Below the Line

Counting baluts and ballots

By AMBASSADOR JOSE A. ZAIDE
August 24, 2009, 11:21am

Milan, Italy — The Italians, heirs of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and the Renascimiento, have design and fashion as second nature. Italian design boggles the imagination. A visit to the Triennale Milan Design Museum is a must for serious practitioners.
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But just once before the turn of the millennium, the late Eli Pinto Mansour exhibited CITEM's hotest designers Movement 8 starring Kenneth Cobonpue and gave the Italians a scare at the Cologne Furniture Fair.
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Milan is open space in August when everyone is in the Italian Rivera. But the bathers are more prudent than in Cannes, Nice, or San Tropez. They wear their tops.
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Milanese love their holidays, including Christian holidays, even if there may not be too many practitioners nowadays. A cynic said that the locals go to church four times in a lifetime – on baptism, first communion, Christmas Day, and at funeral.
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The Duomo Milan cathedral is one of the most beautiful edifices, and here you find OFWs. The late John Paul II said that Pinoys are today’s evangelists... because we fill the churches, teach catechism, and bring families back to the faith.
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Our consulate general works double-time to accommodate the surge of passport applicants which doubled to 100 a day. All the "baklas" need new passports because of the government's carrot and stick: A security package threatening to deport TNTs by September and a grace period of one month for those who work as domestics and caregivers with proof of employment.
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Comelec Chairman Melo may not begrudge the Samahan ng Mga Sabungeros a party-list seat after he accepted a lady party-list representative for the balut vendors. He cannot count the "baluts" or the ballots before they are hatched.
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The power of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper was not the mystery of Transubstantiation (bread and wine turning into Corpus Christi) but of Jesus’ prophesy that one of His disciples would betray Him.
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Feedback: jaz@mb.com.ph