I remember a rainy afternoon. I was sitting next to the window, drinking hot chocolate as an alternative to coffee because I was pregnant with my fourth child. I stared outside and watched the raindrops falling to the ground. I could hear my three other children laughing and playing in the living room. On some...
Tag: life
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Food, friendship and more on a tour with a chef
FUKUOKA, HIROSHIMA, OSAKA—We came here to savor food that popular Filipino chef Sandy Daza has taste-tested and pronounced “exceptional” (for him, “good” is simply “not enough”). But the “Daza Japan Food Tour” of the three cities and their namesake prefectures on Oct. 20-25 offered participants more than just food. It also included visits to fish...
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Sinistral in a dextral world
Are you left-handed or right-handed? Neither? Only recently I learned that there is a term for my handedness: mixed-handed. I write and brush my teeth left-handed and use scissors and play golf right-handed. But I think that using my right is more of an adaptation to right-handed tools. I looked it up and I read...
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Hitting our stride together
To celebrate World Animal Day on Wednesday, Oct. 4, the nongovernment organization Animal Kingdom Foundation (AKF) sponsored “Run Fur Life” last Sunday at Bridgetowne Estate in Pasig City. The event, now on its eighth year, had over 1,000 runners registered—a record achievement for AKF. My running buddy was a two-year-old red Golden Retriever named Angus....
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Being Filipino as the most natural thing to do
Isabel Padua Grant’s home in Nottingham, like many other English homes, has a traditional English garden. But the living room of that home, at the time when her British-Filipino children were growing up, had marks of the tropics, like native baskets, tribal figures, wood carvings. It was definitely not a traditional English home. From her...
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The Mechanic (a real one)
Al Evasco has been working as an automotive mechanic for 23 years. He has always wanted to be one, he says, as he likes “magbutingting,” or taking things apart and fixing them. He excelled as a Tesda trainee, and was awarded as outstanding student when he took its automotive mechanic course after graduating high school....
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Old man Norman
The way people are treating me, I must look ancient. There is surely a disconnect here between people and me. I don’t see any confirmation of how old I seem to them when I look in the mirror. Yes, I’ll admit I look old, but not that old. I’m not the frail and fragile geezer...
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Need help? There’s ‘Thank God It’s Wednesday’
KALIBO, Aklan—A conversation can do wonders. A safe space where people freely talk about their predicaments and anxieties to someone who listens intently without prejudice, offers advice whether solicited or un, and prays for their healing is therapeutic. Sometimes all one needs is to have one’s feelings validated, one’s thoughts articulated, and one’s actions understood....
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In loving memory of my ‘Lolo’ Pulong
AVERNES, France—It must have been a day in July 1976. My three-year-old sister Jenni was in the kitchen in our home in Santa Ana, Manila, having a fit. I was nine. Our brother, Kuya Nonoy, was 12. We were with our mother in the living room, waiting for Jenni’s temper tantrum to pass. She was on the...
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On a street in Brooklyn, prayer demonstrates power
NEW YORK CITY—It was May 11 and I had to be at the acupuncturist’s clinic by 2 p.m. I left Manhattan and headed to Brooklyn at 1:15 p.m. I was by myself. I usually travel with my friend but she ran into train delays from where she was coming, and we decided to meet at...
