Let me start with a familiar story: a wrestler, two comedians, and a comic book artist all walk into a bar… except they don’t, because there’s a pandemic, and we’re all still stuck at home.

To mark the 70^th anniversary of the declaration of St. John Baptist de La Salle as the Patron of Teachers, De La Salle University will stream A Fire in the Soul, a cantata about the De La Salle Brothers during World War II, from May 15 to 17 on its YouTube channel.

THE Film Development Council of the Philippines (FDCP) is asking audio-visual workers, their companies, and distribution companies to answer several online surveys for the council to be able to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and quarantine measures on the audio-visual (AV) industry.

THE enhanced community quarantine (ECQ) in Metro Manila has hit its 60-day mark. While selected industries will slowly begin to resume operations as the metropolis transitions to a modified enhanced community quarantine (MECQ), live performances and other activities which entail large gatherings remain postponed. Still, over the past two months, singers, musicians, actors, directors, and writers have collaborated to raise money for the benefit of those who have been badly affected by the enhanced community quarantine. And they are already planning for the future.

LIKE almost everything these days, how and where people listen to music has also been affected by the pandemic and the various quarantine or lockdown procedures. Music streaming service Spotify noted in a late-March blog post that people are now listening to more “chill” music — more acoustic fare than dance music. And thanks to social distancing, The Police’s “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” (1980) also saw a 135% spike in people searching and listening to it.

FOR a unit involved in community engagement and advocacy, with disaster response and resilience among its main programs, working from home during a health emergency sounds rather contradictory.

Everyone has rained plaudits upon Sally Rooney. I think I’m alone in expressing ambivalence.

THE Instituto Cervantes de Manila and the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences of Spain will be showing Spanish film classics with “Clásicos contigo / Classics with You,” a cycle that will be shown through the Instituto Cervantes channel on the Vimeo platform, for free.

BROKEN bits of fishing boats drift on the sea before making landfall on the beach in Panglao, Bohol. The bangka are used for transportation between islands, by fishermen, and people taking leisure trips. As time goes by, parts of the fishing boats wear out and come off, some after rainy season storms.

While healthcare workers are on the frontlines and scientists are busy testing possible vaccines or cures for a virus that has changed the world, economists are getting their hands dirty at home as well. They are rigidly working with data to assess how this pandemic could change the course of our economy, updating their projections and recommendations to help seal that soft landing when recovery comes.

RANSÄTER, Sweden — A coronavirus-resistant restaurant in a meadow in Sweden with just one table and one chair has welcomed its first guest.

IN its inaugural run, Great Place to Work Philippines awarded five companies that exemplified how to keep a company running efficiently and employees happy. And while the surveys conducted to choose the winners were done before the COVID-19 pandemic raged, the California-based consulting firm behind the award noted that the same companies named “Best Workplaces” nonetheless found ways to keep both employee morale and productivity high.