Dear readers, I invite you to read this piece about my late mom-in-law, Priscila Santos Manalang, or Cil. While being sentimental is partly the reason why I’m writing this — the family recently commemorated her 103rd birth anniversary (birthdate: Jan. 20, 1919) — I write about her because of her continuing relevance to our times.

The next administration will inherit a social time bomb — this social timebomb is income inequality, or the gaps in the distribution of wealth among members of a population.

I wonder if things will ever go back to the old times when business executives closed deals over cocktails at a five-star hotel lobby bar, or at a half-day golf game in a prestigious golf course in the outskirts of Manila. Or maybe it was just entertaining foreign buyers or visiting VIPs, and the dark night beckoned with bars and hot entertainment. Business and pleasure were alliances with dalliances.

With the new wave of the Omicron COVID-19 variant and the subsequent upgrades in alert levels and their impact on mobility and business activities, many think tanks and research groups are going back to the drawing board to recast their growth forecasts for the Philippines this year and the next.

The record-breaking surge in the number of daily COVID-19 cases and its devastating impact on business operations and workers’ livelihoods are among the more visible consequences of the government’s pre-holiday rush to seeming normalcy as the year 2021 was ending.

The sunsets of our country are among the most spectacular in the world. The spellbinding and marvelous colors splashed against the sky are unique and difficult to capture on canvas.

Last week the US Supreme Court came out with a decision of huge importance to the rule of law and civil liberties. In National Federation of Independent Business vs. Department of Labor, the Supreme Court reiterated the principle proclaimed in 2020’s Agudath Israel v. Cuomo and Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo that “even in a pandemic, the Constitution cannot be put away and forgotten.”

As expected, Australian Immigration and Health authorities sought the truth, discovered it, gave it proper value over the status of a tennis Wonder Boy, and cancelled the visa of the number one male tennis player in the world, Novak Djokovic. Victory for the truth over immoral and untruthful hype.

THERE is no shortage of candidates for the title of the most dangerous business idea of the moment. Management-by-algorithm may remove what humanity there...

NOW AND THEN, executives who have left (or been asked to leave) a company may find their way back some years later. Maybe they’ve recovered from an illness or come back from working abroad, perhaps just got frustrated in the company that pirated them earlier. Or, they have been asked to return and help their former organization or country… just like expats coming home and setting up tech companies here after doing well (or even not so well) in Silicon Valley.

As we move to the sectoral level in formulating a strategic plan for the Philippine economy, the first and most important step is to have a long-term plan for Philippine agriculture, the Achilles heel of the Philippine economy.

The 2020 regulatory impact assessment by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)/Asian Development Bank (ADB) was unequivocal: “Governments are generally becoming more citizen-centric. For example, improving government service delivery has increasingly become a focus for many OECD member countries in recent years.”