Filipinos have never really needed an invitation to love basketball. Give us a hoop, a ball, and approximately four square meters of concrete and we will figure out the rest. There is no requirement for proper flooring, air-conditioning, seating, parking, or even a complete understanding of the rules. Someone will keep score. Someone will call a phantom foul. Someone will bend the rules to ridiculous proportions in plain sight. So when the National Basketball Association brought basketball to the Philippines once again, nobody complained. After all, Filipinos have been quite willing to make room for basketball for decades. We simply cleared a little more space.

When the US Federal Reserve, the world’s most influential central bank, moves interest rates, Manila can feel the ripple, even 8,500 miles away. The effects do not arrive all at once, and they do not affect everyone in the same way. But eventually, they can show up in the mortgage, car loan, credit card bill, and even the grocery budget.

There are two kinds of Filipino motorists: those looking for a parking space and those who have already found one and are determined not to tell you where it is. Parking has become one of the more demanding sports in modern Philippine life. It requires patience, spatial awareness, quick reflexes, and, occasionally, the ability to stare at another motorist for several seconds without saying anything that could get you into trouble.

A Constitution is not a calculator. Yet when constitutional questions become uncomfortable, there is always a temptation to reach for one.