The year was 2001. We were young bucks eager to serve the nation by writing everything we saw around us. We were aspiring beat reporters, investigative journalists and lifestyle and sports writers who wished to make a difference by honing our craft and make use of it through any available means. Our mentors were mostly professionals working in different newspapers - namely from Philippine Daily Inquirer, Tempo and Manila Bulletin. Driven by our intense passion to embrace the outrageous and the unconventional, we preferred to follow the most notorious but bullied newspaper of our time - The Philippine Daily Inquirer.
It was a time of great upheaval. Erap Estrada was about to stand trial for graft charges and Gloria Macapagal-Arrovo had just resigned from her post in the DSWD. There was storm brewing in the House of Representative and the Senate over the balance of power in national politics. And we were there as witness to history. Had we been given the signal to storm the places of dissent to write everything, we would do so without a blink of an eye.
PDI was the opposition. They never hesitated putting everything that was wrong in the country and the truth they sold swayed public opinions to their cause. They were in the forefront of the coming changes and we, as journalism students rode with them. We wrote like we're PDI reporters, drafted editorials like we're PDI columnists and we, with one voice declared Conrado De Quiros our hero. I don't know what my classmates opinions were back then, but I was bent on being shaped by what I get from my favorite broadsheet.
The hands of time rolled like the rise and set of the sun. We moved on from our journalistic aspirations and we found ourselves in different jobs - serving different interests that are sometimes opposing one another. But at times I look back and remember how driven we were back then to make a difference,
I realize that the past still echoes towards the present. No wonder, I am still as open to politics like I used to - when it was still my breakfast, lunch, dinner and yosi breaks for the day.
Things have changed. I have become a lowly outsourcing agent in some obscure company who dabbles as an aspiring creative writer on the sidelines. But when I wish to return to my roots and bask in the brilliance known as my senior years in college.
I click on the inq.net website to remember them all.
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Entry written shortly after reading inq's op-ed piece, "Nakakahiya" dated today. The commentary is about how the opposition in Pampanga resorts to so many different tactics to depose it's current governor, Among Ed Panlilio for dubious charges such as loss of confidence to even non-attendance in meetings with the President.
I don't know what my Kapampangan friends think of him, but in a time when everything sucks about the country - especially its president, the only truth I wish to believe and see comes from the only newspaper who shaped the way I think.
I realize that the past still echoes towards the present. No wonder, I am still as open to politics like I used to - when it was still my breakfast, lunch, dinner and yosi breaks for the day.
Things have changed. I have become a lowly outsourcing agent in some obscure company who dabbles as an aspiring creative writer on the sidelines. But when I wish to return to my roots and bask in the brilliance known as my senior years in college.
I click on the inq.net website to remember them all.
---
Entry written shortly after reading inq's op-ed piece, "Nakakahiya" dated today. The commentary is about how the opposition in Pampanga resorts to so many different tactics to depose it's current governor, Among Ed Panlilio for dubious charges such as loss of confidence to even non-attendance in meetings with the President.
I don't know what my Kapampangan friends think of him, but in a time when everything sucks about the country - especially its president, the only truth I wish to believe and see comes from the only newspaper who shaped the way I think.
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