Happiness in a pandemic
Manila—I’m wearing lipstick as I’m writing this. It’s a Sunday afternoon and I just finished discussing health journalism during this...
Daydream
By Diana G. Mendoza
By Diana G. Mendoza
- May 5
When I’m sixty-four
Manila—Thoughts about mortality have never been this constant as we are stuck in a pandemic caused by the most destructive virus in...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Apr 11
Thriving in a rough sequel to 2020
Manila— While walking one day during my routine errands, I saw street maintenance employees of city hall trimming one of my favorite...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Mar 6
A poignant anniversary
Manila – I cried on the second week of the hard lockdown in mid-March last year. It was the first time I cried in public, on a roadside,...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Feb 5
Surviving the end of the world
Manila— The year 2020 was the end of the world, or so I thought. But as I kept reading happy essays listing the best places to live in...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Jan 5
Rushing back
Manila— I realized that things became different the moment I looked at the items on the table during my first coffeeshop visit six months...
By Diana G Mendoza
- Oct 30, 2020
In memoriam: our life and death clichés
Manila — Death happens — if not to someone we know — to us. The only problem we have with it is how we pass its test on our level of...
By Diana Mendoza
- Oct 3, 2020
Our painful goodbyes
Manila— Every time I passed by the dimsum restaurant in my neighborhood, it was being torn down bit by bit, until a few weeks later, it’s...
By Diana Mendoza
- Sep 4, 2020
How will our stories end?
Manila – Truths, realities, epiphanies. This coronavirus pandemic is such an unprecedented ballgame it made many of us come to certain...
By Diana G Mendoza
- Aug 6, 2020
Birthday behind locked doors
Manila— I took the opportunity of the relaxed quarantine to visit the family of one of my siblings, the one who lives nearer to me, to...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Jul 5, 2020
How I spent my summer vacation
Manila – When a tropical storm and its nonstop rains darkened Metro Manila for days in early June, I realized that, in ordinary time,...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Jun 2, 2020
Six feet away
Manila— I just came from a walk in the rain. The Philippines was experiencing its first typhoon that was devastating a number of...
By Diana Mendoza
- May 2, 2020
Running for our lives
Manila— Every night at eight, the police cars sound off their sirens as they go around neighborhoods to signal the lockdown curfew. The...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Mar 31, 2020
When your soul is on lockdown
Manila — Two pylons and an iron chain in front of Ronald McDonald caught my attention as I walked to the supermarket. The fast food chain...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Feb 12, 2020
Our Valentine’s Day clichés
Manila—I’ve had two dates on a Valentine’s Day. It may look like I’m one lucky girl for having experienced that, but no, I’m not fond of...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Jan 5, 2020
Person of the year
Anyone who grew up reading Time Magazine, when it was just one of the few printed publications and before the arrival of multimedia and...
Diana G. Mendoza
- Dec 1, 2019
Our mad journeys of arrivals and departures
Manila— My most recent journey would have been perfect except for a glitch. As I was preparing to leave Africa after attending an...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Nov 4, 2019
Embracing our imperfect world
I am visually disabled. My left eye didn’t make it after a surgery last year to correct retinal detachment. It can only sense faint...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Sep 30, 2019
An ode to the coffee shop
Manila— Ernest Hemingway was said to have spent time in coffee shops writing. I read up somewhere his story about how he went to a...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Sep 6, 2019
I don’t speak Prada and I don’t care
Manila— At the start of the millennium, I had the chance to work overseas in an international organization. I was chauffeured around in a...
By Diana G Mendoza
- Aug 2, 2019
Dear younger self
Manila— I spent my birthday with a trip to one of my favorite places in the world. I was not celebrating a milestone birthday. I was just...
By Diana G Mendoza
- Jul 7, 2019
My digital, intergalactic life
Manila — A month ago Facebook reminded me, through a video, of the date when I joined the social media platform 10 years ago. Surprised...
By Diana G Mendoza
- Jun 4, 2019
I need a hug, a parodia magnifica, and a panda
Manila — When I do my morning walks, I watch people walk with their dogs. A few people bring their cats. I grew up with cats and dogs at...
By Diana G Mendoza
- May 10, 2019
Losing my religion
Manila — I went to Catholic schools for 14 straight years of my young life, from elementary (basic or primary in other countries), high...
By Diana Mendoza
- Apr 4, 2019
Traveling in the succor of remembering
Manila — A few weeks ago, work required me to be on the road. There was a writing workshop I had to attend in an upland city; the other...
By Diana G Mendoza
- Mar 5, 2019
'They don't read Camus'
Manila — I have vague memories of when I first read a book, but what I can recall is that some time when I was in grade school, I got...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Feb 1, 2019
The movies in my mind
Manila — In the movie "Sweet Home Alabama," Reese Witherspoon has marched down the aisle to marry Patrick Dempsey when her lawyer came...
By Diana G Mendoza
- Jan 2, 2019
The sunrises that wake our lives
Manila — I'm an early riser. I always wake up at 5 am every day, even earlier. On some rare occasions, I wake up past that time when I...
By Diana G Mendoza
- Dec 6, 2018
If you believe in Santa Claus
Manila — I don’t remember any one memorable Christmas during my childhood, but most of it was replete with dreams about Santa Claus. My...
By Diana G Mendoza
- Nov 2, 2018
If I were a billionaire
Manila— As I write this, I just read somewhere again that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wears the same style of sweatshirt every day...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Sep 30, 2018
Cherishing the one that got away
Manila — In my last column, I wrote about growing old with "the one." As I was writing it, I thought about the people who didn't make it...
By Diana G Mendoza
- Aug 2, 2018
Whatever will be will be
Manila —What is likely to happen today? What's my future like? What happens when the planets party? What does it mean when they align?...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Jul 31, 2018
The happiness of a virtual birthday party
Before I celebrated another birthday last month, I attended my seven-year-old niece’s Barbie-themed birthday party at a pizza restaurant....
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Mar 31, 2018
The fault in our stars
Manila — I was born in the sign that is ruled by the moon, which, according to birth sign readings, makes me a sensitive and emotional...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Feb 28, 2018
Women march — repeat
Manila —"Have you ever experienced sexual harassment? In what form? From whom?" A male journalist asked me this question for his article...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Jan 31, 2018
Love and other addictions
Manila — Love, just like nicotine and other stuff that are inhaled, drunk, eaten or felt, can be addictive. And so scientists have said...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Dec 31, 2017
Beginnings for new endings
"Every day is a new beginning and a chance to blow it." Cathy, the comic strip character, has this perfect spot-on description of the...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Nov 30, 2017
Our lives in hash tags and lol
I read somewhere that some people's addiction to Facebook shows up in their brain scans, especially the types who can't stay off the...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Oct 31, 2017
Dying alone with 72 cats
So goes the funny print on a shirt that I saw in a department store that featured three checkboxes with the options "single," "taken,"...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Sep 30, 2017
Dead plants and human suffering
Coming home from a one-time, month-long job posting with an international humanitarian organization that has a team deployed in a...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Aug 31, 2017
Mornings and rude awakenings
Manila-- I live in a neighborhood of mixed commercial and residential structures. Next to the apartment where I'm staying is a 24-hour...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Jun 1, 2017
Our lost conversations
American actress Jennifer Aniston, the most popular star of the ‘90s TV sitcom “Friends” that ended 13 years ago, offered a reason why...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Feb 9, 2017
To be single or to mingle
Manila — Married, engaged, de facto, separated, divorced, widowed, never married or been in a de facto relationship. When I encountered...
By Diana G. Mendoza
- Dec 1, 2016
Diary of a Marcos Baby
I was born during the Marcos regime. The name Ferdinand Marcos has been, to my generation, synonymous with prejudice -- we grew up either...
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