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As a young child, I never had a long hair. I remembered I had an uncle who was so fond of me that he always wanted to cut my hair and named it the "Boracay Cut." I don't know what the rationale was about the name but I did remember crying each time my precious crown of glory was snipped. What took me so long to grow could just be cut by an uncle whose fondness and somewhat disdain for manes had been noteworthy.

When I was in my teens, I made sure not to see that uncle often. ...

The fastest way to get news these days is not through the newspaper, the radio, nor the TV, not even the internet but through hailing a cab and listening to some random driver talk about education, the government system and then some vitamin supplement.

This was what welcomed me as my plane touched down at the Mactan airport this morning. Under the heat of a typical April morning, I hailed a cab. I was trying to get my nerves all calmed down as I went down from a 16-seater jet stream ...

One of my fondest childhood recollections was that of spending summer afternoons at my grandfather's farm. At a young age, there I first learned to be a botanist. I learned to identify the time when a tree is about to give off its yield of fruits. The signs that flowers bloom in a tree meant time for me to look out in the succeeding days the fruits that would come out, much to my grandfather's chagrin because he always finds the fruits that he himself waited to sprout already gone. (I think I could ...

I had the chance to dine at a bayside bistro last night, overlooking the sea before me. While waiting for our orders to be cooked, an assortment of barbecued chicken feet they fondly called "Adidas," chicken liver and chorizo, I had a chance to look at the sky before me that is filled with stars. I have come to wonder how the stars seem to be just within my reach, when back in Cebu, the stars seem unreachable. Then it hit me that it was the first time I actually saw the sky clear that ...

"I don't need to get high grades. I only need to pass in order to go to the next level," so says one student whom I asked about his performance in school. This got me thinking. Gone were the days when our teachers and even our parents would tell us, "If you won't study hard, you'll end up a janitor." Well, I have nothing against janitors and maintenance personnel. I consider their jobs noble. It just so happened that our parents often dissuaded us into doing things that led to ...

No words.

I was on my way home after grabbing a bite when my head poked a hole through a thick puff of smoke exhaled by a smoker on the sidewalk. I coughed briefly for a few seconds and shot an angry glance at the man who nonchalantly kept on puffing off his stick. I shrugged and went on. I never really have that much of a grudge against smokers, perhaps due to the fact that I was once a smoker myself, and smoked for over 9 years before deciding to quit in 1997. I never smoked again. But sometimes I do get ...