Practice makes perfect. This was my mantra during the 45 minutes that I drove an ATV or all-terrain vehicle at Cagsawa, the area in the town of Daraga in Albay province famed for its postcard perfect Mount Mayon landscapes. I don’t know how to drive though I can manage a bicycle so long as I […]
Fresh and gut-wrenching romantic comedy-drama
I have never been an avid supporter of the Metro Manila Film Festival. Forgive my honesty but the rule of showing only MMFF films during the holidays is essentially a punishment to the Filipino nation for consuming too much Hollywood during the rest of the year. I just have this mindset that festivals must only […]
A Soulful Rendition on Living
Now retired and reacquainted with the enigmatic woman with whom he first professed love, Tony Webster recalls the 1960s. He was a student, a young lad who formed friendship with boys who are, like himself, curious and sex-hungry, marked by ideals borrowed from literature though often too lazy hence easily outran by the mundane, and […]
History in the Realm of the Supernatural
The time is the early 1800s, some five decades before the American Civil War and the south was still gripped by slavery. The Weylin plantation in the confederate state of Maryland is a microcosm of the African-American experience-men and women of color were deprived of liberties and treated by whites as properties that can be […]
Southern Tagalog Antebellum in a Day
It is less than a hundred days before Christmas and there is a festive reason to head now to Paete – the abundance of Christmas decors! At the onset of the holiday season, one of the shops in this small town, M&E Paete Handicraft, otherwise close during the rest of the year, welcomes customers with […]
The Reluctant Fundamentalist
From Pakistan, Changez, the protagonist and narrator of Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist, moved to New York to study Finance at prestigious Princeton University. Changez’s affluent family was not spared from the hard times that swept Pakistan and his American education was due primarily to granted aid and loans. The combination of determination, focus, and […]
