Today is Friday the 13th – a day replete with ominous superstitions metaphorically represented by black cats, bogey man, cauldron-stirring witches, and more. How about the image of an old lady sitting behind a creaking spinning wheel – how does it make you feel? Spooky? Sinister? Yes, she is called a spinster – possibly brewing potions too, or doing magick…
Halloween is in November but there is another month that is associated with “ghosts”. In several Asian cultures, August is also called the Hungry Ghost Month – the seventh lunar month of the Chinese Lunar Calendar. On the 15th lunar day of this month, this Buddhist-Taoist festival is celebrated. That means, this year, it is celebrated on 22 August. Meanwhile, the…
The month of July is what I consider the cusp of the year, even though June is the 6th month and is thus, the middle of the year. But I feel that July is a calmer month since things have settled in following uncertainties, anticipations and adjustments we might have encountered from early in the year leading up to June…
May is springtime for us here. I remember the fire tree – which we call Calabllero that we had in our old house in Bulacan. For me, it was the most awesome tree in our neighborhood. May evokes the energy of new beginnings, of fun, of reunions. It is also because, during May, many towns in the Philippines are celebrating…
This pandemic has certainly created disruptions in our personal lives. It has altered our career plans. Everyone is anticipating that everything turns back to “normal” or at least to the next normal where we can go about our daily lives sans the mobility restrictions and finally execute our career and wealth plans. In this article, I wrote career and business…
Today, we’re going to talk about an issue that is among my important advocacies – domestic abuse. Globally, 1 in every 3, or 35% of women have experienced either physical or sexual violence from their partners (married or not), according to data by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Although domestic abuse happens to all genders, studies claim that women are…
At this time of the pandemic, there have been countless families and individuals who have lost their loved ones, in an untimely manner, to Covid-19. While others may have lost family members to natural causes or other illnesses but because of the lockdown, they are not able to mourn properly, or attend the wake to be with their deceased relative.…
I have cultivated a habit of meditating and I never thought it is really that easy and life-changing in that I have become balanced – well, I do have minor outbursts every now and then, especially when I start to get bogged down by tasks or some situational nonsense. When I was starting with meditation, I used the visualization technique.…
This new corona virus lock-down has awakened in us a dormant monster that is a product of globalization; of urbanization, industrialization and consumerism. This monster called “restlessness” takes either the direction of aim or aimlessness. Aim as a process unearths more monster underlings – defeatism, limitations, projections, and so on; while aimlessness is a journey that either leads to nowhere…
Flashback to two decades ago: When I was still working as a staff writer at a (now defunct) lifestyle magazine, my weekend R&R meant going to Intramuros, also referred to as the “walled city”, where acoustic musicians entertained a small crowd of amblers with the popular strains of Paolo Santos’s “Moonlight over Paris”, Jimmy Bondoc’s “Let me be the one”,…
Those were the days when simple living was bliss; when children were children and adults acted like adults. No complicated social movements, no long queues in metro rails, and the cost of living was acceptable. That was in the 70s to 80s. Except for the lioness manes and the thin arched brows of the Charlie’s Angels, I could not think…
A huge following of the Filipino Y-generation –the millennial generation that makes up the demographics of 1980 through the present –dedicate their weekends (and paydays) to trooping to bars for a sampling of music from the likes of Nyoy Volante, Paolo Santos, Jimmy Bondoc, DJ Alvaro, to name a few. These emerging breed of young and brilliant musicians are emblems…