MEDIUM RARE Happy birthday plus one day to the richest Filipino on the planet, a former Tondo boy, former Senate president, and now future planter of a million trees! Manny Villar turned one year older and no one knows how many million pesos richer yesterday, but if his track record is an...
MEDIUM RARE What is Christmas without Belen, the Spanish derivative of Bethlehem, the little town where the Baby Jesus was born? Christmas without the Nativity (Belen) would be nothing more than a long season of shopping and gift-giving, such as in non-Catholic countries where it is joyfully...
MEDIUM RARE Walking with me to the car park, the waiter proudly declared, without my asking him, “We had 800 guests at breakfast this morning.” This was two days ago, last Thursday, the precursor to a longish weekend. On a “regular” day such as Dec. 7, 600 guests would’ve been closer to...
MEDIUM RARE Yes, you may call her Atty. FL, as in Atty. First Lady Louise (Liza, with a “z”) Araneta Marcos. Remember her first unofficial act was to take out all her stuff from the law office that she headed? Now that her lawyerly duties cover weekend trips to Iloilo for her Friday classes in...
MEDIUM RARE Breaking up is so hard to do... But when it comes to the KathNiel split of the century, the hard-to-do part seems harder on their fans than on the lovers. When even BBM’s presidential legal counsel and former President Duterte’s “most intelligent mind in the room,” a...
MEDIUM RARE It took New Yorker Lin Bildner for me to gain entry into the polish and gleam of the newly restored Goldenberg Mansion, part of the Malacañang estate, and see what a lovely gem it has been since its last glorious days under a Marcos Sr. administration. What serendipity it was, for...
MEDIUM RARE There are fair weather friends and there are friends who use friendship to feed their needs and greed. Friends, colleagues, neighbors of an enterprising ex-government employee recently found to their regret that when it comes to fueling one’s greed, friends are an easy touch....
MEDIUM RARE Two of the nicest people I’ve known have left us, they say for a better place. With them gone, how easy would it be to find two nicer persons to take their place? Portia Leuterio was the little pink lady who lived in a little pink house that I called her teacup cottage. She lived...
MEDIUM RARE What the Universe lost we are keeping. Michelle Dee, a most deserving Miss U, didn’t win the crown so she won’t be touring the world as her reward (?), all the better for us oglers and fencesitters who are intent on keeping a watch on her right here, at home. Michelle, whose dad...
MEDIUM RARE Earthquake! Nine killed in Sarangani province. Heavy rain, floods as high as the rooftops in Catarman, Samar. Extreme climate. And extreme despondency: A 23-year-old housemaid hung herself after she could not explain what she did with money she was supposed to pay on her...
MEDIUM RARE Once in a while it’s great to be swept off one’s feet by a power as insubstantial as music: To lose oneself in a stream... a waterfall... an ocean of emotions that offer no definition, no description of what has just happened. Such was the experience when a 31-year-old Russian...
MEDIUM RARE Belinda, as I named her in my book, Etiquette for Mistresses, appears in the last page, not as the last of her tribe but because of her closing statement: “When he dies and turns into a corpse, that’s the time to give him back to his wife and children. It’s the only...
