Do you think Sara cares, if we don‘t?

I was there for a week in August with journalists from India, Myanmar, New Zealand, Taiwan, Malaysia and Indonesia. Taiwan was generous to us. It was easy to feel at home there.

But I kept noticing how often we spoke about the homes we had left.

One of my friends was Alok, a journalist from Mumbai. He has a young daughter. Whenever we visited somewhere, he would look at something and say, “I would love to have this for my daughter. She’d surely love this.”

I knew that sentence.

My father was a seafarer. When I was growing up, he would return from somewhere far away with small things I had asked for during our calls and messages. I remember the things. I remember waiting for them.

In Taiwan, Alok collected those same small things for his daughter.

Near the end of the trip, he told us he had even asked his editor if he could stay longer. He wanted to bring his daughter to Taiwan.

She had an exam that had been rescheduled.

So we went home.

That is what travel sometimes does. You leave looking for something new and find, unexpectedly, something you already knew.

I went to Taiwan as a journalist. I came home remembering my father.

— Jason Mago

A life not lived

I entered the small chapel and offered my condolences and heartfelt grief to strangers I didn’t know.

“This is unfair.”

Her grandfather is one of the kindest men I know. Quiet, soft and patient. This is a punishment nobody deserves.

I walked toward the small coffin, barely bigger than a shoebox, and prayed while struggling to look without flinching. I have a soft spot for children and the elderly. Maybe because at both ends of life, we are at our most fragile.

She was seven months old. What could have been. What should have been.

I talked to her in my prayers. Around her were children’s drawings, little prayers from who I assumed were her cousins, asking their angel to guide them.

I looked for someone to blame. The hospital. The doctors. A government incapable of giving every Filipino the best health care possible.

Nine months inside her mother, less than that outside. We visited because we respect, support and love.

Grief I understand. Moving forward, I don’t.

Yet in that pretentious “we are men” voice we tell ourselves, even when we don’t believe it, we carry on.

A day later, her grandfather was back at work. And so was I.

— Carl Magadia

F* Belat

Every day, we confront an uncomfortable truth: Filipinos have little regard for their fellow Filipinos.

Gatchalian said four senators — Loren, Jinggoy, Marcoleta and Bato — have stopped receiving their salaries because of their continued absence from the Senate.

Meanwhile, some senators sitting as impeachment judges have made their positions so clear that their supposed impartiality is increasingly difficult to defend.

The Constitution requires 16 of 24 votes to convict.

Four senators are absent. Others have openly shown where they stand. Still, 16 votes.

Because that is what the Constitution requires.

Then there are the acknowledgment receipts — to Pusa, Pagong, Ngitngit and, I should be careful, your honor, Belat.

The Vice President has little regard for Filipinos. Lawmakers have little regard for Filipinos. Filipinos have little regard for Filipinos.

We see the absurdity. We laugh. We shrug. We move on.

Then it happens again. And again.

That is how the unacceptable becomes ordinary. How the ridiculous becomes routine. How we learn to expect less — from our leaders, our institutions and ourselves.

We laugh at the joke — until we become it.

— Vivienne Angeles