SURVIVOR’S TALE (The author is a Filipina transgender who was managing a bar in the Ginza district in Tokyo until it closed due to the pandemic. This is how she coped and continues to live in an expensive part of Tokyo for more than a year since the lockdown.) TOKYO, Japan – I opened my iPhone...
SURVIVOR’S TALE “I am God’s miracle,” Cora Villanueva, 65, said a year after she tested positive for COVID-19 and became one of the most critical cases in Bacolod City. She survived the disease after being in the hospital for five weeks. Three weeks of that, she was in the ICU,...
SURVIVOR’S TALE (The author, who hails from Bohol, is currently in Canada. He works at a Catholic School in Manila.) This pandemic goes beyond any prediction, calculation, and data analysis. It has been a year or more of lockdowns and quarantines. Most of our senses cannot afford to notice the...
On the morning of July 4, Shanie Martinez Mehong received a text from her live-in partner -- a Philippine Army personnel -- that he already boarded a C-130 transport plane en route to his latest deployment in Sulu. Mehong's partner, Private First Class Nathaniel Bongcayao, was excited as he shared...
SURVIVOR’S TALE (Ricky Ibe, 52, is a creative and events director. He lives in Cainta, Rizal.) I have always declared myself a self-made man. Everything I achieved and acquired was because of my own doing. Then, I was made to realize it was not all about me. In life, people face trials that test...
SURVIVOR’S TALE (Brenda Yonzon, a nutritionist, has been living in the United States for 50 years. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.) It was the fall of 1971, when I first set foot at the Golden State of California, in America, the Land of Promise, en route to the well- known city of Al Capone,...
SURVIVOR’S TALE (Ms. de Vera, 26, is the Manila Bulletin reporter covering the health beat.) I thought I was invincible but the virus got me. Since January 2020, I covered the developments related to the current pandemic — from the time it first appeared and was being called a “mysterious...
SURVIVOR’S TALE (John Carlo Perez is a registered social worker by profession. He is also a college professor in various academic institutions in NCR and in Luzon. At present he is also a full-time staff of the San Pedro Calungsod Chapel, SM Aura Premier, under the Catholic Diocese of Pasig.)...
SURVIVOR’S TALE (The author is a Filipina married to an American. She worked for a Top 20 Fortune Oil Company as a Corporate Affairs Field Manager before taking an early retirement package in mid-2020. Before she left for the U.S. in 2006, Marian was the corporate communications head of a...
(The author is a Filipina married to an American. She worked for a Top 20 Fortune Oil Company as a Corporate Affairs Field Manager before taking an early retirement package in mid-2020. Before she left for the U.S. in 2006, Marian was the corporate communications head of a major oil company...
SURVIVOR’S TALE (The author, 38, is a father of two children aged 10 and 5. He works as an accountant in Dubai.) One Saturday, I felt like I was going to have a cold. The following day, my family and I went out to get some fresh air and sun, hoping it was just what we needed aside from our...
SURVIVOR’S TALE (The author is the Political Affairs Officer III and Officer In-Charge of the Pasig LGU-Cooperative Development Office. She is 58 years old.) I am a government employee and with the threat of COVID-19, and because of my age and health condition, I was allowed to work from home...
