Two things always make me uncomfortable: one, self-promotion; and, two, discussion about money. “Which is why you will never be rich,” my ...

Eight posts ago, I blogged about summer beginnings —my unfinished paintings. The scorching days were then just starting to assault us withou...

Whenever I receive a gift painstakingly made by the giver, a huge smile escapes my lips. It means so much more than the gift itself. The giv...

Silent and listen have exactly the same letters. One is an anagram of the other.  Not only are they inter-related, they are also inter-dep...

By its sheer splendor, a rainbow always renders me speechless; it makes me remember God’s covenant with Noah after the great flood: “When ...

Sometime ago, a friend of mine, an adviser of a university campus paper (on its 10th anniversary), requested me to write a message to encour...

Are you familiar with Parkinson’s Law? (Yes, the law, not the disease.)   I heard about this law for the first time in one of those casual...

Manny Pacquiao just lost his much-hyped fight against Floyd Mayweather. It was a unanimous decision after 12 rounds. Sports analysts say...

As I visit our atis (sugar apple or sweetsop) fruits and watch them grow in our garden every day, I likewise revisit the book I wrote about...

While biting my nails, waiting for the manuscript of my latest book “Present!” to be sent back by my editor, I intensely keep busy with othe...

To protect myself from the moist air during my dawn walks, I wear a hat.  The hat stays till I reach home at 6 AM. Today, seconds after th...

The one fruit that seems to reside permanently in our home is the banana. Tony buys a bunch almost daily (the yellow, seedless kind, which w...

On the Sunday Christians all over the world celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, adults and children in my home church resurrect our love fo...

That much-appreciated limited period of time in which penalties are not imposed even if you are late—for whatever (insurance, class, appoint...

Not only babies (and acrobats) can put their foot in their mouth.     We can, too. I can and I do.  Foot in mouth is an old idiom, origin...

OPM. That was the acronym we used for clients and bosses who reneged on their promise because they either forgot about it or didn’t mean it ...

Someone very close to my heart died from drug overdose at age 30. I knew him since he was 16 years old. His parents, who spoke very little...

We’ve gone where the world has gone! To that dark pit where gizmos have taken the place of face-to-face encounters: Make no mistake about it...

This idiom was first used by the ancient Greeks, referring to the risks shared by all passengers in a small boat at sea. Through time, the m...

I've been blessed with two wise, thinking bosses, from whom I have learned a lot.  (I omit from this post the creative, unstructured one...

The book:  Originally written in English, No Lipstick for Mother won first prize in the Palanca Awards 2005.  It was re-told in Filipino b...