MEDIUM RARE Days before last Tuesday the 22nd, I already had a headline for this little essay I was still going to write. It would be about the passing of two icons in the entertainment industry, Pilita Corrales and Nora Aunor, within days of each other. Who could have known that the end of...
MEDIUM RARE Eighteen regions. More than 7,000 islands. And 68.43 million voters to reach. If you have the spine and the stomach, do you have the funds? Campaign, it rhymes with pain. At our once-a-month lunch, 2025 senatorial candidate Greg “Gringo” Honasan, former senator and cabinet...
MEDIUM RARE If you have three thumbs, use each and every one of them to greet the good news courtesy of Finance Secretary Ralph G. Recto: The 15.6 percent growth in GDP is the highest in the last 16 years! And more: We are going to be the 13th largest consumer market by 2030, with consumer...
MEDIUM RARE If music is poetry with sound, thank God for its language that speaks to the soul. Musicians are not necessarily emotional people, they just know how to demonstrate their feelings through music. What is expression but letting go, whether as a sigh, whisper, oration, a plea or...
MEDIUM RARE Those two words are in quotation marks because I didn’t say it, though I wish I had. They were used by Ermelita Valdeavilla, chairman of the Philippine Commission on Women, who was a guest of former San Juan mayor Guia Gomez at the opening of a two-day bazaar at Robinsons...
MEDIUM RARE With Olive and Niwa Ang in their car, I was able to visit again Baliwag, Bulacan, home of our friend Manny Samson, interior designer who has clients, including grand hotels, on both sides of the globe. And just as I remembered, Manny’s famous white house occupies an entire block on...
MEDIUM RARE Two of my friends sat in the front row for Rowena Arrieta’s homecoming concert last March 14. Several rows higher up, I thought I had a better view of the pianist’s hands and her right foot on the pedal in spite of her long gown. Rowena was a young girl when she, along...
MEDIUM RARE It’s a Buddhist-Hindu concept, but no one in the Philippines can say that they don’t know what Karma means. In real life (listen to your neighbors) or in soap operas (turn on your TV), Karma is a word freely thrown about between quarreling parties, words like “Ma-karma ka sana!”...
MEDIUM RARE First lady Liza A. Marcos was walking fast, almost running, near the Goldenberg Mansion, one of the heritage houses that she has renovated and updated within Malacañang Park. I waved at her, “Why the hurry?” and she said she was late for a meeting. Trying to keep up with her...
MEDIUM RARE This is a true story. Only the name of the narrator, “Amy,” is a fiction. Amy, looking 18 but thinking 25, is in second year college majoring in theology, civil law, and philosophy. Her assignment: visit a “typical” family of six, find out how they live on one...
MEDIUM RARE Surrounded by tall, impressive structures in Bonifacio Global City, a cozy two-story building glows with mellow lights on Rizal Drive. It is soon after sunset, shortly after cocktails, and guests have started streaming into the building’s 120-seat theater. Singapore’s embassy...
MEDIUM RARE There is a God. A God who overrules forecasts of very hot weather by the simple expediency of sending us a constellation of clouds to partly cover the face of the sun for part of the time. Clouds are my thing. I love them, don’t you? And that’s why I wish meteorologist and...
