The L.A. Lakers lead the Spurs 3-1 in the best-of-seven Western Conference finals, and looks to put them away Thursday night (Friday morning in Manila) at Staples Center, where they own a 7-0 record in the postseason. DONE.

The Celtics are one win away from the NBA finals, for the first time in more than two decades. Ray Allen scored 29, hitting a long 2-pointer with a minute left after Detroit came within one point, then he and Kevin Garnett each made a pair of free throws down the stretch as the Celtics beat the Detroit Pistons 106-102 in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference finals. Game 6 is on Friday (Saturday morning in Manila) in Detroit, with the Celtics holding a 3-2 series lead. With a victory there or on Sunday back in Boston, the Celtics would advance to the NBA finals for the first time since the legendary Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish took them there in 1987. DONE.

What does this mean ? The revival of a historic rivalry, Lakers vs. Celtics, East vs. West, Bird vs. Magic, which for my generation defined the highest level of competitive basketball ever played on the planet. Read the rest of this entry »

Eight years ago on this day, the 27th of May, my son died. Thus, began for us who loved him, and love him still, a journey of mourning and grief from which I sometimes feel there is no way back. In a sense, this is true. Having walked through the valley of death, by way of lamentations for those we lost, we can never return. At least not as we once were.

For one thing, to paraphrase C.S. Lewis in his classic “A Grief Observed”, some aspects of my fatherhood must be written off. Never, in any place or time, will I have my son on my knees, or bathe him, or tell him a story, or plan for his future, or see my grandchild.

Or get a haircut together. And share some burger and fries after. Which we used to do on a regular basis, just the two of us.

Still, I cling to memories and mementos of our time together, specially books, which he loved. It gave me indescribable pleasure to read to him, most often in bed just before sleeping. A particular favorite, “The Sailor Dog”, about a dog that always wanted to go to sea and realizes his dream, has pride of place in my bookshelf. Read the rest of this entry »

I had some reservations about writing on the deaths of ten individuals, murder victims who were killed in a successful robbery of the Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation (RCBC) branch in Cabuyao, Laguna a week ago. The killings hit close to home and I felt I would not be objective enough to handle the subject.

But having already made a post on it some days ago, and seeing the response of so many readers, I feel compelled to close the loop on my analysis of the tragic incident and its aftermath.

The brutal inhumanity of the killings have been reported extensively in traditional media and the blogsphere , and there’s no need to repeat the details here. However, recent events related to the incident require closer examination.

First, the handling by the police of the investigation. In their usual ham-fisted way, the initial responding team broke into the RCBC Cabuyao, Laguna branch, and started trampling around the scene of the crime. Understandable, as there was the urgency of saving any survivors. But was there a systematic attempt to gather and preserve evidence critical to the investigation ? I don’t know. But it appears, from news reports and pictures of the incident which have been circulating on the internet, that even the police were taken aback by the mayhem and violence of the killings. I hope the Philippine National Police (PNP) Scene of the Crime Operations (SOCO) people were cool and level-headed enough to have collected, in a scientific and methodical way, all the possible physical evidence which could lead to the killers. There were certainly plenty of pictures taken, some of which found its way online, but more on this later. Read the rest of this entry »