The Philippine Star: Celebrating 20 years!

Allow me to congratulate my good friend, Hector Almario on the blessing of Cebu's 1st AutoGas Station. So he's opening another gas station and there's plenty of that already. Hmmm... but his invitation also looks like an advertisement as it says, "Defend Yourself Against rising fuel prices!" Well, it turned out that his "Gas" station" is a first in Cebu as it is the very first Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) that is exclusively set up by Petronas for the use of cars and vehicles. Alternative Fuel has finally landed in Cebu!

If you want to know why many taxi operators never cared to increase their fares, it is because big taxi companies are already reaping the benefits of LPG, something that was already of use by the taxi companies in Japan 20 years ago! Now it is time for us to save gasoline, by not using it. I understand it is merely a simple step of putting an LPG tank in your car and putting a selector switch and voila! You just cut your fuel cost by half! So my congratulations to Hector Almario for his courage, determination and dedication.

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By the time you are reading this column, I will be in Manila for the 20th Anniversary bash of the Philippine Star. This mega-celebration will be held at the Rizal Ballroom of the fabulous Makati Shangri-La and with the Philippine Stars' great reputation as the country's number one national newspaper (the Rotary Club of Manila this year made The Star the Newspaper of the Year!) we can expect that the country's "Who's Who" in the world of business and political spectrum to be in attendance. Since anniversaries are always held in Manila, I have only attended this bash only once before, during our 10th Anniversary.

For this 20th anniversary, I'm proud to say that The Freeman is now part and parcel of the Star Group of Companies. Hence allow me to give a short autobiography of my career in journalism. Few people treasure their IDs and I do keep a lot of them. My 1st ever ID or Press Card of the Philippine Star was dated Aug. 25, 1986 and my card number was no.33. Yes, I still keep my old Press Card signed by my mentor Sir Max Soliven and our editor at that time, Antonio V. Roces, for old time's sake.

But actually, I joined the Star just a week after it came out of the press. We had a forum where we invited Sir Max Soliven as a columnist of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, but when I fetched him at the Mactan airport, he was already the publisher/columnist of the Philippine Star. That was quite a shock to his audience and many Soliven fans for his leaving the Inquirer, which Sir Max and the late Betty Go-Belmonte built from nothing to become the numero uno newspaper of the country towards the dying days of the Marcos Regime. But why then did they get out of the already successful Inquirer and build another newspaper?

Apparently, the group of Sir Max Soliven and Betty-Go Belmonte had corporate problems, questioning the issuance of each shareholdings, which often happens to a successful business venture. Thus both Max and Betty decided that it was better to come up with a new newspaper venture... thus the Philippine Star was born. I'm sure that Sir Max would be writing the inside story about that ill-fated venture in this column today... so if you want to know more about that, just check out his column.

While he was in Cebu during the open forum, I dared to question him that Manila-based columnist often write about Cebu happenings as a 3rd hand information, hence too often it is far from the truth. Sir Max looked at me and admitted that this was true! During breakfast at the Cebu Plaza Hotel the next day, Sir Max commended me for my courage to ask tough questions and asked me to join The Philippine Star. A couple of weeks later, he gave me my first Press Card and I became a Star Correspondent based in Cebu. Back then, few national newspapers cared to have permanent correspondents outside Metro Manila.

Mind you, that was before the age of computers and the Internet. Hence, I too started my journalism career using a clickety-clack typewriter. But the age of computers was dawning and I was one of the first journalist to use a computer then the fax machine came and soon, it was easy to send articles to Manila from Cebu.

Having noticed my news reports being printed in the Star, The Freeman editor (now publisher) Juanito Jabat asked me to join The Freeman as a columnist. Thus, my first Freeman column came out on Aug.5, 1987, almost exactly a year after I joined The Star. Somehow, by God's grace, we've been writing daily columns with The Freeman except on Saturdays and thrice-weekly columns in the Philippine Star. But for me, the best thing that ever happened in those 20 years was when The Freeman joined The Star Group.

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