MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Pandemic, word of the world in 2020. Following close behind at second spot would be, I guess, “protocol”. Not new or strange, as we’ve been using “protocol” in relation to diplomatic affairs, but since COVID-19 happened along we’ve been using the word as...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Christmas is bustin’ out all over, but nowhere as robustly as the malls have it. I promised I’d visit every SM mall in sight and compare how each tries to outdo the other, only to retreat at the first wave of traffic jitters. In any case, where some malls pull out all...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Them were the days. And nights that lasted until the dawn. To Ado Escudero, they were glory days to mount religious festivals, the more sumptuous and spectacular, the better. On Good Friday he’d invite outsiders – outside his beloved Villa Escudero in Tiaong, Quezon...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink. An easily quotable line that’s also the figurative and literal truth. More than a million customers of Maynilad still have no water. Neither do thousands of other victims left high and dry and mud-wrapped by typhoon...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Suddenly it’s the end of the year -- the liturgical year, that is. It came to a close last Sunday, and suddenly it’s five days before Nov. 29, start of the four-week season of Advent leading to Christmas. Merry Christmas, all! Christmas too soon? One lady started...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza You’ve come a long way, Babe! Not a line from a song but my compliments to our man in Washington, D.C., Ambassador Babe Romualdez. One of the first things you learn about His Excellency is that his nickname is not Babes but Babe. And if he looks and sounds like a real...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza It was the first day of my friend’s retirement as a banker, after 35 years. Sol is only 55. Selfishly, I thought she deserved a thank-you from me, in the form of lunch with her at a five-star hotel. Afterwards, on our way home, she guided me on my first trip down the...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Short of building a contemporary model of Noah’s Ark, listen to Jun Palafox on building homes in the post-Ondoy, post-Ulysses chapters of our history as a resilient people, but enough of that adjective -- we’re suffering from exercising too much resiliency already....
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Does it have to be a recurring nightmare? Every time it rains, tinted with yellow and red alerts, it’s no longer just another season. It’s history in the making, carrying a load of painful memories that will be repeated and passed on to the next generation. After...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza Is the President mellowing? After promising us bread and circus by forcing the “pastillas” gang of bribe-takers at Immigration to eat their pastillas, PRRD had a change of heart. Still, it was quite a show, watching how a Palace usher moved among the President’s...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza This is the pause before the crunch. If I were you, I’d do my last-minute Christmas rush before December sets in. This is a good time to go malling, before the hoi polloi and elite decide they cannot postpone window-shopping, price-canvassing, shopping and gift-wrapping...
MEDIUM RARE Jullie Y. Daza When super typhoon Rolly came bearing down and made landfall in several provinces last Sunday, Metro Manila was warned to expect signal-4 winds and rain, next only to the highest category of 5. The warning was issued just in time, alerting optimists, pessimists, and...
