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Last night I called an Uber from my mother-in-law's house (my wife was staying the night with her) to take me home to our apartment, and I noticed that the car was driving away from me. The driver was already in the immediate vicinity, about two minutes away, but I noticed right away that he was driving in the opposite direction. (And no, he wasn't finishing a previous trip.) I'm not new to the ride-hailing game, fuck no. And heck, I'm from the Philippines. A lot of Grab drivers use this tactic too, in the hopes that the passenger will cancel to avoid a penalty. The problem is, I can be petty as fuck. There was no way in hell I would cancel the ride before that scumbag of a driver did, and so I was already preparing to spend the night sleeping on the couch at my mother-in-law's living room -- to, at first, my wife's amusement and then, later on, to her chagrin (she was pissed, all right: more at me than at the Uber driver. And I couldn't blame her. Lol). And...

  When I decided to transition from writing to teaching, I had to earn a couple of certifications. Before that, I volunteered to teach online English students in the Ukraine and Gaza, for experience. Even now, while carrying a full teaching load, I'm still studying for two more certifications, which I'll hopefully get in the next couple of months. After that, I'll be looking into a master's degree in education (to make me feel better after that master's program I abandoned in the Philippines? Probably. Who knows?) My point is, we SHOULD take our jobs seriously (especially something as critical as, well, I don't know--Senator??). God knows I have -- after 20+ years as a professional. And that's the operative word here, isn't it? PROFESSIONAL. Please, please, please, let's vote for qualified and competent candidates in the upcoming midterm elections. We've tolerated these clowns for the longest time.

This was me with Señor Manuel many years ago, when I first visited Mexico. Coming from a tropical country where the summer heat can literally kill you, I wasn't used to the relative cold of Mexico City in winter, and you can see the difference here in the way we were dressed -- it's hilarious.  He took me out one evening, along with my wife, Diana -- his youngest daughter -- to the best taqueria in town.I didn't speak a lick of Spanish at that time, and it was a pleasant surprise when Señor Manuel spoke to me in fluent English after graciously playing the piano for me after dinner one night in their home. He talked to me about his career as a music teacher that spanned many decades, and it never failed to amaze me to hear stories from his own former students -- many of whom would still call him on his birthday or on Christmas day after all these years -- about how inspiring a teacher he was to them. Some of these students we would chance upon on the street while we were wal...

Many years ago, I tried my hand at poetry.  A couple of my early “poems” were published in the student paper back in college, and I thought I could probably develop my poetry writing skills more, try to improve on my fledgling attempts.  I dropped it. Never tried to write a poem ever since.  I used to love reading poetry too. (I still enjoy the occasional poetry collection now and then, but fiction is still my go-to read.) I loved trying to make sense of the meaning of every poem, because to me a well-written poem should be metaphorical. What you see isn’t what you get. A well-written poem is a puzzle to be solved.  But ironically, the biggest reason I quit trying to write poetry is I couldn’t make use of metaphor or simile well. To me, my poems seemed superficial, shallow. Best leave it to the experts, I thought.  Through the years I’ve come across writers who’ve argued that poems should be more “accessible,” and I’ve appreciated these “easy to read” ...

Lately I’ve been using three laptops. One for my full-time job, one for my freelance gigs, and one for my personal (and, I’d like to think, more creative) pursuits. The most powerful of the three is the newest, although I could tell right away when the IT guy handed it to me -- when I first visited my new place of employment -- that it wasn’t brand new. The second one might be significantly older than the first, but it still has enough juice to play old games with, and index books with, and listen to streaming music with -- I just have to leave it plugged in, because the battery has seen better days. The third one is the oldest, running on an ancient Pentium processor, but still better than the PC assigned to me many years ago when I used to work for a publishing company in the Philippines -- but that’s another (hilarious) story. When I fire up the first laptop, which I do every morning from Monday to Friday (but now, more increasingly, also during weekends), I feel a sense of dread. I...

It's been eight years now living here in Mexico City, but I still find it strange when I think about it. To be writing this at the dining table on my old laptop, feeling the chill of the early afternoon creeping in from a window opened ever so slightly. Unless you're living in Baguio City in the Philippines, it's not usually commonplace to write "chill" and "early afternoon" in a single sentence. Of all the things I miss from the Philippines, it's the humidity that has to be last on the list. It's the kind of humidity that's unrelenting, the kind that sticks to you wherever you go. There's no escaping it. Just like there's no escaping this feeling of strangeness that I mentioned to begin this blog post. If you told me twenty years ago that I'd be living here in Mexico City as a permanent resident with my Mexican wife -- and speaking passable Spanish at that! -- I wouldn't have believed you. I would have said you were bonkers. ...

Sporting events like the Olympics or the Southeast Asian Games should be a wake-up call to a lot of Filipinos. Our athletes bust their asses day in and day out in training; they do their jobs to the best of their ability. They do their jobs even without a guaranteed budget because the money that should be given to them are stolen by politicians. When are we going to demand that those useless pabigats and epals and sarap-buhays in Malacañang, in the Senate, in Congress, and in city halls all over the country do their jobs for a change? And, more importantly, not steal from the public coffers? What's worse is that these scumbags even have the audacity to steal the spotlight from our athletes when they win medals and bring pride and honor to the country. We demand a lot from our athletes. We should demand more from our public servants.