One of the most difficult words to explain is: explain . Even a teacher in communications, like I am, can't find the simplest, most un...

What’s an eight-year-old like?    He is in third grade. If he loves to read, he should be on his fifth adventure book; if he attends Sunday ...

My doctor’s squiggles, all two pages of orders on how I should be admitted/treated in the hospital , are difficult to read. I don’t even att...

While working people may be sighing, exclaiming, or whispering "TGIF" today, I am packing my suitcase for a destination nobody wou...

Blogging and joining social networking sites are a no-no to many people. Reason? "I don't want to bare my soul in public." S...

Sometime ago I wrote a book entitled Ragamuffin Kid: The Boy without a Smile.   It was one of four stories in art published by Ayala Museum....

The days when people were discreet about their relationships are gone forever. Except for those in their seniors years, nobody remembers or ...

Millions of fans wailed and sobbed when Michael Jackson, Pop/Rock star, died at age 50.   TV networks, newspapers, radio, the Net—every m...

College students often interview me about creative writing as part of their class project. I make time for these interviews because, not onl...

Book lovers are not many in this country. But you can easily spot one anywhere. At a book store, she is riveted to a page, oblivious to th...

Wrist watches in ancient days (my time) had no batteries. We manually wound them in the morning and they kept going all day. Then came tho...

Gender sensitivity, per se , is easy to understand. It is the ability to recognize issues and problems in the way societies look at gender. ...

When someone you don’t know personally calls for help, what would you do? One of my FB friends (let’s call her Precious), whom I have neve...

Once there were two sisters, Vicky and Yoly, who were related neither by blood nor genes. Vicky was the wealthy employer, well-known as th...

My regular blood chemistry test was due two months ago. I kept postponing it because, aside from being terrified of needles and blood, I dre...

“My, you have the whole kit and caboodle in your luggage! No wonder it weighs a ton,” my aunt, an American, exclaimed when I met her for th...

For marketing practitioners, one ideal place for a book-signing blitz is Cebu City. Everything is five minutes away; you have the luxury of ...

“You’re traveling alone?!” my friend Zeny asked, disbelief written on her face. Her tacit sub-text was, at you age?!    I have always trav...

The Philippines is not yet a book-reading country—proven in sales and in research. If a book sells 5,000 copies in a year, it is a bestselle...

Lola Cionang, my maternal grandmother, was unlettered. She had difficulty reading; she could write only a few words and sign her name. But ...

Copious, overflowing tears have been falling from the sky, submerging many parts of the country, including Metro Manila. There has been no l...

From tot-hood, Lady D, one of my six, exceptionally smart and pretty nieces (in my unbiased opinion, of course), has always been enamored wi...

There were six of us: four from OMF Literature , a storyteller, and me in a van. Our trip to San Pablo, Laguna took a hurried lunch and two ...

The all-female club I belonged to held an essay contest among high school students in all schools in Makati. I invited a writer friend, who ...

Another semester is over. My students' blazers and mine are going to the cleaners.    This leaves me two conflicting feelings as I wo...

Wherever I go these days, I seem to see more wheelchair-bound seniors literally being pushed around by able-bodied young people. Those whe...

Forgetfulness is the domain of the elderly, or so I thought. The world has believed that when one grows older, his neurons lose their agil...

(I usually blog every four days, but I am making an exception today, National Heroes Day. I had just posted a blog early this morning and no...

We have discovered a common mind and body relaxant at home on a Sunday evening before we all part ways again tomorrow, to each his own sched...

Every fraction of a millisecond, grace was palpably at work through my latest book, Grace@Work .  From the birth of the idea to the day the ...