"Telepathy: I Know What You Have. You Know Nothing."

 

"Telepathy: I Know What You Have. You Know Nothing."

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr. MD

Telepathy can be a one-mana double-edged sword.

Imagine playing an Island and having this little enchantment land on your side of the battlefield.

Now imagine one of your opponents reading it and realizing exactly what this one-mana enchantment does.

Now imagine the collective groaning around the table.

Perfect.

Telepathy gives you the wonderfully unfair advantage of seeing all of your opponents' hands while they have absolutely no idea what you're holding in yours.

Normally, we play Magic with our cards face down. There are no secrets from the player holding them, but there are plenty of secrets from everyone else at the table.

Telepathy changes that.

Suddenly, everyone else's hand is basically an open book.

You know how many lands they have. You know which spells they can cast early. You know which threats they are saving for later. You know whether that player has the removal spell they have been quietly waiting for.

More importantly, you start getting a sense of what is going to happen before it actually happens.

And while you are getting all of this information, your opponents are still left wondering what exactly you have in your own hand.

Maybe you have a counterspell.

Maybe you have a board wipe.

Maybe you have the perfect answer to whatever they are about to do.

Or maybe you have six lands and absolutely nothing else.

They don't know.

You can bluff your way through an entire turn simply because Telepathy has already told you what everyone else is capable of doing.

Isn't it convenient when you know exactly how much countermagic the Blue player is holding?

Isn't it even better when you know exactly how much removal the Black player has?

Information is power in Magic, and Telepathy gives you information that your opponents simply don't get in return.

Of course, Telepathy is not necessarily the card that makes everyone angry.

It's merely the opening salvo.

Because if you are putting Telepathy into a deck that is also packed with stax pieces, resource denial, and other ways of making everyone else's game miserable, then congratulations: you have just announced to the entire table that things are about to get unpleasant.

Telepathy is the polite part.

It is the moment where you quietly look at everyone's hands and say:

“I know what you have.”

And then everyone else looks at you and realizes:

“Wait. We have no idea what you have.”

And that is probably when the real groaning begins.

"You Call It Privilege. I Call It Giving My Child a Fighting Chance."

 "You Call It Privilege. I Call It Giving My Child a Fighting Chance."

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr. MD

There has been a lot of talk about nepotism, or what we Filipinos commonly call the padrino system.

People are angry that some individuals get ahead in life simply because they know the right people, carry certain surnames, or find themselves in circumstances that give them a head start. There is a growing frustration over how opportunities often seem to depend less on what you can do and more on who you know.

Many people think this is something only the ultra-rich can afford to do.

The truth, however, is that a vast majority of those who benefit from connections and introductions are not necessarily members of the wealthiest families. Many belong to the middle class. They are parents who went to certain schools, built professional networks, cultivated friendships, and established relationships that eventually became opportunities for their children.

Is life unfair? Yes.

Do people have advantages because of their surnames, the schools they attended, or the people they know? Absolutely.

Can talent and capability exist outside those surnames and school affiliations? Of course they can. Some of the most capable people in the world come from backgrounds that offer them none of these advantages.

But talent alone does not always open doors.

Sometimes, someone has to open the door for you. Sometimes, your surname gets your foot in the door. Sometimes, the school on your résumé earns you an interview that someone equally qualified might never receive.

That is the reality of the world we live in, whether we like it or not.

To be clear, I am against people receiving positions, opportunities, or rewards they do not deserve simply because of their connections. Competence matters. Merit matters. And giving someone an opportunity they are not qualified for can have consequences for everyone else.

But I also recognize that the padrino system is not something I can simply wish away. It existed long before I was born, and it will probably continue long after I am gone.

So, as a parent, what am I supposed to do with that knowledge?

My wife and I have taught our daughter that life is unfair. There will always be imbalances. Some people will start ahead of you, while others will have to work twice as hard just to reach the same starting line.

As cold as it might sound, you need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the people you compete against. You need to recognize the advantages they have, understand your own limitations, and learn to play to your strengths.

You cannot control every circumstance, but you can prepare yourself to deal with them.

And that brings me to our responsibility as parents.

Our job is to give our daughter the tools she needs to navigate the world. It is to provide her with an education, teach her the value of hard work, help her develop her abilities, and introduce her to people who might help her grow.

It is also to build the connections that could give her access to opportunities she might otherwise never encounter.

None of these things simply materialize out of thin air. They take time, effort, sacrifice, and years of building relationships. The opportunities we can offer our child are, in many ways, the result of the work we have done throughout our own lives.

We are not trying to guarantee her success. No parent can do that.

We are trying to give her a fighting chance.

And if we can open a door for her, why wouldn't we?

Of course, there is a difference between opening a door for your child and demanding that the world hand her everything she wants. There is a difference between introducing her to an opportunity and insisting that she be given a position regardless of her qualifications.

We can introduce her to the right people, but she must still prove herself. We can help her get an opportunity, but she must still do the work. We can give her the tools, but she must learn how to use them.

That is the distinction I hope people understand.

I do not believe my daughter is entitled to everything simply because she is our daughter. But I do believe that my wife and I have a responsibility to prepare her as best we can for the world she will inherit.

If that means using the connections we have worked hard to establish, then we will use them. If it means introducing her to people who can teach her something, then we will make those introductions. If it means helping her find opportunities that might otherwise remain out of reach, then we will do our best to help her find them.

We are her parents. We want her to succeed.

So, to those who look at the advantages we try to provide our daughter and call them privilege, I have only this to say:

You call it privilege. I call it giving my child a fighting chance.

Because what you see as an advantage handed to her may represent years of work, sacrifice, and doors her parents had to fight to open.

And if we have managed to open a few doors for our only child, we will not apologize for wanting her to have the opportunity to walk through them.

She will still have to prove herself once she gets to the other side.

But at least she will have had the chance to get there.

“It Wasn’t About the Pokémon Cards: It Was About Chaewon Opening the Pack”

 “It Wasn’t About the Pokémon Cards: It Was About Chaewon Opening the Pack”

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr.MD

There has been a video circulating of LE SSERAFIM’s Chaewon opening a Pokémon card pack for a fan.

Interestingly, the clip has generated quite a bit of discussion because Chaewon herself appears to be, well, completely uninterested in the pack opening.

Some people have argued that the fan was forcing something on Chaewon and that perhaps the fan should have chosen something that would interest the idol more.

But honestly, that isn't what I saw.

What I saw was a fan who wanted Chaewon to open a pack of Pokémon cards for them.

Maybe that doesn't sound particularly significant to everyone else. But I can understand exactly why it might be meaningful to that fan.

Because sometimes, it isn't about the hobby.

It's about bringing two things you love into the same moment.

Here is an idol that I love, and here is this game or hobby that I love. Somehow, for a few minutes, those two worlds came together.

And that's enough.

Chaewon doesn't need to be a Pokémon enthusiast. She doesn't need to know the cards, understand the game, or even be particularly excited about opening the pack.

She was doing something that mattered to a fan.

And I completely understand that.

I do the same thing with my wife and my daughter.

There have been plenty of times when I ask Hanie or Aven to choose a Magic: The Gathering pack for me. Sometimes I even ask them to open it.

They don't necessarily care about the cards.

Most of the time, they really don't.

But they do it anyway.

Not because they suddenly became Magic players, but because they know that I care about it.

And sometimes that's what love looks like when you don't share someone's hobby.

You don't have to understand why they're excited.

You just participate for a little while because you know that it makes them happy.

I have no idea what that fan eventually pulled from that Pokémon pack. Maybe it was a great card. Maybe it wasn't.

But I do know one thing.

Those cards probably mean a little more to that person now.

Because Chaewon opened them.

And she didn't just open them privately. She opened them in front of cameras, and that moment now exists for that fan to remember.

For someone else, it was just an idol looking somewhat bored while opening a pack of Pokémon cards.

For that fan, it was probably something much more personal.

And I think that's the part people are missing.

It wasn't about the Pokémon.

It was about Chaewon opening the pack.

"Tam, the Possibility: The Multiverse’s Next Superfriends Commander."

"Tam, the Possibility: The Multiverse’s Next Superfriends Commander."

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr. MD

Tam, the inheritor of Jace's spark, is not exactly being hailed as the new queen of Planeswalker EDH.

And I can understand why.

At first glance, she appears to be a Simic creature with a rather unassuming 2/4 body. But Tam is much more than that. When it comes to Commander, she effectively gives you access to all five colors.

That alone opens up a ridiculous number of possibilities.

Atraxa, Praetors' Voice currently holds the distinction of having helmed an enormous number of Planeswalker decks, and she has long been one of the faces of the Superfriends archetype.

But Tam might change the way we approach it.

Especially because having access to Red Planeswalkers—or Planeswalkers with Red in their identity—opens up a whole new selection of characters and abilities that traditional Atraxa builds couldn't access.

Then there is Tam's discount.

She reduces the cost of your Planeswalkers by one generic mana, which might not sound spectacular at first.

But when you are playing a deck filled with Planeswalkers, that discount adds up quickly.

A lot of these cards are expensive.

If Tam is sitting there making each one a little cheaper, you can start deploying your Planeswalkers earlier and potentially get more of them onto the battlefield before your opponents have a chance to catch up.

But the ability that really makes me interested is the proliferate ability.

You pay all five colors of mana and proliferate X, where X is based on the number of different Planeswalker types you control.

And I think that is where Tam gets really interesting.

Because suddenly, we aren't just building a deck around Jace.

We're building a multiverse.

Tam encourages you to play a variety of Planeswalkers—different characters, different colors, different personalities—from across Magic's history.

And that feels appropriate for a commander whose entire identity revolves around possibility.

Tam can come down relatively early, then sit there while you deploy your Planeswalkers one by one.

Build your board.

Accumulate loyalty.

Proliferate.

And eventually start firing off ultimates before your opponents can figure out what just happened.

There is something particularly satisfying about the idea of having a table full of Planeswalkers, each one doing their own thing, while Tam quietly makes the entire operation more efficient.

Is Tam going to immediately dethrone Atraxa as the face of Superfriends?

Maybe not.

But I don't think she needs to.

She offers something different.

She gives us access to the entire color pie, rewards diversity among our Planeswalkers, and potentially turns a collection of individual characters into one enormous multiversal team.

Not a bad possibility.

Not bad at all.

"The Country That Exported Its People Is Running Out of People."

 "The Country That Exported Its People Is Running Out of People."

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr. MD

There have been plenty of experts warning about population decline around the world. Yet many people still believe it could never really happen here in the Philippines.

After all, for decades, our country has been one of the world's biggest exporters of manpower.

Nurses. Seafarers. Engineers. Domestic helpers.

You name the profession, and there is a good chance the Philippines has provided someone to fill it somewhere around the world.

For generations, leaving the country to work abroad was almost a rite of passage.

It was also a great equalizer.

You could leave your family behind, endure the loneliness of being away from home, and hopefully provide them with a better life. The sacrifice was painful, but there was usually a promise attached to it: work hard enough overseas and you could give your family opportunities that might have been difficult to achieve in the Philippines.

But that promise is becoming harder to sustain.

Yes, you can still go abroad and earn more than you probably would at home.

But earning more does not necessarily mean achieving the kind of prosperity that overseas workers enjoyed in previous decades. The cost of living has risen everywhere. Fuel is more expensive. Housing is more expensive. Food is more expensive.

The paycheck may be bigger, but so are the expenses.

And something else is changing.

There is a growing percentage of young Filipinos who may simply not want to follow the traditional path.

Why spend years training to become a nurse, seafarer, engineer, or skilled worker, then leave your family and spend years working abroad when there are now other possibilities?

One viral TikTok video can sometimes bring in an amount of money that would have seemed impossible to earn from a day's work in the traditional economy.

Of course, some people will hit it big.

But most won't.

Virality has a very short attention span. Today's sensation can easily become tomorrow's forgotten account, replaced by the next viral video, the next creator, the next trend.

And yet, the traditional workforce is still here.

The jobs still need to be done.

And increasingly, we may find ourselves facing shortages—not necessarily because there are absolutely no people available, but because there are fewer people willing to take those jobs under the conditions being offered.

At the same time, young families are making different calculations.

Gone, or at least increasingly rare, are the days when having three, four, or even more children was considered normal for a family.

Many families today are choosing to have only one or two children.

It is not difficult to understand why.

The cost of raising a child has become enormous while wages, for many workers, have struggled to keep pace with the rising cost of living.

And so the demographic shift happens quietly.

One family at a time.

One fewer child here.

One delayed marriage there.

One young person deciding that working abroad is no longer worth the sacrifice.

One couple deciding that two children are enough.

Eventually, all those individual decisions become a national trend.

Perhaps that is the strange future we are moving toward: a country that spent decades building an economy around sending its people elsewhere may eventually find itself with fewer people willing to go.

The Philippines has long had an abundant supply of one of its most valuable resources—its people.

But people are not an infinite resource.

And when fewer young people are born, when families become smaller, and when traditional jobs become less attractive, the consequences do not arrive all at once.

They arrive slowly.

First as shortages.

Then as higher costs.

Then as industries struggling to find enough workers.

It is a world where problems abound and solutions often seem temporary.

And perhaps the biggest problem is that demographics do not change as quickly as policies do.

You cannot suddenly create a new generation when you realize you need one.

The country that spent decades sending its people out into the world may eventually have to confront a very different question:

What happens when there simply aren't enough people left to send?

"Today, I Wrote Anyway."

 "Today, I Wrote Anyway."

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr. MD

It is funny how writing also requires a certain amount of momentum.

When you finally get the time to sit down, gather your thoughts, put them into words, and then edit everything into something worth publishing, it can feel like you have finally gotten the machine running.

But life has a funny way of getting in the way.

Ironically, while actually living life gives us plenty of material to write about, it can also disrupt the momentum needed to write about it.

That is why some writers develop a kind of muscle for it. They write and keep writing—day after day, week after week, year after year—until writing becomes less about inspiration and more about habit.

I used to think I had developed that muscle.

Until recently.

I have been procrastinating again.

A terrible sin when it comes to writing.

I had been trying to write at the beginning of my shifts, partly because I wanted to exercise my brain before I started seeing patients. It was a small routine that helped me feel like I had already accomplished something creative before the day got busy.

But lately, I have been tired.

And the patients have been arriving earlier.

And there have been a lot more of them.

It is the Ber Months, after all, and flu season has taken hold in certain offices. My quiet time before seeing patients has slowly disappeared.

And so, here I am, back to writing.

Not because I am particularly inspired.

Not because I suddenly have some brilliant idea that absolutely needs to be written.

I am writing this simply to prove to myself that I can still write when I don't feel like writing.

That perhaps the muscle is still there.

Maybe it just needed to be exercised again.

So this is today's exercise.

No grand revelation. No profound story.

Just words on a page.

And, apparently, that is enough.

So much writing for one day.

Today, I wrote anyway.

"Piracy: Because Your Mana Is My Mana"

"Piracy: Because Your Mana Is My Mana"

by:

Virgilio F. De leon Jr. MD

When I build a deck, I don't normally ask myself the question:

“Just how annoying would this spell be?”

That isn't usually how I approach Magic.

Ever since I started playing, I rarely had a ready opponent sitting next to me. I didn't grow up with a friend in the same neighborhood who played Magic, an office mate who could suddenly say, “Hey, want to play a game?” or even a family member who understood why I was excited about a particular card.

I usually played by myself, calculating how much damage I could dish out by turn three and whether I could already make it lethal.

Satisfying?

Absolutely.

A little sad?

Maybe.

But I digress.

Because about as far away from that style of play as you can get is Piracy.

Piracy is an incredibly annoying two-mana sorcery that essentially looks at your opponent's mana and says:

“You don't mind if I use that, right?”

The spell lets you tap your opponents' lands for mana and use that mana to cast your own spells.

And honestly, I'm surprised they haven't made a Commander specifically built around this ability yet.

Then again, with the rate at which Wizards is churning out legendary creatures, I wouldn't be remotely surprised if we eventually get Piracy on legs.

Piracy basically looks at your mana capabilities, looks across the table at the green player who has been ramping like there's no tomorrow, and says:

“Hmmmm... let's use that too.”

And that's where the fun—and the annoyance—really begins.

Of course, Piracy is blue and costs two mana, and it is a sorcery. Your opponents aren't completely helpless. They can simply tap their lands in response, denying you the mana.

But even that can work in your favor.

Because if they tap their lands to prevent you from using them, you've still accomplished something important:

Their mana is now tapped.

And that can be the entire point.

Piracy can become the final piece of a game-winning combo, not necessarily because you need every drop of mana you steal, but because you can potentially leave the entire table without the ability to respond.

You cast Piracy.

They see what you're doing.

They panic.

They tap their lands so you can't use them.

And suddenly, everyone's mana is sitting there tapped while you proceed with whatever horrible plan you had prepared in the first place.

That is the kind of interaction I really appreciate in Magic.

The card doesn't merely give you resources. It creates a situation where your opponents have to make an uncomfortable decision:

Let me use your mana, or tap it yourself so I can't.

Either way, I may have gotten exactly what I wanted.

And hopefully, what I'm setting up is the coup de grâce for the entire table.

Because believe me when I say this:

You cast Piracy once, and you are putting a target on your back.

And sometimes, that's exactly what you wanted to do.