The change in speed could be quite disorienting. It feels like traveling in the expressway one moment and in a blink of an eye being transported to a remote village road. For those used to the fast-paced grind in the office, the extended community...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
The silence is deafening. As I walk around our village for my morning exercise, it is eerily quiet. When I go outside for groceries, the deserted streets are surreal. Trapped in our houses because of the quarantine, this is a unique opportunity to...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
I was 14 years old when I was first exposed to pornographic material. I was initially shocked by it but eventually found some pleasure in it as any teenager would. So I know firsthand the power such sexually explicit media can have over someone....[ abbreviated | read entire ]
“The person who deserves most pity is a lonesome one on a rainy day who doesn’t know how to read.” Those words from Benjamin Franklin capture how I feel about reading. One of my minor phobias as a young man was to be trapped in a...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
I just love chocolates! More accurately, I relish anything sweet. My motto has been “there is always room for dessert”. I don’t have a sweet tooth, more like sweet teeth. So it’s a struggle to be confined at home with all...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
Where is God amidst this pandemic? This is a question that some people may be asking during times of severe crisis such as we now face. The presence of pain and sufferings in this world is in fact one commonly used argument against the very...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
It was a striking sight— a father playing badminton with his daughter, families playing volleyball together, others throwing Frisbee at each other. These are what greet me in the open park in our village almost every afternoon since the...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
The email from the UPLB Alumni Relations was a plea for help. Hundreds of students are now stranded in on-campus and off-campus housing, unable to go home and running short of funds. As it so happened, I was on my way to the grocery store...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
Whether you like it or not, chances are you have been affected by covid-19. The question is will you waste your encounter with the pandemic or not. As I write this, the WHO website shows that there are more than 200,000 persons infected by...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
Today, we buried my mother. Its been seven days since she died and we were preoccupied with the wake. But now in the quite moments that followed her interment, I can reflect on what my mother meant to me. For a starter, I literally owed her my...[ abbreviated | read entire ]
