MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza As I promised myself, no mention of the C word, not today. After watching the nth replay of My Fair Lady, the air feels bright, the space is light, the mood is right as rain and the pretty things it grows – flowers, grass, crops, the umbrella factory. My Fair Lady the...
Medium Rare Jullie Y. Daza As the tunnel grows longer and darker, the desperately longed-for herd immunity seems to be going farther away. At the same time, the herd mentality that is highly vulnerable to trolls bent on virally spreading fake news and easily believable but incredibly wrong...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza What a way to “welcome” ECQ! Where was everybody going? When a solo driver finally reached home, he proclaimed, “It’s Christmas Eve! Everyone’s out on the street!” Right on cue, he heard TV reporters echoing his feelings, calling the non-event “ bisperas ng...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Is it vaccine hesitancy or aversion? At the rate seniors are avoiding vaccination – so far the only known protection against the killer virus -- you have to wonder where their doubts are coming from. Fear of the needle? Before they got old, they were young, and when...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza There must be more than 5 million Manuels but there’s only one Manoling. Manoling Morato, 87, who held his moral compass close to his chest for use in his personal, social, and spiritual life. There was no gray with Manoling, only black and white, good vs bad, the...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza While there are those who were dissatisfied with the President’s State of the (Vacci)Nation speech – three hours for what should have been a 60-minute address that he himself kept interrupting, to the consternation of the teleprompter’s page-turner – I found it...
It was the first time for me to take a real vacation after this whole pandemic shook our world. I chose a place that was reachable by car with the least hassle but with a lot of new food finds. It wasn’t difficult to choose Baguio. Weather is cool (between 16 and 23 degrees). Having to wear a...
Jullie Y. Daza Every other person I know has been victimized by either hacking or theft identity on the Internet. Recently, I got the scare of my life when friends started calling me to report that someone using my name had been sending them creepy messages through Messenger. The poseur attempts to...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Or, if you prefer, 224 kg. Hidilyn Diaz is worth her weight in gold. Although she weighs a mere 54.9 kg or 121 lb, she lifted 127 kg – more than twice her own weight -- to win the Philippines’ first Olympic gold medal in nearly a century. Cheers! Mabuhay! Does her...
Medium Rare Jullie Y. Daza Typhoon. Wind and rain. Thunder and lightning. Floods everywhere, some swallowing rooftops. Earthquake. Pandemic. Forced evacuation and its attendant miseries. All in one day. At 2:20 a.m. the noise was so frightening it woke me up. In the dark, I heard Fabian Jr.’s...
Medium Rare Jullie Y. Daza If I were to conduct a casual survey of family and friends, the results would likely be five in eight for Sinovac. Not that we had much choice, Sinovac being the first vaccine to arrive in massive crates and thanks to the propaganda being mouthed by Dr. Anthony Fauci that...
Assorted fresh sashimis When I lived in Canada, I worked as a messenger. I’d deliver and pick up documents around the North Vancouver area. I had a fixed route and therefore had the same clients. Every lunch, if I wasn’t too busy eating in the car while driving, I would go to two places. One...
