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words by Erwin Romulo || Uno Magazine

I wish this issue didn’t have to exist.

It’s been a year since our good friends Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc were murdered in their home. Up until now, there has been no movement on the case and none of us know why they were killed. All I know is that it wasn’t a robbery and that the authorities have not done a proper investigation. I should know. Along with the Tioseco family, I’ve met too many police officials, bureaucrats, investigators, lawyers, politicians, psychics, and inept people named Agnes to say otherwise.

Alexis, in particular, meant a lot to those of us here in UNO. He’d even sit in during our editorial meetings. He was very much a part of what this magazine was all about, why we all chose to take on the challenge of doing it. But our friendship with him went well beyond working together. At least for me, he was no less than a brother. And I’m lucky that I was able to tell him that I loved him before he died. I told it to him quite often actually and he never gave up on me even when I gave up on myself.

Read more here.

…Yes, the adjectival expression has its grammaticality. The basic pattern is that you repeat the adjective in a noun phrase to emphasize or underscore the intensity of the description. It is a superlative expression. The adjective was positioned to respond to the term ‘big’ in William Baldwin’s question which conjures the idea of something grave—something really, really major. In conversations, we hear people say, ‘I am very, very happy’ and this is the same pattern employed in the expression ‘major, major problem’. Of course, Venus used a verbalized pause—‘I mean’ splicing the noun phrase which consists of the adjectival expression and the noun—which can also be taken as an attempt to clarify her point…more.