The Feast of the Santo Niño or the Holy Child Jesus falls yearly on the third Sunday of January. Though originally a simple religious feast, it has become one of the grandest and most colorful festivals now called the Sinulog. To celebrate this year’s festival, various activities were lined up by the Basilica Minore del...
Category: Lifestyle
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Finding the quiet
Many movies today, perhaps as a reflection of the world around us, are unbelievably loud, relying on explosions and special effects and outré visuals to stimulate and, at the same time, mesmerize the viewer. Thus, among all the scenes of chaos, devastation and conflict that may be either or both external and internal to the...
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On with the show on New Year’s Eve
SYDNEY—New Year’s Eve without fireworks? Unthinkable! Especially in Australia, one of the first countries to welcome the new year with the now iconic Sydney Harbor Bridge pyrotechnics display watched around the world. But just days before the show, it was in danger of being cancelled in the wake of a dispute between the New South...
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Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah!
It is the fourth time since 1900 that the Jewish festival Hanukkah is being celebrated during the Christmas season, which ends on the Feast of the Epiphany or the baptism of Jesus on Jan. 5. This year, Hanukkah began at sundown on Dec. 25 and will end on Jan. 2. (The date of the holiday...
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To become a good lawyer and a good person
If you have all the time, resources, and skills in the world, what would you want to be in the future? This was what my editors at the Flame, the official student publication of the University of Santo Tomas (UST) Faculty of Arts and Letters, asked me one night over dinner years ago. “I want...
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Watch your step
I learned to walk when I was 2, and almost instinctively, I made it my life’s motto to “always watch my step.” Now that I am 30, and having lived most of my days walking and randomly stepping on dog poop, I can now say with adultlike conviction that sh*t happens. It happens without warning...
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Trainspotting down under
SYDNEY—Hours before sunrise last Aug. 19, a crowd of nearly a thousand people was reported to have gathered at the 1880s railway station in Sydenham, a suburb 8 kilometers south of this city’s central business district. Trainspotters mingled with regular commuters at the new concourse to get on the 5 a.m. inaugural service of the...
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The American potato’s 7,000-mile adventure
First, you put all the dry ingredients in a big stainless bowl—200 grams of standard potato granules, 250g of all-purpose flour, and 3g of salt. Once they’re incorporated, you can form a well in the center for the wet ingredients—four eggs, 200 milliliters of water. Mix until everything coagulates into a stiff dough. You massage...
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So you wish to win the lotto
No, I haven’t won the lotto—or not yet. But is it possible to really pray hard and manifest winning the lotto? How? My friend DM, almost 80, boasts that in his younger years he won five of the six-digit lotto combination at least thrice. He claims that he did it through the prayer and meditative...
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To buy or not to buy
Whenever I think of buying something, I try to be guided by the question “Do I really need it?” Almost always, the answer is “I don’t need it.” Not need in a physical, survival, existential sense, as I do have my basics covered. But for some reason or other, I want it. Want not necessarily...