MANGKOKOLUM!

N OMADS Sports Club must have acquired a taste for settling on tracts of land that turn into prime real estate stirring the greedy to try for a grab, not unlike a maniac drooling for coveted flesh. The 98-year-old non-stock, non-profit group composed of 60 percent Filipino and 40 percent foreigner voting members started out in the Ermita/Malate area in Manila on a spot where the Philippine President Lines Building sits now. The Japanese occupation evicted the club and in 1949, they moved to a rented lot in Makati, a sneeze off where Pasay Road meets EDSA. Yeah, another pricey place that went up for sale and raked profits in the 1960s. Nomads settled for the suburbs, leasing a 2.5-hectare tract in Merville Park, Parañaque from Nersan Corporation in 1969. Over the years that spread of land turned up as, say, a lot like prime beef that had vultures hovering, eager to devour. After the club was told that a company called Multisphere Trading offered to buy the land in 2007...