Boxing/wrestling aficionados or not, we all know what low blow means. It is an illegal strike below the opponent’s waist—unsportsmanlike and...

Tattoos go back thousands of years. Humans have marked their bodies since ancient times. Tattoos then served many purposes: amulets, statu...

Have you met a nonagenarian? I haven’t. The octogenarians I knew went to glory before they could reach the awesome age of 90. But one da...

Hurrying to one book-signing event, I bumped into an old friend, Conrad. He was on a short break from a writing workshop. "I want to ...

Patience: a word derived from the Latin verb patior that means, to suffer. Ergo, patience is the inner strength to bear what gets our goat w...

The dirt, grime, and filth are so real you can feel them on your skin and in your soul. On the other side of the world that we, the educat...

Before sending any children’s book manuscript to my publisher for finalization, I usually request four to five kids to read and critique it....

Uncle Bob passed on as he moved in life—quickly.    After a massive heart attack, he was cremated and buried before the beginning of what C...

“I am an advocate for short paragraphs,” I told my class in Business English, after reviewing their term papers. My obvious rationale:  ...

Day and night. Light and darkness. There are two sides to everything. But the dark side seems to be winning out lately. If you read the ne...

Has the world of children turned dark while I was sleeping? I recently conducted another Creative Writing Workshop for kids ages 8-12. Th...

“We are going paperless this term,” announced our department Chair during our faculty meeting. I broke out in cold sweat and hives. I also s...

I thought the first workshop was going to be a one-off event . But to accommodate friends’ requests for a creative writing workshop for th...

This is my sixth and last blog post on our delightful twins, Maika and Nikka. They have graduated from grade school! I intended to write and...

Escalators are pretty safe for adults; they are slow moving and have hand rails. How could anyone possibly meet an accident there? Well, T...

On the first day of my English for Business class, I assigned my students to research on writing business emails. “Apply what you have learn...

Patience was what I tried to summon for two weeks, but miserably failed. Within those dates, I had alternately cajoled, instructed, and warn...

My mother was an active member of the women’s group in our church. I grew up often seeing her excitedly packing her bag for conferences here...

Teachers today mourn the fact that students do not read anymore. These digital netizens simply skim over internet soundbites, FB messages, w...

Five years ago, I blogged about the 24/7 noise inside my ears— tinnitus —a symptom that my hearing was slowly going.   The noise is still ...

A recent trip to Singapore with my husband earned us countless but nameless friends. As Tony and I leisurely roamed the streets, visited i...

What’s so historically significant about the number 1000? None. What I readily think of, however, when I hear the number 1000 is found 1 P...

For some years now, I have been conducting creative writing workshops initiated by organizations here and abroad, and just recently, by my p...

Two hours before the awarding ceremony dubbed “Celebrating Our Stars,” I was all dolled up, enduring the punishing pinch of my girdle and h...

“YOU JUST WON A GRAND PRIZE . . .” Thus screamed, in all caps, the subject-line of one of my unread email messages.  I receive emails of...

Being a principal sponsor or witness ( ninang ) in a wedding is, for me, a big responsibility. I take it seriously especially because the ...

Long ago, when I was a starving art student in Chicago, my small circle of Filipino friends, all faith brethren, and I would treat ourselves...

Let me quote Honoré de Balzac today, “When the heart is full, the lips are silent.” Unexpectedly, I came upon twin good news, like twin bu...