THE recent death of former President Benigno Simeon C. Aquino III, or Noynoy and PNoy, brought to the fore our mortality and sudden departure from the face of the earth.

We will all be called to account, only at scheduled times and no one can stop such eventuality.

Death, like taxes, is inevitable. We must therefore be totally prepared to accept our fate, no matter what and it is advisable to accept it without regrets.

Some meet death so suddenly, either violently as in vehicular accidents and silently albeit grimly as in the aftermath of a deadly, lingering illness.

Others live beyond a century. I wonder how it feels to outlive relatives and contemporaries. Seniors, as usual, count every year added as some sort of a bonus from above.

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I wish to reach out to Robert S. Paquia, the elder brother of Rosan S. Paquia, head of the CPDO and OIC of the City Agriculture office. It's been a long while since his last vacation to the Philippines.

Robert, affectionately called Supremo by his siblings, is now well-entrenched in the United States and has built a stable future for himself and his family, thanks to his fortitude and good working ethics and character.

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There is a proliferation of e-sabong or the online cockfight of sorts. This gaming (and betting) activity must be financed by a stable and big-time gambling operator associated with jueteng.

Its downside is its bad social and financial effects on low income earners, including tricycle drivers who become addicted to the game, bet and lose their meager daily earnings and sometimes resort to heavy borrowing from loan sharks and throw away their livelihood and future due to their addiction to e-sabong and possibly to drugs later on. E-sabong could become the reason of various marital disputes and quarrels as the daily wage earners, now buried deep in debts, can no longer provide for their families!

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Another social disease is the presence of land grabbers and illegal squatters, euphemistically labeled informal settlers. These interlopers just enter someone else's property, stay there for a long time and claim it. It is utterly unfair to those who acquired their properties the legal way and pay taxes therefor.

Is the government so helpless in rooting out these interlopers? Some might must be employed in getting out the illegals from someone else's property. To be fair, the Mabalacat City government is active in identifying these bad elements and prosecuting them decisively.