Thursday, January 05, 2006

[Blog Entry] Terry Pratchett Interview, 20 Years Ago

Terry Pratchett Interview


Fully Booked has a short interview with youknowwho.

20 Years Ago

I was at the Philippine Star library yesterday, looking at periodicals from 1986, a post-EDSA Philippines. Back in the day when $1 = P20. Of course the best thing to describe the experience is history repeats itself. The LRT had just been erected, and it faced the same woes the MRT was facing. Economic crisis? Check. Kidnappings, violence? Still there. Massacres? Yes. Kris Aquino? Affirmative.

Of course I'm not stating all that to belittle the progress of the country. Some people think that the past was better, that the present is worse than ever. I don't think that's really the case. The past has just been as horrible as the present. We might have been younger, less insightful, less cynical, or simply more naive back then. Or maybe our memories have been dulled by time, and we prefer to remember the good more than the bad. There's an anecdote I heard from someone more wiser (forgive me if I get the details wrong... I'm recounting this from memory). Someone was asked to give a speech at a school and he read a letter stating how the youth were getting wilder and wilder, more unruly. The parents at the school agreed. And then the speaker said that the letter he read was what the speaker xx years ago said about their generation.

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