Category: Nonfiction

On Writing Before Typing

Nonfiction by | May 16, 2010

While my friends fret with their laptops to do their assignments, I calmly write down ideas from my mind. Somehow, even with the proliferation of computing machines, I still find myself sticking it out with pen and paper. There is courage and strength when I hold a pen in my hand and set out to conquer the clean, empty space of the paper. Not that I disdain the computer. In fact, my games of Plants vs. Zombies show my fondness for it. the computer helps me with a lot of things, like the submission of reports and assignments.  However, I enjoy contributing to the bin by writing my thoughts first before typing them.

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Tagum Fairy Tales

Nonfiction by | May 9, 2010


I will be the first to admit that as a kid, I never grew up reading fairy tales. The lives of Cinderella, Little Mermaid, Snow White, and Little Red Riding Hood were never stored in my personal memory box. I have often wondered what my outlook would have been had I been initiated into these fairy stories early on.

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Success

Nonfiction by | May 3, 2010

How do we measure success? Each has her own answer to this basic question, and each is correct. It depends, I guess, on where one is coming from, or perhaps, where one is at the time the question came. Since is no right answer to this question, there is only the supposition of its accuracy, of its veracity. From whose perspective will the assessment of such accuracy come? I guess it will be from the perspective of one who had been there.

I measure my success not in terms of how much I have in the bank—for there is not a lot there, just a few measly pesos to tide me over till the next paycheck—nor even how long I have taught in the University. To do so, I think, is inutile, for then, I am but one of the many who have given their best to honor the age-old tradition of greater service for the glory of God. I am but one of the soldiers who march to the battlefront, swinging her gun to the rhythmic cadence of inspired heroism before the guns start to mow us down. I am one of the many who may still live the ideals of a world gone awry, tenaciously holding to what could have been so that this world could become a more habitable one for those who will come after us. So, what, then, is success for me?

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Hi Tech: Solutions or Problems?

Nonfiction by | May 3, 2010

One of my professors in masters’ education once said, “High tech solutions create high tech problems.” It was his remark while trying to fix the computerized multimedia projector that was having problem amidst our class. His statement struck me as remarkable, since, as a district Information and Communication Technology coordinator, I too have a wide background in computers. Just like my professor, I recognize how useful this new technology is in establishing effectiveness, efficiency, and productivity in this fast changing times. On the other hand, I usually encounter technical problems with the new technology, and we also have the same plea oftentimes. I enjoyed the benefit and comfort of using this technology while sometimes I felt the stress and anxiety it has caused me.

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His fatherly love

Nonfiction by | April 18, 2010

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When I was a child, I used to play with my friends after every class. We would play different games each day. But I only remember the game we play on Thursdays – the dakop-dakop. It was a predator searching for its prey type of game. My friends and I would play this high-energy game in the quadrangle of my grade school. I would scream, shout, and run as fast as I could so that the hungry predator would not catch me. When I am caught and become the “it,” I run faster to grasp my prey. Usually, everyone becomes a predator of the game before the first round ends.

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What it takes to be a man

Nonfiction by | April 18, 2010

I was six years old then when someone came knocking at our door around seven in the evening. I was asked to open it and so I did. After that, I saw myself standing in front of a huge man wearing a police uniform. That man was one of the people whom I feared the most, admired the most, and wanted to surpass the most – my father. He’s a huge, strict, man who had once killed a lot of people as a member of the army’s elite force – an example of this society’s idea of a real man.

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Maris and Jude

Nonfiction by | April 11, 2010

It is a Friday, 5 am, and Maris comes home after having pulled yet another all-nighter. She goes up to her room and sees her two children, Gabby, six, and Patrick, three, sleeping and oblivious to the creaking door as it opens. Maris enters and sits at one side of the bed watching her children. Her eyes linger on them for a moment, then fall on two travel bags that remind her of her flight to Tacloban City later that day. She glances at her watch, she realizes that she still has to go to work in three hours.

Coming home in the wee morning hours is normal for Maris — at least now it is. She works for two law firms, one in the Office of the Government Corporate Counsel and another with a consultancy for a business process outsourcing company. As the law firms don’t require her to be present daily, she also handles cases in her private practice. It is not the hours that measure the work that she does, it is the load of corporate cases she handles within those hours and after hours. Draining, but Maris does not let this get to her.

But this is not how it all used to be.

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Letters from Bengt, My Swedish Love

Nonfiction by | March 28, 2010

Fifty-two years after our last correspondence, at the age of 80, I discovered while delving into an old bureau a box of sepia-colored love letters—42 in all, with addresses from different parts of the world over a space of four years, 1955 to 1958, from Bengt Birgander, a very blond Swedish seaman whose fervent love for me was undeniable.

We had tried so desperately to get married after a shipboard romance on the freighter MS Mangalore where I was the only female on board carrying my Fordomatic car from New York through the Panama Canal to LA and across the Pacific to Manila—or a total of one month and a week.

In my soon to be published autobiography, I have a chapter on “My Super-blond Swedish Love” where I recount how I finally opened my cabin door to him but refused to give up my virginity. One of Bengt’s letters gives his views on that.

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