MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Chinatown with its trademark tikoy, siopao, mami, lumpia – what a long way it has come! How it has leveled up from no-frills, no-fuss in noisy, messy Ongpin to the glamorous heights of five-star cuisine fit for an emperor and his favorite concubine. Just as an...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza But for a case of perfect timing, I would have missed the last few (of 24) episodes of the Korean version of War and Peace, a colossal production about Korea’s war against Japanese invaders in the early 1900’s. Unlike most K-drama couch potatoes, I didn’t have the...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Baguio City, a hot topic. Mayor Magalong, aka contact tracing “czar,” tarred, tainted by the city’s scandal of the season, at party where pictures were shot, advertently or inadvertently, of the merrymakers making merry sans masks. “Sapagka’t kami ay tao...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Nineteen days after the Quiapo phenomenon of more than 200,000 devotees turning out en masse to honor the Black Nazarene, we have yet to hear if superspreaders added to the transmission of COVID-19 cases in the NCR. Or if it’s simply a case of no news is good news. The...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza “. . . for the world in its present form is passing away.” From a letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians (said to be a sinful people), read in church last Sunday. Whether those words, written a little less than 2,000 years ago, stopped you in your tracks or did not,...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza It was perfect whether-weather – whether sunny, whether rainy, whether cloudy. We got all three on a pretty day two hours out of Metro Manila. Just as the sun began to set and soften the curves of rolling hills, there was no whether-ing about where to eat. After all,...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Baguio weather in Silang, said to be “Cavite’s biggest town.” Who wouldn’t accept the invitation? Baguio takes four to five hours, Silang two. With the RFID pass still to be tested and the promise of Baguio weather yet to be verified, the call of the weekend...
Whenever I need to go to areas to do work or a chore, I create an incentive as a reward to myself. That usually involves food. I also like to make use of my time while being in the area anyway by getting other things done. I usually take my car to a shop in Banawe for the usual checkup, tune...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza “No one is safe unless everyone is safe.” A mantra that should be dinned into every pair of ears now that we’re facing a more easily transmissible variant of coronavirus, waiting to see how high the spike will hit after the Quiapo fiesta, and biting our nails as...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Vaccine, vaccine, vaccine. That’s all people can talk about. The what (brands), where (to get it), how (logistics, distribution), why not (choice of brand), and when. Starting February (let’s hope not Feb. 29) you get Sinovac, but wait for July to choose your vax. The...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza “If you get vaccinated with a dose that’s 50 percent effective, it means you reduce the infection rate by 50 percent.” It does not mean that the vaccine is only half good. If the vaccine is 95 percent efficacious, “you’re 95 percent sure of protection.” Edson...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza She’s not a spring chicken anymore but her idea of exercise in the time of the pandemic is scuba-diving. That sport may or may not be at the extreme end of leisure activities for adults, but Lee is a super/superior senior whose constitution and state of health, honed...
