MEDIUM RARE Like your dentist, the owner of the Hapee brand of toothpaste doesn’t want you to lose your teeth. “What will happen to my business if everybody becomes toothless?” Dr. Cecilio K. Pedro joked over lunch. His brand has become so successful, he said in an aside, that his competitors...
MEDIUM RARE I watched Korina Sanchez Roxas’ conversation with the Philippines’ most celebrated centenarian, Juan Ponce Enrile, and learned what could well be his secret of a lifetime. “I don’t drink cold water,” he said on Korina’s Rated K last Sunday. Doctors should have...
MEDIUM RARE Inflation is a slippery eel. You cannot pin it down. For one thing, down is the wrong word, because inflation means prices moving upwards. Unlike the law of gravity, what goes up doesn’t come down. Inflation is almost a physical law of nature, and it’s here to stay, except when you...
MEDIUM RARE Senator Imee Marcos, according to the headlines, denies that she’s gunning for City Hall in the 2025 elections. Manila’s “crowded,” besides which she still has a third term to go as senator. But the Chinese Filipinos who were naturalized by the simple expedient of two...
MEDIUM RARE How do you celebrate a 100th birthday? If you have a daughter like Katrina Ponce Enrile, you let her pull out all the stops, and then some. You let her invite 500 of your oldest and newest friends. You leave her to prepare your private chapel for a birthday mass. You give her free rein...
MEDIUM RARE Dinengdeng. The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Giant clams that cost hundreds of pesos in Makati but harvested free by the shore in his hometown. Reporting for work every day in Malacañang without missing a beat. It adds up to a century of achievements and accomplishments for the one...
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 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...
