More and more now I recoil from seeing troubling things. Because once seen, they stick in the mind’s eye and often they are shocking or sad and there’s nothing one can do about them. Often, it is the sight of accident victims or the victims of violence. Or even day-to-day things one could just dismiss...
Late last August I received a Viber message stating (although it was phrased as a question) that I was to host something: “Ikaw ang host nito, ha?” “Host” actually meant emcee. “Nito” referred to the planned fundraising for Jose “Pete” Lacaba. The “nito” was no longer a surprise. The planning had been an endless exchange...
I find that one way I get myself out of a writing slump is to write about my day-to-day fight with phone addiction. It’s been five months since I last wrote for CoverStory, and in the two times I emerged from a similar writing slump, I got myself out by writing about my phone addiction....
Cherie Magsanoc has one nonnegotiable rule in allowing her 10-year-old daughter to play Roblox: Only with friends she knows. The moment a stranger joins the game or tries to interact with her, Magsanoc reminds her child to stop immediately and leave the game, and to tell that unknown person that her parents said so. Roblox...
Some 180 subsistence fishermen in the island-province of Catanduanes, who lost their boats to storm surges triggered by Supertyphoon “Uwan” on Nov. 9, 2025, have been thrown a lifeline. A coalition of civic organizations has gifted them new outrigger boats, restoring their shattered livelihoods and pushing back the constant threat of hunger stalking their precarious...
Last August, CoverStory ran a piece I wrote on three simple ways to lessen screen time. That was six months ago and, like a dutiful patient out of rehab, I am reporting on how it has been, some losses and some gains, since I weaned myself off my phone. Suffice it to say that it...
When I turned 50, my wife gifted me with a compact SUV. More than two decades and close to 380,000 kilometers in the odometer later, it is still with me. And my wife seems to be truly, finally resigned to my not parting with it anytime soon. More than my oft-stated reasons for keeping it—like...
“Welcome to the slow lane.” This was a message I received from a friend, an ex-colleague who had left before me, on the day I left the only company I had ever worked for. Fourteen years may not seem like a long time, but the bank was where I started my career just two months...
SYDNEY, Australia—Our all-Filipino choir, Himig Sandiwa, was invited by the City of Sydney Council to perform at Martin Place for its annual Christmas event, “Choirs in the City.” This is the first year the choir has sung at the event, and, according to the organizer, we are the first Filipino choir to be part of...
Among my vivid childhood memories is making bilo-bilo. I remember the sensation of rolling between my palms a dollop of cold malagkit (sticky rice) to about an inch round until smooth, putting the ball on a plate, and repeating the process, putting the balls one beside the others on the quickly filled plate, until there...
