Tabada: When women talk
SHE said her name is Arlene. She lived and worked for a time in Manila, handling the carvings sold in the stall she handles now in Puerto Princesa City, Palawan.
Though it was quicker and more lucrative to sell goods to tourists and locals who didn’t count the cost, city life tired her....
Tabada: Alien life
A PERPETUAL passenger all my life, I was thrust out of the relative safety of mere observation when I found myself seated at the prow of our boat during a recent exploration of the Underground River at Puerto Princesa, Palawan.
As the outermost passenger seated at the forward part of the...
Tabada: Passing through
THE IRONY is that in the places where you meet so few people, the folks turn out to be among the most likeable.
Puerto Princesa City in Palawan is such a place.
In the two hours or so it took to clear the airport and travel by van to the coast of Sabang, there seemed to be more...
Tabada: The pedestrian sleepers
A WARM nest of bodies.
Walking away from the Basilica del Sto. Niño’s final evening mass at the height of the fiesta novena, I came upon sidewalks full of people sleeping or settling down for the night.
I felt like an interloper who walked in on guests of the house acting as “floor...
Tabada: Ease unease disease
CAN an empty room disturb?
At first, when I entered the Cebu City Museum last weekend, the silence was like a canvas splotched with the distant clamor of the streets, the freezing rush of the air-conditioning unit, and the flight of the dust motes.
Being in a roomful of art can...
Tabada: Instructive accident
AN INSTRUCTION on reading or cultural resurgence?
In search of the “Contemporary Cebu” exhibit, I stood outside the wrong museum. Answering my inquiry about modern art, the guard at the Museo Sugbu pointed out a tarpaulin announcing recently excavated artifacts.
Rereading the...
Tabada: A grain of sand
THIS is my theory: if one lives by the sea, one must be reconciled to always living with a grain of sand.
The final days of the old year deposit our family on the southern coast of Cebu. The sullen sky, the turbulence of the surf and the chill in the air create a spell of solitude that...
Tabada: Niño, by way of Nora
CHRISTMAS is a visual feast.
Of all the indelible memories I retain from my youth, the belen is at the center.
The tableau of the Child born in a manger, witnessed only by his parents, animals and shepherds, still spins many versions in my mind.
Long before I saw the irony...
Tabada: ‘Katakataka’
EXCELLENCE and service.
For embodying these intertwined values, 50 alumni of the University of the Philippines (UP) received Oblation statuettes from the UP Alumni Association Cebu Chapter Foundation Inc. (UPAACCFI).
The statuettes symbolize the “Tatak UP” award, given for the...
Tabada: Missing
LAST Dec. 2, journalist Carol Arguillas from Mindanao posed a question to the students filling the Center for Performing Arts at the University of San Jose-Recoletos: do you want to become a journalist?
Arguillas, news editor of the online news service Mindanews, is the 2011 Marshall...
Tabada: Survivor’s guide to P.C.
ODD couples sometimes work.
The pairing of words not usually seen in each other’s company made me stop and reread an Associated Press (AP) article published last Nov. 25, 2011 by Sun.Star Cebu.
“Female boxers shoot down skirts” was the “head” or headline of the AP report...
Tabada: Evergreen and floating libraries
HOW do we covet?
Hannibal Lecter, that fastidious cannibal, memorably said in “The Silence of the Lambs” that people learn to covet what they see.
In my case, reading undoes me.
These past weeks, two emails stand out in my inbox. One informed me that the Ateneo Press...
Tabada: A dream of Rain
THIS lot looks most unlikely to be in trafficking.
Jhanika is into photography the way her sister, Micah, was so into music when I first knew her.
Troy has a high sweet voice that hoists a pure clear bell above my head and slowly settles it down as the last few notes of...
Tabada: Chicken soup and kindness
IF YOU shared chicken stew with a person, would he spare your life?
One wonders if doubt ever assailed Lea, 15, during the 17 hours her father kept her hostage in their home in a mountainous village an hour’s walk from the poblacion of Borbon, a northern town in Cebu.
In Davinci S...
Tabada: Be streetwise
TREE-LINED and recently spruced up, Osmeña Blvd. is pretty as a postcard scene, and as deceptive.
Last Friday, at midmorning, my mother’s attention was caught by a group of teens that jogged across the street while the traffic lights turned red. One boy slowed down to pick something from...
Tabada: Divine at 15
DID the parents of Divine Saludaga foresee, 15 years ago, that their child would grow to become not just divine but uncommon?
Divine is a senior at Tipolo National High School. According to Justin K. Vestil’s Oct. 18, 2011 report in Sun.Star Cebu, Divine was recently honored as one...
Tabada: Origin of Evil
IF I were to curate our times, I would begin at the comfort rooms. CRs, as we call them in this shortcut-loving country, reflect the values and temper of an age.
When I was still in uniform, we could eat in the CRs of our school, run by nuns. The air was so pure, these places seemed only...
Tabada: Copy and perish
HELL Week” is inaccurate but apt for this time: the last remaining weeks of the semester when some students wake up and find out there is a final grade due and it’s not a white rabbit they can pull out of a trick hat but a computation based on their outputs and performance, or lack of it.
...Tabada: Books, not flyovers
IT’S not possible to read all the books in a human lifetime.
It’s possible to let others read the books you can’t read in your lifetime.
That didn’t come from a fortune cookie but from four years of “Their Books.”
A brainchild of accidental journalist/children’s rights...
Tabada: Two loves
ONCE upon a time” used to be good enough.
Listening to the storytellers in my family and later, in the community, I learned that to hold a listener rapt to one’s tale was to imagine plaiting an unending flow that had one story cascading into another.
Nearly all of the stories I...
Tabada: Inky past
CAN you read?
For someone who devoured books, I had one of the worst pick-up lines: check the sentence before this.
This is exactly quoted from a boy I pounced on to read my radio script. That he happened to have the cutest shorts running around the soccer field of the University...
Tabada: Land of eternal sunshine
YOU are where you live.
I met Celia when an afternoon shower prevented me from leaving the Sidlakan Center in Piapi, Dumaguete.
Even after retiring as a public school teacher in Bayawan, Negros Oriental and raising four children, who now have families of their own, Celia has not...
Tabada: Lessons from ‘Alo’
“NGANONG nag-apil-apil?”
It’s a short trip via jeepney from the University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu in Lahug to a V-hire terminal at the North Reclamation Area. Usually, I enjoy this ride at the end of the day. I’m going home and can let my thoughts drift this way and that.
...
Tabada: House rules
THE RECENT separate reports of demonic possession make me wonder: Is the craving to communicate with the unknown just a novelty for the young or a preoccupation among those already pierced by the twinges of mortality?
I watched on the news several people restrain youths after they played...
Tabada: Holy cows
“JESUS saves USC” was the headline of an Aug. 14, 2011 article that reported how gymnast Jesus Zaragosa won two gold medals and boosted the standing of the team fielded by the University of San Carlos (USC) in the 16th Milo Little Olympics.
That headline made me pause in my scanning, read...
