MEDIUM RARE We arrived for lunch and saw a long table all set and ready for us. What I was not prepared for was the sight of two extremely beautiful, extremely expensive cars, an Audi and a Porsche (model Taycan, spelled almost like Toycar) parked daintily in the dining area, like they were waiting...
MEDIUM RARE It could’ve been a triple whammy. Taal-Mayon-Kanlaon showed signs of restiveness simultaneously, but after volcanologists said the three were not related – not even distant cousins? – two of them quickly calmed down, leaving Mayon alone fuming. Otherwise, imagine the cost of...
MEDIUM RARE Two days in a row, PBBM shook hands and rubbed elbows with two of the most prominent, clubby Chinese-Filipino organizations, and twice he thanked them for their “astuteness and wisdom” in helping grow the economy as a partner of government. One day after President Marcos Jr....
MEDIUM RARE The invasion happened round about 2005 when ABS-CBN imported the first Korean soap, after which Filipino audiences could not have enough of K-drama. Years later, when Paolo was 10 years old, I heard him arguing with his father, who was all set to take the family on a vacation to Seoul....
MEDIUM RAR E That “small screen” as it used to be called is no longer small. The standard size now is 40-plus inches diagonally across, and in some homes a 100-inch set is all part of the furniture. Besides its size as an appliance, TV has grown in such importance that it is now the primary...
MEDIUM RARE Fire and Ice was a new color invented for a brand of lipstick years ago, when I would’ve been too young to use it. As my literature teacher might’ve phrased it, the name was a “reconciliation of opposites”— so who wants to kiss ice-cold lips? This isn’t about lipstick. Look...
MEDIUM RARE What fun to reconnect with Gringo Honasan, soldier, “cashiered colonel,” coup leader, senator, cabinet secretary, now looking so relaxed it must be due to his temporary retirement from politics and public office. Is he ripe for another run come 2025? He’s not confirming, not...
MEDIUM RARE One more down. June 30 will be sign-off time for Teleradyo, ABS-CBN’s news and public affairs station on SkyCable. The network lost its congressional franchise in July 2020 after its appeal for renewal was rejected. It’s not cheap to cover an entire archipelago and broadcast the...
MEDIUM RARE You may complain and they will explain but the truth is never plain to you. Why our power bills are so high – supposedly second to an expensive city like Tokyo? — is a mystery that will remain unsolved to our little minds and shallow pockets. The more you try to read how electricity...
MEDIUM RARE Gone with the smoke, the fire, the tears of Manilans who consider the Manila Central Postal Office a part of their living collective memory. Mayor Lacuna has quickly assured city residents that the post office will stay where it has always been for the past 97 years. Not everyone who...
MEDIUM RARE Dear reader, have you ever seen a real gold bar and held it in your hands? At last I have experienced placing a gold bar between my hands, all five grams of it, so tiny the store sold them at five grams per bar, each of them one inch long, width and thickness impossible to calculate,...
MEDIUM RARE Often enough, I used to tell myself, it might be fun to be a travel writer in my next life. Just as often, I would remind myself that traveling professionally would merely buy me a lonely life. All those solo trips flying hours and hours cooped up in a plane . . . long nights alone in...
