Sunstar Essay: Like children
I ASKED the taxi driver I took a day after the recent Negros-Cebu 6.9 earthquake. “Diin ka paglinog?”
The strength of the tremors differed in the places where they landed, from 6 to 6.5 to 6.6 to 6.7 to 6.8 to 6.9, unhappily not below magnitude 6.)
Sun.Star Essay: Who’s wearing what
YOU sit in a pungko-pungko corner while waiting for what you ordered for this quick eat-and-go lunch and you have just a few minutes to watch people pass up and down the divergent sidewalk, to the roadside (quick!), then up and back to a swift sidewalk rise and a normal jump (ooops!) to get a...
Sun.Star Essay: Walking well
IT’S good that they’re running and biking. And let’s walk.
These are good times to grow healthy in, if the inspiration lasts. Some people are more aware now of what running or biking can do to shape up physically and mentally. There’s an awareness of health and physical fitness among...
Sun.Star Essay: The pain of a ride
IT’S the same old picture you see, but this one takes the cake—a mother on board a habal-habal motorcycle with her three children, two of them perhaps less than three years old, clasped to each of her sides, while the third sat in the middle, in her front. Both the mother’s arms held each of the...
Sun.Star Essay: Filipino drama
YEARS ago I’d come across scenes from the American soap opera “Sunset Beach” as I tinkered with the remote control gadget without much thought. But I was never attracted to the American teledrama. Neither to any soap operas in our local media.
That was almost two decades ago when...
Sun.Star Essay: Hail, Sinulog
IN high school when it was time for me to learn a bit more of 1521 Cebu history, my younger brothers hadn’t heard of Lapulapu or Magellan. They heard “Opon” or “Mactan” mentioned in conversation only ever so seldom and to them it was nothing but the quiet place “out there” reached after a boat...
Sun.Star Essay: New Year resolutions
A DAY and just a few more hours after the flash floods occurred following the Sendong storm two weeks ago, a mortuary in Cagayan de Oro city made known to its clients that they were running out of coffins for children, even as the owners worried about having only five embalmers (each one...
Sunstar Essay: The gift-givers
ONE of the nice things in life is gift-giving. You receive something nice and in accepting it, you in turn make the giver feel good twice (even without the actual reciprocation, like giving in return). And so if one were left to choose what to do to express love and good feelings (and get it...
Sun.Star Essay: Harm in blasts
IT’S just 13 days before Christmas but the festival of light goes on way before Christmas in the world’s longest celebration of the coming of the Child Jesus.
I’m talking of the Philippine Christmas which many think is the longest Christmas holiday on earth; somebody even saw Santa Claus...
Sunstar Essay: Cory in Edsa
A FRIEND asked if the congressman who filed a bill seeking to rename Edsa (Epifanio de los Santos Ave.) into Cory Aquino Ave. was kidding.
All of these efforts of naming and renaming streets are attempts to “construct places of memory.” But renaming streets too often (as often as the...
Sun.Star Essay: Keep the ‘patintero’ memories
THIS week came out an Amper Campaña photo of children in Carcar City playing karang (bamboo stilts), something I still have to personally see being played of the traditional street games in the country, especially in the towns. I wish there were a culture and art group (or is there?) who’d think...
Sun.Star Essay: The champ, he is
WHAT kind of fans are the Filipinos?
“Intawon sab si Pacquiao!” said the housegirl after the fight on television was over that Sunday afternoon.
“Hoy, nakadaug siya, uy!” I reacted.
“Wa lagi siya malipay, maam!”
Listen to the talk about this fight, it will be around...
Sunstar Essay: Of family size
STORIES about many women all loved by one important man (in politics or in the movies) are more about children and more children, like in Southeast Asian royal harems of old. Or like the movies.
The horrible news about the Revilla children hurting each other makes me wonder how deep...
Sunstar Essay: Rain beginning in November
MY EXPERIENCE of November through the years is rain, and not necessarily of water blasts during typhoons but rain, simple rain. In normal times, the wettest months in Cebu begin in November, up to January in the next year. The dry months come in late February up to April just before heat draws...
Sunstar Essay: Remembering Ellah
PRETTY ducklings’ was the caption of a photo in Sun.Star Cebu in an issue this week. The front page on its bottom glittered in yellow as four child dancers swung to the itik-itik skip-hop-and-slide dance during the Suroy-Suroy sa Sugbo welcome for visitors in Ginatilan. Small girls happy...
Sunstar Essay: A long, sad story
AS I took a cab to office some days ago, I realized how much our world is hurt and horrified by the deaths of a married couple and three of their children in the family home in Talisay City—the man shooting his wife and children, and himself.
Even the woman house help, Anastacia Deniega...
Sunstar Essay: The woman driving
I WAS going out of the gate of my boarding house during college days to open it to a friend who was backing up to park her car closer to the side along Dominga St. in Pasay City. Then I heard the crash.
Sun.Star Essay: Wheeling safely
IN MOST of Asia, it must be easy for any tourist to see women driving scooters and motorcycles in rural and city streets as a normal means of transportation, like in Chiangmai where I saw a woman in a party dress and high-heeled shoes driving a scooter.
It is in developing countries,...
Sunstar essay: Feet for running
YOU'RE running 10K?”
“I’m joining the Road Revolution.”
Sunstar Essay: The grit of rallies
NEWS on the Middle East is about the continuing fight by rallyists for freedom from dictators, at the cost of lives. Just last week, the Yemen leadership cracked down on Yemen rallies and killed over 45 people—both rallyists and plain observers. It’s an ache in each rallyist for a new life in a...
Sunstar Essay: One in beauty
SHE could have made it, if they asked her the right question when she could have shown she’s bright, said the young woman seated next to me while I waited for my turn with my service card number at the bank. “It was a silly question they asked her!” she exclaimed.
Sun.star essay: Roads in our life
HOUSE girl Ana was only 8 years old when she’d travel with her father and some members of the family from Balamban town of Cebu province eastward across the province to Cebu City.
No, they didn’t ride a bus, they walked. It was an alternative, cheaper and shorter travel from the town to...
Sunstar Essay: Homecoming, sort of
HAVEN'T you ever wondered what Filipino immigrants in the US think about their old home, like Cebu, when they come and go for short quick visits, looking back a bit, then out front, hurrying on, and away?
Sunstar essay: Take a break
IN JUST a few minutes, we could use the ability to forget about all the bad news, like rallies and protests in the Middle East, then closer home, of news about deaths due to dengue cases, and deaths also in landslides, floods, road mishaps.
We could forget for a few minutes news of loss...
Sun.Star Essay: Familial work
THIS story is familiar: an Arab saying he shut down his flower and gifts shop business in Jeddah after his Filipino workers left to return home. “When they left, I felt as if I had lost my arms. I was so sad that I lost my appetite,” said Muhammad Al-Maghrabi.
