I believe the hardest book to read is your own. And that is perhaps why I had not read “Surreality” in a long while. Or perhaps I was just too busy living: meeting people, giving speeches, running events and other life stuff like teaching kids how to write, learning new skills from the best schools, [...]
Three months was all I was given to prepare for his leaving. But I did not know then how much time I would need to move on and be happy again. I was 43 when I lost Benjie in June 2005; he was 49, and our son Joseph was 9. That dreaded day in March [...]
The most carefree times of my life were the childhood summers I spent doing absolutely nothing. No school, no homework, no piano lessons, no out of town or overseas trips, no dead relative to bury, no house to burn – nothing. “Only boring people get bored,” my mother would say at times like these, which [...]
BATANES has gained iconic status among local travelers and a growing number of foreign tourists mainly because of its fascinating landscapes and the friendliness of the Ivatan people. The list of attractions is long. Verdant hills and forested mountains for trekkers. Cliffs and crags, at the foot of which the booming surf lashes dramatically. Unpolluted [...]
TEXAS, USA – “I will drive you to wherever you’re meeting. And remember, I want to know where you will be. And call me when you’re ready to come home, and I will pick you up.” That was my daughter talking while she drove me to my first Internet date. Talk about role reversal! Then [...]
SCARED out of my wits. This was my first reaction when I got to Oxford, despite – or probably even because of – the fact that it seemed I had walked straight into “Harry Potter” land. My level of independence was probably at par with a 2-year-old, and yet there I was, off to spend [...]
Being sick is no laughing matter. But it does help to see the lighter side of things YOU’RE lying in bed, bogged down by fever. You’re shaking and shivering, coughing your lungs out and thinking you’ve lost your nostrils because your nose is way too stuffed. No this isn’t a scene from “The Walking Dead” [...]
IT was a perfect day to travel by ferry – sunny, with a light breeze. The waters of the Strait of Georgia were placid; the sky was a spotless blue. After an hour and a half ferry ride from Horseshoe Bay north of the city of Vancouver, we docked at Nanaimo’s Departure Bay on Vancouver [...]
IT was our first time, my husband Bernard and I, to travel outside the Philippines for a tour of Europe. Our tour guide in the Manila travel agency told us our tour group’s meeting place would be in London, at the Novotel Hotel. Our daughter Rowena was supposed to be our tour companion for she had had a year’s stay in Amsterdam (as a foreign study exchange student) and has a familiarity with European countries, but at that time she had to go and stay in Vancouver, Canada.
-01-FA.jpg)