Let me end the year with an edited excerpt of my regular column, Big Little People , published yesterday in The Freeman , the daily newspape...

It rained hard on Christmas eve, flooding the road fronting our house. Our 11-year-old, beat-up car wouldn’t start. So through the flood a...

Except for household chores and cooking, all other tasks belong to me. Preparing our yearly Christmas card, therefore, falls under my jurisd...

This word has become so common in net-speak. I wondered about it the first time I read it in a post on FB. Mr. Webster defines it as: a loud...

In 1925, long before I was born, Severino Reyes —founder and editor of the Tagalog magazine, Liwayway —started writing Kuwento ni Lola Basya...

(Devotional reflections on Christmas at the last get-together for the year of the Christian Writers' Fellowship)    Let me begin by sh...

Years wreak havoc on one's face and body. Like violent storms, they leave you physically ravaged. This you’d never find out once you bel...

At dawn, the first living organism I lock eyes with is, yes, a black cat. We are both early risers. It glares at me and I glare back. It see...

Call for entries! Media Associates International (MAI) has announced: “Help us encourage Christian writers worldwide. Submit an original...

In recent years, there has been a surge of single-parent and extended families. The nuclear family (defined as a group that includes only th...

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 ...