade ambitious national figures to set aside their own presidential aspirations behind a single candidate.

That will remain the central challenge heading into 2028.

Still, last night suggested that the opposition may finally be learning that fragmentation is its greatest weakness, and that coalition-building may be its only realistic path to victory.

And because of the walkout, the Senate minority now looks less like a disparate group of isolated opposition figures, and more like the early outline of how such a coalition could emerge.

P.S. In Case You Need This

Wala lang.

Alan Peter Cayetano is once more attempting to frame Duterte’s war on drugs as “pro-life” because it supposedly protected communities from crime and addiction.

It is an absurd assertion. More than that, it is an insult to the families of those killed during those years.

Duterte’s campaign, which Cayetano continues to defend, resulted in thousands of documented deaths, many carried out without due process, without trials, and often without clear evidence beyond suspicion and accusation.

How exactly does that become “pro-life”?

Of course, these contortions are entirely on-brand for Cayetano. It was during Duterte’s presidency that the very phrase “human rights” became heavily politicized. Human rights advocates — including even the Commission on Human Rights — were mocked, vilified, and portrayed as enemies of peace and order by Duterte loyalists.

The issue became so emotionally and politically divisive that many Filipinos began hearing “human rights” not as a universal principle, but as a political slogan associated only with critics of Duterte and the drug war.

If we allow that distortion to stand, we reduce human rights from a universal principle into a partisan insult, and future generations will inherit the consequences.

Because human rights are foundational principles of a civilized society. They are as basic and essential as a child’s right to play and to education, or a worker’s right to be paid fairly, or a citizen’s right not to disappear because someone powerful decided they deserved it.

At its core, human rights is based on something very simple: every human being possesses inherent dignity. Not conditional dignity. Not dignity dependent on social class, political loyalty, popularity, or whether they made mistakes in life.

Just dignity. By virtue of being human.

From that flows everything else: equality before the law, access to opportunity, protection from abuse, freedom to speak without fear, the chance to build meaningful lives instead of merely surviving under arbitrary power.

History is filled with examples of what happens when societies abandon those principles because fear, anger, or ideology feels more urgent.

The Marcos dictatorship normalized arbitrary arrests, torture, disappearances, and censorship in the name of order and national security. Thousands suffered before the country realized that giving governments unchecked power never ends neatly or voluntarily.

In the United States after 9/11, fear of terrorism led to torture programs, indefinite detentions, and mass surveillance that many Americans themselves later questioned. During World War II, Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps simply because panic made discrimination politically convenient.

And today, we are seeing similar moral justifications unfold in Gaza and Lebanon. Entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble, thousands of civilians killed, children buried under concrete, all while Israeli political leaders invoke security, historical grievance, national destiny, and at times even biblical entitlement to rationalize overwhelming force.

In many authoritarian states, governments always begin with the same promise: sacrifice a little freedom now for safety, prosperity, or national unity later.

Except that “later” never quite arrives.

Every empire, every dictatorship, every occupier, every fanatic believes they are uniquely justified. That their enemies are so dangerous, so evil, so irredeemable that ordinary moral rules no longer apply to them.

And once people begin believing they possess some higher moral or divine authority, other human beings quickly become abstractions. Casualties. Collateral damage. Statistics.

This is why human rights matter even when — especially when — they are inconvenient.

Human rights are not about making criminals comfortable. They are about preventing societies from becoming comfortable with cruelty.

That is why nearly every modern nation on earth — including the Philippines — formally recognizes human rights in constitutions, treaties, and laws. Not because countries are perfect at protecting them, but because humanity has learned through blood and catastrophe what happens when states are allowed to decide whose humanity counts.

A society does not prove its moral strength by how it treats the beloved and respectable. It proves it by how it treats the weak, the accused, the unpopular, and the disposable.

But maybe the best way to understand human rights is not through courtrooms, constitutions, activists, politicians, or ideological debates.

Maybe it is something far simpler.

A child sitting quietly with a book. Reading freely. Letting their imagination wander toward futures they cannot yet fully describe. A scientist. A teacher. An artist. A nurse. A builder. A parent. A dream not yet interrupted by fear, violence, hunger, or arbitrary power.

Human rights are what make that possible.

They are the invisible foundation beneath a meaningful life: safety, dignity, education, opportunity, freedom, justice, stability, hope.

The ability to wake up tomorrow believing you still have a tomorrow worth building.

That is the real point.

Not politics. Not slogans. Not partisan identity.

Simply the stubborn belief that every human being deserves the chance to live fully human lives.

No government, ideology, movement, or strongman should ever get to decide whose humanity matters less.

In fact, the obligation of government is precisely the opposite.

The state exists not merely to wield power, enforce order, or project strength, but to safeguard the dignity, rights, and future of the people entrusted to it. Its duty is not to determine who deserves protection and who can be discarded, but to ensure that every person — especially the weak, the poor, the accused, and the voiceless — can live without fear of arbitrary cruelty.

A government truly worthy of its authority does not ask citizens to surrender their humanity in exchange for security.

It protects both.

Because the real measure of a nation is not how loudly it celebrates power, but how faithfully it protects human life, human dignity, and the quiet possibility of tomorrow for every person under its care.

P.S. In Case You Need This

One of the great philosophers of our time, Keanu Reeves, on what happens when we die.

Wala lang. :)

I could take risks because there were enough years ahead to correct any mistakes, or even reinvent myself if needed.

Sometime after turning fifty, something began to shift. A realization crept in that I would not become all the versions of myself that I imagined. I started understanding time not as an abstraction, but genuinely feeling it as something finite.

Slowly at first, and then increasingly, I sometimes find myself quietly doing arithmetic in my head.

How many truly productive years remain?
How many major projects can I pursue?
How many chances to begin again from zero?
How many family members, friends — and I myself — are still healthy, and for how long?
How much longer will my knees allow me to play basketball?

And perhaps hardest of all:

Which of my audacious goals are still alive, and which are just pipe dreams?

I do not mean this in a sad or regretful way. It’s actually liberating. There is clarity in understanding that I cannot do everything, be everywhere, or pursue every possible version of my life simultaneously.

At this point in my life, being realistic is not pessimism. It is simply unavoidable.

It is also, for lack of a better word, disorienting. Because even now, part of me still resists the idea of narrowing things down. I still want to explore. I still want to build. I still feel excited about pursuing new things that I know will make it difficult for me to accomplish the ones already on my very full plate.

I think this is why ambition feels different after fifty, and especially now past sixty.

When I was younger, ambition was broader, if perhaps shallower. I wanted more. More recognition. More experiences. More achievements. More movement. Imagination raced outward endlessly.

Now, it’s not about more anymore, but about choice.

What is actually worth building now?
What deserves attention in the remaining decades of my life?
What am I willing to give up in order to finish the uncompleted things that truly matter to me?

I have learned that every serious commitment is also an act of elimination. To choose one path seriously means — even demands — abandoning others.

The good news is that more than at any other point in my life, I know exactly what I want to pursue.

I want to build Tumba-Tumba, our dream children’s museum of Philippine art, properly. I want to keep working with Filipino artists and writers to create children’s books that we can place into the hands of children who might otherwise never own one. I want to prepare CANVAS to continue growing beyond me.

I want to write more seriously. Maybe make strange little books and prints and stories that only a few people will care about.

We have a small piece of land beside Tumba-Tumba. I want to turn it into a walkable garden with a few tiny museums tucked into the landscape filled with things, knowledge, and abubots that Alyssa and I accumulated through the years, separate and distinct from CANVAS. I want to plant more trees there, including some whose shade I may never fully sit under myself.

I want to travel with Alyssa and our children while we still can.

And I want to continue playing basketball with my friends for as long as possible, just like these guys.

Somewhere in middle age, we will all realize that life is no longer something that is “about to begin.”

For me, this is my life now, and I am excited.

Because while I still may not have everything figured out, the path before me is no longer as hazy.

There is still so much life ahead. A museum to build. Places to see. Stories to write. Books to bring to life. Conversations to have. And, every now and then, new possibilities emerging that may be worth chasing.

The difference now is that these ambitions feel less about becoming and doing everything, and more about choosing carefully what is truly worth spending my time — and ultimately my life — on.

This is what “mature” ambition has become for me: to spend the remaining decades not in the endless pursuit of more, but in continuing to build more purposefully upon the life I am fortunate enough to already have.

P.S. In Case You Need This

I’ve decided to start adding this section at the end of these posts. No deep meaning necessarily. Just something to share that came across my feed and made me pause, smile, or think.

Wala lang.