March 4, 2014
Zambales Photo Essay: To Zambales to Mend What did I do to deserve this extravagance of my color: green? Do I deserve this much happiness? Yes, the color of happiness. Brown. Blue. And I, a woman, with uncontrollable black hair. I had the guts because I was alone. Ah, no, […]
February 20, 2014
We live in words—some beautiful, some painful, some hopeful, some gnawing, some dark, some lucid, some heavy, some light. We live in words. This one was for a certain someone. I gift words—but sometimes they don’t come out right. More than three years ago, I quoted Mary Oliver on one […]
February 15, 2014
I spent some time reading and writing at one of those beautiful love seats at Ocean Vida. They are the only resort that has huge bean bags laid out on the beach in the afternoon. Earlier this year, the masseuses starts wearing blue and green uniforms. You can find them […]
February 10, 2014
Here are some Malapascua Island photos: Snobbery is an unlikely character of a traveler. But sometimes I cannot help but label islands either too touristy or superficial and tend to avoid traveling to these places I—who prided herself a traveler—reduced to tourist consumption. It did not help that Malapascua has […]
January 27, 2014
Here are some southern Cebu photos: Dry coughing. Feverish. A rather painful lower back. That’s me today. But yesterday. Yesterday was awesome. Perhaps it was insanity for me to cure insomnia with a bus ride. At two, I fed my litter, left my small place, bought sikwate and puto from […]
January 22, 2014
Walkers are ‘practitioners of the city,’ for the city is made to be walked. A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities. Just as language limits what can be said, architecture limits where one can […]
January 20, 2014
I asked Chad to write about our trip to Kinatarcan, knowing it was a crazy trip. I just told him to write with sincerity and honesty. But he was way too honest! But I actually loved it and laughed so hard while reading. So here is his recounting of our […]
January 16, 2014
Sun Xi Beach Club Alegria Photos Staying a night at Kawasan was the original plan. But my muse remains a snob—and it is better that way—to Internet and phones. So we had to scout a place where I could finish some work and where Chad could check his sports. We […]
January 15, 2014
Inside the tunnel-like tent, it was hot. So Nanay in her 70s chased the shade running scarce in the treeless lot at Cebu South Road Properties. She sat on a kid’s stool in the tent’s shade with her sunglasses on. The younger ones huddled at the big tent in the […]
January 12, 2014
It is a personal pilgrimage. To visit my muse, that is. Despite my countless visits, Kawasan’s vigor strikes me as exciting as the first time I set eyes on her. We were supposed to visit this place on New Year’s Day to lead off the year with rush, flow, exuberance. […]
January 5, 2014
Somewhere mid-2013, I embarked on a photography project I named “Images from the Bus Window.” Instead of randomly shooting subjects from the bus window, this project now comes with a theme. Let me start with the theme yellow. For Hannah Reyes, a very young and hot photographer I admired a […]