Year: 2026
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Seeing the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD) Sunken Garden on the Alone/Together movie poster from the plane movie list, I decided to watch it to remind me what it’s like to be in UPD. I can remember how during my master’s, my classmates were giddy about seeing Liza Soberano and Enrique Gil while shooting…
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Eight hours away from Toronto, watching the 2012 film Argo on the plane’s movie playlist, I thought about how its characters do things scared. They are scared because their lives are at stake if they fail, but they do it anyway because there’s no better alternative than to do it scared. Death will still catch…
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An hour at the skating rink gave me a pocket of solitude to think about the following:
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Then being at the airport feels like heaven while we were waiting at the boarding gate of our international flight. Listening to different languages spoken fluidly felt like listening to enchanting music from distant lands. And seeing different faces opened my mind to a greater world beyond the monotony of my own.
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My grandmother Lola Magdalena has lived a full life. She kept a farm running, raised goats, raised children, and taught more than a few grandchildren how to do things with their hands. So when we visited her on her 86th birthday, I wasn’t prepared for what dementia had taken. I can’t imagine how fast it…
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My grandmother, Lola Magda, has raised goats her whole life, so when I thought about raising one after finishing my master’s degree, she was the first person I called. But instead of giving me a step-by-step guide, she did something better: she had a goat delivered to my childhood home while I was still in…
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The ghost of productivity haunted me in the early 2020s. It could be the nationwide lockdowns that came with the pandemic making me want to always reach out to podcasts to keep me company while in the shower, making breakfast, and tidying up my room. Because at that time, it felt like not learning something…