Daydream

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 as "the one," on one hand, and the people who lost them, on the other. I suddenly thought that not all people find or end up with "the one." Not all people get to strike an agreement with someone with a promise of forever. For reasons we don't quite understand, we don't get to keep the person...

Manila — My friend is engaged to be married. This will be her third. She doesn't call her first two as total disasters because she may have learned a thing or two about being in relationships that required a contract; only that the relationships did not work out.

 But this third, she said, is "The One." I was happy to hear that. I was happy that she will get to dream about her third time to walk an aisle with her partner waitin...

  Manila — It turns your city into a cesspool. It wets your shoes and socks, spatters the hem of your pants with dirt, and makes you feel cold and wet especially when it dumps heavy amounts of water, diagonally or in all directions depending on the winds that shift the rain's downward gravitational direction.

That's what the rain does when you live in a concrete muddle of streets, sewers and canals, notwithstanding roads that a...

Manila— I boarded the owner-type jeep with the male tabloid reporters. The photographers were in another vehicle. We followed the policemen's car, also an owner-type jeep, with the male suspect seated in the middle.

  When we arrived in Bagong Silang in a vast grassy field, the cops pulled out knives and started stabbing the suspect without letup. Then they asked him to get off. "Run!" they shouted. The suspect, bloodied from t...

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 being. I have read that people who love staring at the moon, most often playfully called lunatics (the word comes from the word Luna, the Roman moon goddess) are induced into lunacy and other behavior changes as full moon also changes.

   But this is getting too far already. In the last day of J...

 Manila —"Have you ever experienced sexual harassment? In what form? From whom?" A male journalist asked me this question for his article about sexual harassment experienced by female journalists. I had second thoughts to agreeing to be interviewed as, first, I was not comfortable with the question and second, I am rarely asked a question because I'm the one who often does the asking.

  I stepped back for a while to look at wha...

Manila — Love, just like nicotine and other stuff that are inhaled, drunk, eaten or felt, can be addictive. And so scientists have said time and again that falling romantically in love or being in love with someone is a rarity because you don't get to fall in love a thousand times.

   For many people, it can only be once in their lifetime. That is why when they do, they look at this person they fall in love with as the one who'...

Manila— “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 reality that each day as we start fresh, we face two situations – we will either have a great day or a bad one that we'd rather forget.

   Cathy, a syndicated comic strip created by American cartoonist Cathy Guisewite that ran for more than 30 years, depicts the pikes and pitfalls of bein...

  Manila — I read somewhere that some people's addiction to Facebook shows up in their brain scans, especially those who can't stay off the site. The report said this affects grey matter much as does cocaine. So I imagine that the other equally addicting social media platforms -- Twitter and Instagram – probably work like heroin.

   While the report may appear scientific and funny at the same time, I believe in the addicting po...

Manila — So goes the funny print on a shirt that I saw in a department store that featured three checkboxes with the options "single," "taken" and "will die alone with 72 cats." As I took a photo of the shirt and posted it on Facebook, I thought about not really being alone or dying alone but of old age. The "being alone" tag often partners with old age when a person formerly coupled with someone who passed on is suddenly labe...