WALA LANG Sex or money, preferably combined, heats up otherwise ho-hum COVID lockdowns. With titillating peccadillos already taken for granted, it’s really money that raises antennae. Siblings sue each other, children sue wicked madrasta , children sue widowed parent—all over inheritance....
WALA LANG Alone with his flock in a meadow high above the hamlet he called home, a small boy with blue-green eyes sat dreaming of what lay beyond the peaks that surrounded his world. The boy’s papa once took him to the lowlands where he saw the boundless sea, heard screeching seagulls,...
WALA LANG I came across some 1920s writings of Percy H. Hill, an American who settled here and as amateur historian combed old accounts. Here are some of his gems I didn’t know about. A MAP OF THE PAST - Capilla Real is between H and F; Palacio del Gobernador is B. Above Capilla Real is Puerta...
WALA LANG I used to thrive (at age 13) on the electrifying adventures of the 12-year-old twins Nan and Bert Bobbsey and the teenaged Hardy Boys Frank and Joe who solved mysteries that adults could not. These were novels written for young people, the early 1900s equivalent of today’s computer...
Wala Lang I was not exactly a nimble kid and was forever tripping, falling, and bumping into something immovable. Rarely was I without a taped or bandaged body part. We had that red stuff mercurochrome and agua oxigenada , but Lola Trining and Tia Juli were into leaves—boiled guava leaves for...
Wala Lang We now call them superstition and idols, but the practices and images we now dismiss were once part of our belief system. Ancient Filipinos’ fears and hopes were formed by their surroundings. They lived in settlements along rivers teeming with caimans or in villages surrounded by thick...
Daniel and Kathryn are waiting for something to happen, maybe in May, maybe sooner, maybe later, maybe never. WALA LANG In one of the 20th century’s most celebrated plays, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot , Vladimir and Estragon wait for someone or something called Godot. They do not know...
WALA LANG We don’t do things by halves and, on top of our own paról , we add Spanish, Mexican, Italian, German, and American touches. Some 800 years ago in Italy, St. Francis of Assisi thought of reenacting the nativity as part of Christmas celebrations. The idea caught fire and even royalty...
Wala Lang The inaugural exhibit (“Intertwined”) of the splendidly renovated Ayala Museum is notable for its magnificent gathering of ivory images, the first time ever that so many such fantastic objects have been in a Manila exhibit. Ivory from Africa and Asia (India and Indo-China) were...
WALA LANG Now on its soft opening—by appointment—is a transformed Ayala Museum. Completed after a two-year renovation, the old Greenbelt 4 concourse is now the museum’s vast lobby. An electronic board surveys the museum collection, introduced with a real-life retablo once in a Leyte...
WALA LANG I missed what would have been my first snowfall. It happened on Thanksgiving Weekend the year I was in graduate school at Georgia Tech. Tatay had kept in touch with Texan GI Joseph Slay who was billeted with us during the 1945 Battle of Manila. He invited me to visit and I spent a...
Weddings then and now WALA LANG “Kumare, nais na yatang manahimik nitong dalawa,” began my mother-in-law to be, Conchita Hidalgo-Sandoval, as Alice and I sat there silently. My mother and I had come to her Makati home to formally ask for her hand, the ancient Filipino pamanhikan. It was so...
