MEDIUM RARE Nedy Tantoco was her mother’s daughter. Glecy Rustia Tantoco wanted to give every shopper at Rustan’s an experience. Nedy, born five years after Manila’s first classy retail store (1952), added another dimension to that aspiration by fragrancing the shop throughout...
MEDIUM RARE As the immortal love song goes, where do I begin? Elizabeth Barrett Browning would reply, “Let me count the ways.” Flowers, a Hallmark card, a txt message? Who writes love letters anymore? Not even for Valentine’s Day (that’s tomorrow, sotto voce). Post offices...
MEDIUM RARE Everyone around him wore red, but not the birthday boy, who came in blue, one of two colors favored for the Year of the Dragon. Not that Sebastian Chua cares about such whimsicalities, for what you see is what you get. Straightforward, sincere, honest-to-goodness frank (without being...
MEDIUM RARE On Saturday, the Wood Dragon begins its reign. In Fookienese, “Kiong Hee Huat Tsai!” Translation: Congratulations and be prosperous! Coming from a civilization that predates Christianity by 3,000 years, the local Chinese or Chinoys are entitled to a wealth of beliefs and practices...
MEDIUM RARE An “immersive” experience, the producer promised before the show. After the show, The Best of Broadway and Classics, I thought “transformative” would’ve done as well. When it’s impresario Eddie Yap pulling the strings and selling the tickets – sold out in two weeks – one...
MEDIUM RARE Patrick Fernandez, US-based (Orange County) investment banker and Manila-born feng shui advocate, advises ladies of every age and persuasion: “Seize the moment. You are due for leadership roles for the next 20 years.” Attention: First Lady Liza A. Marcos, Vice President Sara...
MEDIUM RARE There’s one way to enjoy shopping, more than you ever did before. Tell your children you’re going to buy a few things and they’ll want to accompany you, just in case you get lost or your credit card does. So this is what happens. I went looking for sandals in black, with a bit of...
MEDIUM RARE Five billion pesos and nine years later, CNN Philippines will be off the air in a matter of days. Sky Cable will come under new management at 11:59 p.m. on Feb. 26, when it transits to PLDT as its owner. The two media entities whom we welcome into our homes every day for information and...
MEDIUM RARE Prinsipe Bahaghari, aka The Little Prince, has taken on an unexpected form as a puppet – “papet” in the vernacular – in a surprising show of what an amateur reviewer might call transfer of technology. First of all, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery is a story, not a...
MEDIUM RARE Certain that “cosplay” would not appear in my well-thumbed dictionary, I turned to “play” and discovered there are more or less 18 different meanings, used as a noun or verb. In the time of Coldplay – “fantastic” entertainment, quoting PBBM describing their concert...
MEDIUM RARE Last December, the Christmas gift I got for a friend – he is patient, born with a sunny disposition, cheerful in every weather – was a T-shirt with a drawing of drivers smiling in close-up with the legend “Heavy Traffic. Happy People.” I thought the slogan was worthy of an...
MEDIUM RARE If Quezon City experienced some Baguio weather for a few days and Baguio residents had Christmas weather all over again, would those feelings amount to climate change? In olden times, i.e., when we were young, Baguio was the No. 1 dream city for its pine trees and springtime weather,...
