tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65169548516791917602012-01-28T22:18:44.351-08:00Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.comBlogger3251100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-23104290580009283182012-01-28T21:52:00.000-08:002012-01-28T21:52:17.057-08:00

THE IRONY is that in the places where you meet so few people, the folks turn out to be among the most likeable. Puerto Princesa City in Palawan is such a place. In the two hours or so it took to clear the airport and travel by van to the coast of Sabang, there seemed to be more trees than people. These are not just the scrawny, dusty urban survivors eking out an existence in concrete and

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-31182668969267612822012-01-28T21:50:00.000-08:002012-01-28T21:50:19.388-08:00

A WARM nest of bodies. Walking away from the Basilica del Sto. Niño’s final evening mass at the height of the fiesta novena, I came upon sidewalks full of people sleeping or settling down for the night. I felt like an interloper who walked in on guests of the house acting as “floor leaders,” a joke referring to the practice of barrio hosts to accommodate their fiesta visitors on mats spread

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-27339390646847928642012-01-14T19:10:00.000-08:002012-01-14T19:10:34.294-08:00

CAN an empty room disturb? At first, when I entered the Cebu City Museum last weekend, the silence was like a canvas splotched with the distant clamor of the streets, the freezing rush of the air-conditioning unit, and the flight of the dust motes. Being in a roomful of art can never be serene for long. On exhibit till the end of January, “Contemporary Cebu,” curated by J. V. Castro,

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-22624720901383838092012-01-07T21:13:00.000-08:002012-01-07T21:13:58.017-08:00

AN INSTRUCTION on reading or cultural resurgence? In search of the “Contemporary Cebu” exhibit, I stood outside the wrong museum. Answering my inquiry about modern art, the guard at the Museo Sugbu pointed out a tarpaulin announcing recently excavated artifacts. Rereading the invitation, I discovered the venue was not the provincial museum but the Cebu City Museum. For old-timers, the Rizal

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-84945804211874159712012-01-06T23:37:00.000-08:002012-01-06T23:37:56.839-08:00

THIS is my theory: if one lives by the sea, one must be reconciled to always living with a grain of sand. The final days of the old year deposit our family on the southern coast of Cebu. The sullen sky, the turbulence of the surf and the chill in the air create a spell of solitude that keeps away weekend worshippers but summons us, who crave a rest from the festivities ushering in a new year.

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-53754832944137482682011-12-17T17:57:00.000-08:002011-12-17T17:57:22.857-08:00

CHRISTMAS is a visual feast. Of all the indelible memories I retain from my youth, the belen is at the center. The tableau of the Child born in a manger, witnessed only by his parents, animals and shepherds, still spins many versions in my mind. Long before I saw the irony of the world’s salvation prefigured in that rude birth, I was drawn to the infinite opportunities of

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-78865725702277595532011-12-10T18:44:00.000-08:002011-12-10T18:44:25.562-08:00

EXCELLENCE and service. For embodying these intertwined values, 50 alumni of the University of the Philippines (U.P.) received Oblation statuettes from the U.P. Alumni Association Cebu Chapter Foundation Inc. (UPAACCFI). The statuettes symbolize the “Tatak UP” award, given for the first time by the UPAACCFI during the Alumni Homecoming held last Dec. 2, 2011. The figure of a nude man, with

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-26274993778934973262011-12-03T23:24:00.000-08:002011-12-03T23:24:14.524-08:00

LAST Dec. 2, journalist Carol Arguillas from Mindanao posed a question to the students filling the Center for Performing Arts at the University of San Jose-Recoletos: do you want to become a journalist? Arguillas, news editor of the online news service Mindanews, is the 2011 Marshall McLuhan Prize winner. The Canadian Embassy, which initiates the annual search, awarded Arguillas last June for

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-31373979034810612552011-11-26T18:21:00.000-08:002011-11-26T18:21:02.612-08:00

ODD couples sometimes work. The pairing of words not usually seen in each other’s company made me stop and reread an Associated Press (AP) article published last Nov. 25, 2011 by Sun.Star Cebu. “Female boxers shoot down skirts” was the “head” or headline of the AP report. For suggesting that in the London Olympics 2012, female boxers wear skirts, instead of the usual boxing kit,

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-27306144475070848982011-11-19T19:51:00.000-08:002011-11-19T19:51:24.227-08:00

HOW do we covet? Hannibal Lecter, that fastidious cannibal, memorably said in “The Silence of the Lambs” that people learn to covet what they see. In my case, reading undoes me. These past weeks, two emails stand out in my inbox. One informed me that the Ateneo Press Bookshop is holding a Christmas book sale from Nov. 14 to Dec. 15 at the Ateneo campus in Quezon City. My former student

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-60609197229138473922011-11-12T19:27:00.000-08:002011-11-12T19:27:37.936-08:00

THIS lot looks most unlikely to be in trafficking. Jhanika is into photography the way her sister, Micah, was so into music when I first knew her. Troy has a high sweet voice that hoists a pure clear bell above my head and slowly settles it down as the last few notes of benediction trail away. Joni wears many veils. She looks too slight to be a hard worker. Yet, after she

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-20442002047411585992011-11-05T19:40:00.000-07:002011-11-05T19:40:26.411-07:00

IF you shared chicken stew with a person, would he spare your life? One wonders if doubt ever assailed Lea, 15, during the 17 hours her father kept her hostage in their home in a mountainous village an hour’s walk from the Poblacion of Borbon, a northern town in Cebu. In Davinci S. Maru’s riveting account in Sun.Star Cebu’s Nov. 4, 2011 issue, the family hostage drama that kept the Borbon

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-11400398696109021542011-10-29T19:42:00.000-07:002011-10-29T19:42:21.979-07:00

TREE-LINED and recently spruced up, Osmeña Boulevard is pretty as a postcard scene, and as deceptive. Last Friday, at midmorning, my mother’s attention was caught by a group of teens that jogged across the street while the traffic lights turned red. One boy slowed down to pick something from the nape of a female passenger in one of the idling jeepneys. Before my mother could blink, the youth

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-31100506882313575532011-10-23T00:32:00.000-07:002011-10-23T00:32:47.626-07:00

DID the parents of Divine Saludaga foresee, 15 years ago, that their child would grow to become not just divine but uncommon? Divine is a senior at Tipolo National High School. According to Justin K. Vestil’s Oct. 18, 2011 report in Sun.Star Cebu, Divine was recently honored as one of Mandaue City’s Top 20 Outstanding Children. The 20 students were chosen for their academic and community

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-64644357773076351962011-10-20T21:14:00.000-07:002011-10-20T21:14:08.980-07:00

IF I were to curate our times, I would begin at the comfort rooms. CRs, as we call them in this shortcut-loving country, reflect the values and temper of an age. When I was still in uniform, we could eat in the CRs of our school, run by nuns. The air was so pure, these places seemed only remotely associated to Bodily Function No. 1, and hardly to No. 2. Cleaned once a day by the staff

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-45426172862068290102011-10-14T23:59:00.000-07:002011-10-14T23:59:24.493-07:00

“HELL Week” is inaccurate but apt for this time: the last remaining weeks of the semester when some students wake up and find out there is a final grade due and it’s not a white rabbit they can pull out of a trick hat but a computation based on their outputs and performance, or lack of it. Is it my imagination or am I seeing more uniforms in libraries and churches? Not all, though, rely on

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-31119508029941416762011-10-02T05:48:00.000-07:002011-10-02T05:48:10.587-07:00

IT’S not possible to read all the books in a human lifetime. It’s possible to let others read the books you can’t read in your lifetime. That didn’t come from a fortune cookie but from four years of “Their Books”. A brainchild of accidental journalist/children’s rights revolutionary/baby blogger extraordinaire Insoy Niñal, “Their Books” is

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-19973812132042523402011-09-24T22:23:00.000-07:002011-09-24T22:23:58.958-07:00

“ONCE upon a time” used to be good enough. Listening to the storytellers in my family and later, in the community, I learned that to hold a listener rapt to one’s tale was to imagine plaiting an unending flow that had one story cascading into another. Nearly all of the stories I grew up with were recollections. “I remember” was the phrase that made us children quiet and lift our faces to the

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-14532406005335065672011-09-17T19:59:00.000-07:002011-09-17T19:59:00.235-07:00

CAN you read? For someone who devoured books, I had one of the worst pick-up lines: check the sentence before this. This is exactly quoted from a boy I pounced on to read my radio script. That he happened to have the cutest shorts running around the soccer field of the University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu was only his secondary asset. It mattered more that he did not mangle English.

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-91404105536029989302011-09-10T19:21:00.000-07:002011-09-10T19:21:10.564-07:00

YOU are where you live. I met Celia when an afternoon shower prevented me from leaving the Sidlakan Center in Piapi, Dumaguete. Even after retiring as a public school teacher in Bayawan, Negros Oriental and raising four children, who now have families of their own, Celia has not yet tired of life and is working as a consultant for this privately initiated center promoting craftwork made by

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-58688525928287898262011-09-03T23:29:00.000-07:002011-09-03T23:29:47.859-07:00

“Nganong nag-apil-apil?” It’s a short trip via jeepney from the University of the Philippines (UP) Cebu in Lahug to a Vhire terminal at the North Reclamation Area. Usually, I enjoy this ride at the end of the day. I’m going home and can let my thoughts drift this way and that. Last Thursday, though, my fellow passenger gave me the longest 10-minute 04L ride so far. Barely getting past the

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-19933397513385886362011-08-27T23:23:00.000-07:002011-08-27T23:23:07.117-07:00

THE RECENT separate reports of demonic possession make me wonder: Is the craving to communicate with the unknown just a novelty for the young or a preoccupation among those already pierced by the twinges of mortality? I watched on the news several people restrain youths after they played spirit of the glass or the coin. Male and female students of different schools located in different parts

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-46125012809196406982011-08-26T21:13:00.000-07:002011-08-26T21:17:18.613-07:00

“JESUS saves USC” was the headline of an Aug. 14, 2011 article that reported how gymnast Jesus Zaragosa won two gold medals and boosted the standing of the team fielded by the University of San Carlos (USC) in the 16th Milo Little Olympics. That headline made me pause in my scanning, read and cheer: Hurrah, Jesus! Hurrah, USC! And cheers to Sun.Star Cebu sports editor Mike T. Limpag for

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-11668596655439146082011-08-14T05:51:00.000-07:002011-08-14T05:51:35.400-07:00

What’s the greater terror? Confronting something we don’t understand or recognizing the unspeakable that’s familiar? In its brief, interrupted public engagement, the Mideo Cruz exhibit at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) revealed a glimpse of ourselves. However its merits or demerits are perceived, this was art that fulfilled what may be its creator’s intention: it agitated.

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-71851873183193404962011-08-06T19:58:00.000-07:002011-08-06T19:58:26.093-07:00

ONE of the pleasures of teaching writing is reading a young, sometimes raw, voice straining to hear itself. The variety and disparity make the encounters. Some write without effort at all. Or at least no effort can make their unfettered voices conform to formula and rules. Then there are the plodders. If I persist in untangling mismatched verbs and irreconcilable tenses, it is either because

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-6062815374571733242011-07-30T18:38:00.000-07:002011-07-30T18:53:48.295-07:00

WILL I get paid if my article gets published? That was the first question raised by a campus journalist after I concluded a talk on writing features. Last July 29, I joined about 30 students in the 27th journalism seminar organized by Ang Suga, the official school publication of the Cebu Normal University (CNU). Many of the participants are writers and editors of Ang Suga while the others are

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-75964069492994895752011-07-23T21:14:00.000-07:002011-07-23T21:14:22.319-07:00

LAST Wednesday proved nature has few rivals in staging dramatic exits. In our faculty room in Lahug, we felt as much as heard the din as the clouds burst and poured for nearly an hour at about 4 p.m. Tired by a day of teaching, checking and editing, I did not join the crowds that, defeated by traffic, flashfloods and a perplexing fire that broke out on Samson Road in Lahug, stoically

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-59652184503626715312011-07-16T19:07:00.000-07:002011-07-16T19:13:04.623-07:00

ON the day Cebu City was designated as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) City of Culture, my friend and I were walking back to her hotel along Osmeña Boulevard. After an afternoon of coffee and stories near the Provincial Capitol, we prepared to part, she to wait for her husband and I to meet up with a son. My friend declared she planned to walk the few blocks back to the

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-78588375273941920022011-07-09T22:30:00.000-07:002011-07-16T19:09:24.120-07:00

WITH my bags of books and groceries, I squeezed in beside the woman seated quietly beside the Vhire window. The bags, the woman and I made too intimate a fit in that narrow space. After a few minutes, two other passengers completed our row. While getting my fare, I felt someone’s eyes on me. When I glanced at my left neighbor, what I mistook to be a bundle hugged to her chest turned out to be

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-2042399136271342582011-07-03T02:04:00.000-07:002011-07-03T02:04:15.171-07:00

A BABY is a blessing. Why is that beginning to sound more like an invocation than a statement of fact? After Andi Eigenmann, 21, was reported as pregnant, two fellow actresses advised her to use the break to become a good mother. According to an ABS-CBN TV report, Ruffa Gutierrez said, “I’m really sad ‘kasi’ I was really looking forward to working with her. Of course having a baby is a

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-38195518988376773752011-06-25T22:36:00.000-07:002011-06-25T22:36:44.032-07:00

RAIN, rain, go away. I remember this childhood chant when brooding skies open up these days. Squeezing inside a jeepney minutes after an early morning downpour raised the stakes in the usual dementia of reporting for work on time, I noticed how, aside from nearly interlocking passengers’ knees blocking the aisle, I had to go through a gauntlet of furled and dripping umbrellas. Once upon a

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-29422711929940999292011-06-18T22:10:00.000-07:002011-06-18T22:10:49.937-07:00

WE crossed the sea between the south of Cebu and Negros Oriental while a storm was whipping up little white, wild horses and flinging these with skeins of water against the side of our fast craft. In the lower deck, we sat and watched a white wall. Three hangers held men’s shirts, used from the way these were turned inside-out. For nearly half an hour, we watched the shirts tilt left and right

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-3491257123233777012011-06-18T21:58:00.000-07:002011-06-18T22:12:47.775-07:00

SEX teaches. School began this week for many of us. Returning to the world of syllabi and prerequisites, I surfed the Net in between classes and found a seemingly more efficient teacher prowling out there. This month, U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner catapulted to the top of several Internet searches after he exposed himself as a serial sharer of self-taken photos. In the Age of Facebook, a fondness

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-12093091895450199562011-06-04T20:26:00.000-07:002011-06-04T20:26:27.916-07:00

AS an eternal passenger, only one thing interests me about highways and roads. It often falls on me to look for signs and landmarks to assist the person behind the wheel. Unlike this person, though, whose priority is to get to some place at a certain time, I’m happy enough to be distracted by roadside views, “being here” taking precedence over “getting there”. In this country, a chief

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-29028916775983925542011-06-04T05:07:00.000-07:002011-06-04T05:10:30.293-07:00

Museum- and night-prowling are spectator sports I discovered in Manila. As a small-town person with small-pond predilections, I find the capital overwhelming. To understand a new place, I usually walk around to wait which pinches first: the calluses of my feet or the preconceived notions in my mind. But this sprawling, brawling place demands a marshalling of resources. When finding my way out

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-58053449829674819492011-06-04T05:04:00.000-07:002011-06-04T05:11:07.008-07:00

I WATCH bags during airport waits. Then I check their owners’ faces to see if they match the way they’ve packed to go. Why not look at the persons first? It’s a game I play to calm myself. I’m used to waiting—all the queues I’ve joined, out of obeisance to bureaucracy and curiosity—but airports, with their technology and (in)security, unsettle me. I have mixed feelings about travel. I can

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-9591945841435271152011-05-14T19:14:00.000-07:002011-05-14T19:14:07.013-07:00

COMING from such intelligence and elegance, the boorishness is all the more appalling. I woke up before my usual hour to find the Dog’s muzzle snorting the hot fumes of his distress somewhere between my eye and a quickly dissipating dream. I already knew what was coming. Before the dream vanished entirely, Udo let out a howl, or a series of pained affronted cries instantly taken up by the dog

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-52464271361590417292011-05-07T18:19:00.000-07:002011-05-07T18:19:31.489-07:00

GOOD Friday in Dumaguete is still slow enough to savor a procession. Our family stood at a corner of Perdices St., waiting for the Santo Entiero procession to start. The mass after 3 p.m.—the time Jesus expired on the cross—found the St. Catherine of Alexandria Cathedral, also known as the Dumaguete Cathedral, full of people and, this being Dumaguete, mopeds and motorbikes. The

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-11667036266581109132011-04-30T15:45:00.000-07:002011-04-30T15:45:19.494-07:00

OF the ones we love, we think we only expect constancy. Only later do we realize that we are hardly capable of that ourselves. The inability to change does not hold off betrayal or loss. At a certain point, the unvarying, the predictable is the terminal, a diminishing, death. We found ourselves stuck in Dumaguete on Good Friday. For the past two days, we managed to squeeze in all we planned,

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-34368073183351834722011-04-23T21:31:00.000-07:002011-04-23T21:35:16.313-07:00

ALLEGIANCE seems always reduced to choice. My affection for Dumaguete is not so much a matter of choice but of incidence and accident. Although my father’s fears aborted my high school dream of studying Literature at Silliman University, I still found myself in Dumaguete, either on job-related trips to nearby Siquijor, Bacolod or certain towns of Negros Oriental, or on personal pursuits where I

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-32681002078930635552011-04-16T18:25:00.000-07:002011-04-16T18:25:39.784-07:00

“I’M still alive,” Fr. Jack Serate, a Franciscan missionary serving in Japan, emailed on Mar. 22. This was 11 days after Mar. 11, a day whose claim to history lies in approximately two minutes: a magnitude-8.9 quake, a seven meter-high tsunami, and nuclear contamination. Yet, framed by human quirks, the scale of these triple disasters I narrowed to this pinpoint of concern: how was Fr. Jack?

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-87642305597000531132011-04-09T18:49:00.000-07:002011-04-09T18:49:48.375-07:00

ONE day while scanning symbols—coded for the unexplored terrain of economics and finance—I realized how the discourse that flows around us exists side by side with small, still pools that separate their secrets from the pedestrian. While we bob around, content to be carried here and there, by the streams of language we pay only half a mind to, it may happen that our attention is snagged by a

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-86490927662404497262011-04-02T19:54:00.000-07:002011-04-02T19:54:59.778-07:00

SO many books to read and not enough time is a dilemma that never afflicts my boys. It plagues their mother, which should balance some divine scale but fails to bring the poor woman any comfort or her children, any rest. When summer begins, the battle of will and wits begins in our home. For my boys, the first day after final exams spells glorious liberation from everything that smells like a

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-1355092329500857392011-03-26T20:28:00.000-07:002011-03-26T20:30:46.713-07:00

I’M a fan of mall events, specially the unplanned ones. Recently, while accompanying the husband and teenage son to check out gadgets, we turned a corner and almost bumped into celebrities. My foot-dragging made me swerve in time and avoid a collision with Rei’s baby bump. Rei is the first of my former students I saw get married on Facebook. That evening, Rei and Baby Bump (BB) were accompanied

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-26238767263553254142011-03-19T19:57:00.000-07:002011-03-19T20:02:31.155-07:00

“DON’T they want oxygen?” That’s a question exasperated student Preran Chowdary asked his forest minister when the Indian government publicly announced its plan to cut trees to transform a 60-feet road into an eight-lane superhighway in Bangalore, India. According to a Nov. 10, 2010 article posted on www.ndtv.com, modernization rationalizes the removal of 856 trees, averaging about 40 years old,

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-65193750586634737642011-03-12T19:03:00.000-08:002011-03-12T19:07:53.478-08:00

THE START of Lent assembles an unusual company of fishes on our table. One lunch, I found “katambak” in the “tinowa,” fried and shredded “anduhaw” in the mixed vegetables, dried “lagaw,” and a dip made of fermented, nearly transparent “bolinao” known as “puti-an” in the southern town of Alegria.Except for the stewed “katambak,” still gasping and red of gills when bought from the market, all the

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-73683739585385239282011-03-05T15:59:00.000-08:002011-03-05T16:01:52.394-08:00

The recent commemoration of the People Power Revolution, which ousted a dictator without bloodshed, drew a lot of re-examination in the media. Listening to people from all walks of life remember events of 25 years ago, I am reminded of a manufacturer’s warning printed on the rear view mirror of a vehicle. The eternal passenger, I was trying to help a driver negotiate a tricky maneuver but ended

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-66437146538761602552011-02-26T18:09:00.000-08:002011-02-26T18:13:18.717-08:00

GIVEN that they intersect so often, you’d think men and women view sex in the same way. Seemingly not. I realized this while alternately moderating and participating in a discussion about protecting women journalists in sexual harassment cases. Last Friday’s forum followed a presentation of safety tips made by Cherry Ann T. Lim, assistant executive director of the Cebu Citizens-Press Council (

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-88646478698958709572011-02-19T19:17:00.000-08:002011-02-19T20:47:14.707-08:00

CORRESPONDENT Carmel Loise Matus recently filed a formal complaint of harassment against Talisay City police chief, Superintendent Henry Biñas. Last Feb. 18, 2011, Sun.Star Cebu’s Garry A. Cabotaje, Justin K. Vestil and Kevin A. Lagunda reported that Biñas viewed that his “friendly gesture… was misconstrued” by Matus. The Police Regional Office 7 is investigating the administrative complaint. As

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-63369200181716990882011-02-12T14:12:00.000-08:002011-02-12T14:15:32.691-08:00

THERE’S a woman in the office who’s always crying. I can’t see her but I can hear her. If she were like other women, who’ve learned to cry in silence so total they can pretend to themselves they’re not crying, it might be so much better. The way this woman carries on, though, I’ve begun to think of her crying as her natural voice, the only way she has to let us know she’s around. Like the women

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-72025743907701763062011-02-05T18:24:00.000-08:002011-02-05T18:29:38.633-08:00

THANK you, Father, for your text last Thursday. I didn’t know today, Feb. 6, is Pro-Life Sunday. Your invitation to read the Pastoral Letter of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), “Choosing Life, Rejecting the RH Bill,” was just in time. I had seen the CBCP full-page ad in a national daily, but had skipped it. Rather than download the Pastoral Letter from

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-60904974458983687032011-01-30T07:28:00.000-08:002011-01-30T07:30:58.836-08:00

I ENVY water. It can be whatever it wants to be. Or, paraphrasing a grade-school science lesson: liquid assumes the shape of its vessel.- Basilica del Sto. Niño spokesman Fr. Tito Soquiño, OSA, on the heavy rains and flash flood during the Jan. 15, 2010 Saturday Grand Procession:“These rains can also be a calling for us to purify ourselves. The small flash floods are an indication that maybe the

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-23134684755702571322011-01-23T00:06:00.000-08:002011-01-23T00:08:49.984-08:00

FOLLOW the stories. Find the way. Last Saturday, we left home too close to noon and had to walk from Plaza Independencia to reach Leon Kilat St. Some streets in the downtown area were already closed to vehicular traffic to clear the route for the 1 p.m. Grand Procession of the Señor Sto. Niño. Our older son was assigned with his college batch to man the cordon along Leon Kilat St. As we were all

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-63129549636909443662011-01-15T23:27:00.000-08:002011-01-15T23:41:40.493-08:00

WHAT’S your Sinulog story? As I was thinking of what to put in the article that will occupy this space on Sunday, I realized for the first time how, for years now, the piece I compose for every third Sunday of January is invariably about the fiesta of the Sto. Niño de Cebu. I must have been in my mid-30s when I walked out of the newsroom a few minutes before Saturday noonbreak to find the streets

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-8150300790770112902011-01-15T23:24:00.000-08:002011-01-15T23:27:34.311-08:00

WHEN Happy Pup barreled into me and greeted me like a long-absentfriend, even though it was our first time to smell each other, hismistress, S., told this anecdote to explain how such a short-leggedfellow came to trail around not just one but two impressively extendednames. The dachshund greets everyone, two- or four-legged, who walks in thisBadian retreat. Without even barking a sales

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-36642181147702011502010-12-18T16:37:00.000-08:002010-12-18T16:41:12.176-08:00

MY niece, Aurora, is a force of nature. We waited a long time for her but when she finally came, you could say there was a lot of surprise on both sides. Just before Rory turned six months old, my sister’s family came home so our youngest member could meet her Cebuano side.Approaching the airport, our generally nearsighted horde already spotted the wee creature propped against my sister’s belly.

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-29221598101975089322010-12-11T15:18:00.000-08:002010-12-11T15:23:39.092-08:00

PETS are very good to their humans. Anyone who lives with a dog will not argue. Sloppy, sticky and abiding, doglove is the secret to world peace, if only we could find a way to translate this to human-for-human terms. The felines are not far behind. Even if its innate unshakeable dignity dictates that a cat permits its human only one pat throughout its entire nine lives, we humans accept without

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-39538666476796533522010-12-04T16:08:00.000-08:002010-12-04T16:10:47.636-08:00

MY holiday began early when I received this gift bin. In a season replete with generosity, this group of companies stands out for its consistent patronage of locally made products and reuse of materials.Made from recycled newspapers, the bin was braided by local community groups. The weaving can compete with the best works of artisans of South America and Africa, whose weavework is so magical, it

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-5893702815352376052010-11-27T04:10:00.000-08:002010-11-27T04:17:17.079-08:00

TO be poor used to be unfortunate.Now to be friendless is the new unfortunate.That’s the fate threatening Facebook if it does not “unfriend” coal.The leading social networking site, which drew 500 million members by July 2010, attracts through features that include how to “friend” or “unfriend” contacts. According to the New York Times’ Kate Ross in its Nov. 4, 2010 issue, environmental advocate

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-65568441564857491482010-11-20T16:43:00.000-08:002010-11-20T16:47:31.770-08:00

I RECEIVED a letter. When my son handed to me the long white envelope along with the newspapers he picked up from the newsroom, I guessed by the sloping handwriting on the envelope that it was neither an invitation nor a machine-regurgitated notification asking to be disregarded in case of irrelevance. I eyed the letter askance. Among journalists, a white envelope is portentous. It may hold a

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-27950960775605034772010-11-13T18:11:00.000-08:002010-11-13T18:13:23.345-08:00

BEFORE Twitter came along, a “twitter” meant either a bird chirping or, in imitation of a chirrup, people tittering over something that’s agitating them. By late 2009, when Twitter became the third most popular social networking site, next to Facebook and Windows Live Profile, a Tweet, which is a message of not more than 140 characters that you encode and send through the Internet, does not just

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-68804327644973400692010-11-06T18:58:00.000-07:002010-11-06T19:01:47.650-07:00

HOW do you kill news coverage? Raise the rent of a journalist’s office. A press association covering the United Nations (UN) said that if the international organization charges the media rent for their headquarters, the news coverage will become a trickle and the UN will be “just another international organization that only makes headlines when bedbugs are found there.” According to a report

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-86413172569905427622010-10-30T21:07:00.000-07:002010-10-30T21:10:05.568-07:00

IT’S better than “FernGully” and “Avatar,” even “Plants vs. Zombies,” a cute video game that pits a homeowner and his plants against a marauding horde of the uncute undead. Mainly because it’s better than these ecologically inspired media, the message is ambiguous and disquieting.In Surigao del Sur, the Mamanwa and Manobo tribes oppose the Ventura Timber Corp. (VTC), which has been granted an

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-48621277442305922692010-10-23T14:37:00.000-07:002010-10-23T14:41:13.321-07:00

LOVE does not just move everyone, from presidents to birds. It is the impetus for research and experiments in an emerging new science.When a State University of New York researcher of the science of love cross-pollinated his ideas with a pain scientist at the Stanford University, the result was a neuroscience study that found evidence that romantic love may relieve physical pain like a drug,

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-4700432230029090462010-10-16T18:51:00.000-07:002010-10-16T18:56:01.708-07:00

THE SKIES opened on the day I brought books for my students to take home for sembreak reading. Since the route to school involves two jeepney rides, the early morning downpour tested my ability to lug a purse, an umbrella and two big bags of books.Fortunately, I’m a buyot creature. The buyot is the Cebuano version of the bayong, a native bag used by women in the past to transport anything to and

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-89018479960935021442010-10-09T22:42:00.000-07:002010-10-09T22:46:38.535-07:00

THE QUEST is heroism distilled. It’s been weeks since I’ve been tagged by friends to come up with a list of 15 books I read “that will always stick with me”. Stickiness, as defined by the tagging rules, means the first 15 books to be remembered within 15 minutes. After 15 minutes lapsed, I realized that my list, if it ever was going to be done at all, was going to be different. Some

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-32790392430940823692010-10-02T22:23:00.000-07:002010-10-02T22:27:20.909-07:00

ASIDE from a bed, the most intimate thing one can share with another is a meal. Filipinos bond over food. Unashamedly, colleagues scrutinize each other’s lunch. We sample each other’s hastily packed breakfast or the remnants of a family feast or the unclassifiable weekend experiment. We masticate failed affairs, office power struggles, jokes/politics and the state of our health as carefully as

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-26409920315176347202010-09-25T22:45:00.000-07:002010-09-25T22:48:07.833-07:00

CHOOSING is easy when the range is limited to the good and the bad. Instead of comforting, though, the undeniability of this logic chaffed when I recently had to make a choice between John McPhee’s “Encounters with the Archdruid” and Stephen Glass’s “The Fabulist”. I was in this secondhand bookstore, looking for a weekend treat that would not cost more than P151 (that’s all the change I had

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-81652008237689841042010-09-19T00:09:00.000-07:002010-09-19T00:14:41.858-07:00

TODAY, local journalists observe a weeklong commemoration of press freedom. Thirty-eight years ago, Ferdinand Marcos placed the country under martial law and scuttled all forms of liberty. Such Sept. 21 associations put the spotlight on the journalist. This year, though, my thoughts are on the other player, less visible but more vital: the reader. The term, “reader,” limits. The generic “

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-79598865828877545472010-09-13T00:44:00.000-07:002010-09-13T01:03:16.078-07:00

Entrap, search and destroy. Saturation drive. Hotspots. The language betrays what’s now out of the public’s affections: mosquitoes. According to a Sept. 10, 2010 article published in Sun.Star Cebu, Cebu barangays’ anti-dengue drives run the gamut from issuing citation tickets to those caught dumping trash to terminating bugs with extreme prejudice. About 100 personnel and volunteers beefed up a

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-13888956233527928252010-09-04T18:24:00.000-07:002010-09-04T18:26:42.709-07:00

MY late father disliked being the cynosure of attention. Towards the end of his life, he largely succeeded in staying undetected by reducing his human contact to the absolutely necessary: his family, his barber, and the newsprint faces and radio voices whose commentaries he respected. One day, though, he broke this self-imposed rule of inconspicuousness. An ambulance entered our cul-de-sac and

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-24852863272024873152010-08-29T17:59:00.000-07:002010-08-29T18:03:15.664-07:00

UNTIL he started shooting the hostages, the man was a seven o’clock news joke. He was a cop but a disgraced one, condemned for extortion and stripped of all his retirement benefits. He wanted to be reinstated and to get the authorities’ attention, held hostage foreigners who wanted to see the best that this country could offer.He was a certified creation of our times—a newsmaker who shot to

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-8287326991435647132010-08-22T03:10:00.000-07:002010-08-22T03:14:39.934-07:00

NANAY tends a small store underneath a skywalk. When I’m waiting for a jeepney ride in the morning, I see her already arranging the banana leaf-wrapped puto maya she sells to early risers. In the afternoon, if I’m not yet running late, I stop and buy whatever she’s selling. Usually, it’s fried bananas. If she happens to be in the midst of frying a batch, she’ll finish a few pieces and wrap

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-33675903722977195282010-08-14T23:53:00.000-07:002010-08-14T23:56:43.181-07:00

Or maybe I should rephrase the title of this piece to the more positive: “How to live longer when born short”. Before the reader continues, I should say a line or two of warning: I am warming up to write for a health blog in need of about 300 words weekly on wellness. No one recruited me. I suspect only my sister believes I can get away with writing about exercise and stuff. When she had a

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-26272578323165565882010-08-08T00:00:00.000-07:002010-08-08T00:02:58.305-07:00

THE MOTHS are here. The vines that twine around the trellis fronting our home are favorites of the human and feline occupants. For most of the year, there’s shade and a coronet of flowers and birds, which the cats heartily approve of. In summer, the caterpillars show up. The leaves disappear. There’s never a week when pieces of the laundry have to be washed again to remove the brown stains that

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-48441617792390453072010-07-31T00:30:00.000-07:002010-07-31T00:33:52.659-07:00

“I WAS misinterpreted.” This, in a nutshell, was the defense made by a diocesan priest recently accused by a Catholic student of touching the strap of her bra while he heard her confession. Last Jul. 30, Sun.Star Cebu’s Justin K. Vestil and Bernadette A. Parco reported that the accused priest said he only “tapped” the students on the back and “drew his face closer” to “whisper” his advice during

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-31634332855828175052010-07-24T16:21:00.000-07:002010-07-24T16:26:46.019-07:00

WHEN I met Cecille the first time, she blended in with her batch: smart, confident, promising. (Real name withheld.) I saw Cecille in another light when she, along with two other coeds, was a news source for an article about one-night stands. For fact-checking, the writer submitted the names of his anonymous sources. I couldn’t associate the articulate and witty Cecille with the person so

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-7922500359866549662010-07-17T20:04:00.000-07:002010-07-24T16:52:13.022-07:00

Mr. Clean-cut & Earnest. Taking over as male co-anchor of the “Wowowee” noontime show, Lucky Manzano was acceptable when he did not distract me from my lunch.Though he does not create sparks like his actor-politician parents, Manzano is still less grating than its still-absent former host. When interviewing the folks who are thrilled to compete in a game requiring them to guess a song’s title,

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-59889613683432668892010-07-10T21:15:00.000-07:002010-07-10T21:18:59.839-07:00

WHEN we visited my lola the other night, she was repairing her wooden fan. Lola was applying a bottle of glue to stick back the cloth that came loose from some of the wooden staves. My cousin, glancing up from his laptop, offered to buy our grandmother a new fan. Lola held up the repaired fan, now fully unfurled, and experimentally stirred the air with it.If I forget this fan in church, it will

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-82786133051095248922010-07-03T22:45:00.000-07:002010-07-03T22:50:26.871-07:00

DROP by our home and you will also not fail to miss our garden. Ask the mailman, the water delivery boys, the teachers conducting the latest census. After they mount the stairs and spot this rectangle of about 25 square meters, visitors nearly always stay on the pebbled path that leads to the door.They might just want to spare their shoes or avoid stirring up mosquitoes as large as horses from

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-42223024244029952602010-06-27T01:03:00.000-07:002010-06-27T01:05:26.149-07:00

WHAT’S the cost of obsession?To find and kill Osama bin Laden, Gary Brooks Faulkner pawned all his construction equipment and put a lot of wear and tear on his kidneys. In the news, the American recently returned to his Colorado home after he was detained and then released by the Pakistani government. According to The New York Times/International Herald Tribune, he was roaming in the “lawless

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-30269054259670120752010-06-19T23:38:00.000-07:002010-06-19T23:44:55.808-07:00

“HILAN” and “dakit” are Cebuano words I renewed an acquaintance with, following the June 13, 2010 accident in Balamban, which killed at least 20 people and injured other passengers of a bus that plunged off the Transcentral Highway in Balamban, Cebu. Aside from focusing on the tragedy and the probe to determine cause and culpability, some of the local and national media coverage included a detail

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-26438516451031821062010-06-13T00:07:00.000-07:002010-06-13T00:10:39.249-07:00

WHEN our all-girl high school batch dispersed soon after graduation to different colleges, the grapevine kept us connected. These days, Facebook chats and SMS-organized reunions help us keep tabs with who’s now promoted to grannywatch or who’s maintaining which medication. In the 1980s, the grapevine issued more dramatic bulletins: who had to get married. Whenever the verb “had” walks into a

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-54058625555250417442010-06-05T22:59:00.000-07:002010-06-05T23:01:38.616-07:00

WHICH word grabs you: “diligence” or “tessellated”?I am drawn more to the word on the right.I’m not sure what it actually means, but tassels of images and ideas tangle and brush the back of my mind while I’m turning the word around. “Diligence,” on the other hand, lies inertly like the lump of breakfast cereal I sometimes use to blot my conscience. I know oatmeal’s good for me but I’m not curious

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-42795643471936940532010-05-29T23:32:00.000-07:002010-05-29T23:36:54.785-07:00

NOW, notebooks are in the news, their prices monitored by parents and authorities, their covers and binding scrutinized by non-government organizations for harmful substances like polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and lead. But after school starts, notebooks plummet from the view of the public, the monitoring bodies, even students and mentors. It’s a reality that may explain why we are a nation of 15

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-52049622208976875752010-05-22T22:38:00.000-07:002010-05-22T22:41:18.379-07:00

WHAT takes the place of postcards in the age of emails? I once stepped inside a classroom that created, for United Nations Day, a mural of postcards from all over the world. It made a pretty quilt. Since the postcards were pasted against a “sinamay” background, the loose weaving of the fiber made it possible to read some of the notes written by the postcard senders. “Here in Walawala. Wish you

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-88659902417380276522010-05-15T23:54:00.000-07:002010-05-15T23:59:55.884-07:00

THE FLY that walked like an underwater trapeze artist in my “utan Bisaya” transformed lunch into a spectacle in the south of Cebu, but I am getting ahead of my story.When my mother sent us off on an errand late last week, we welcomed the break.After the view outside the bus window exchanged walls jaded with campaign hangover for open spaces, I realized how toxic the city had become for weeks,

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-1040744032532014952010-05-08T21:16:00.000-07:002010-05-08T21:20:44.556-07:00

ON May 10, I wonder how many of us will honor our mother. I’m not confusing dates. I know that Sunday, May 9, is celebrated as Mother’s Day. But on Monday, when we select the next women and men to lead the country, for better or worse, we may be subtly influenced in our choices by an institution since nursery days: mothers. More than any election within recall, this one harnesses a lot of mother

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-25336760283025335542010-05-01T21:53:00.000-07:002010-05-01T21:57:32.867-07:00

LAST Friday, at about 3 p.m., I took a last trip with Fr. Paddy. We were a motley group slowing down traffic along Mango Ave. Some were in shoes, many in slippers. The sun beat down democratically on all our heads. From passing vehicles, I heard snatches of campaign jingles. A driver poked his head out of a stalled taxi, perhaps confused why our group was not in uniform or chanted no name. I

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-18103580462046813312010-04-24T20:28:00.000-07:002010-04-24T20:33:20.898-07:00

NUMBERS matter, I’ve learned during this election.Recently, I joined a lunch where the “wander-full” conversation, as a companion quipped, competed with the dishes, and handily won.Since I have no chance of being invited again in this city if I spill everything that flew thick and fast over Monday’s pomelo salad, I will just mention one fearless prediction that seems to be that oxymoron—an “open

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-15393398667736344822010-04-16T23:03:00.000-07:002010-04-16T23:06:21.498-07:00

WHAT does your wrist say? A late night TV report recently focused on the bracelet swap Sen. Ana Consuelo “Jamby” Madrigal entertained during a campaign sortie. The news footage showed the candidate, running independently for the presidency, tossing bracelets to an enthusiastic market crowd that included children, women and men, young and old. The report then cut to an on-cam shot of the senator

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-44351194442363658132010-04-10T21:52:00.000-07:002010-04-10T21:56:48.141-07:00

WHEN people gather in the country, the eating is always the centerpiece.Does what comes after the eating dwindle or increase in importance?Some nights ago, I was among friends, watching an azure sky deepen into a purple mantle, draped around the slopes of Negros. The second round of rice had been served and left untouched; children and wives had gone up to bed.The table was cleared of

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-31565776347994985462010-04-03T23:56:00.000-07:002010-04-03T23:59:53.372-07:00

I’VE tried citrus, chocolate and bubble-gum. In Ethiopia, where banana, strawberry and chocolate are common, coffee-flavored was introduced.Packaging a product as “Coffee Sensation” in a country known as the “birthplace of coffee” may seem to be trite hard-sell.Yet, with the HIV/Aids epidemic cutting short the life expectancy of Ethiopians by seven years, pushing a caffeine fixation may not just

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-64833081172057179402010-03-27T23:59:00.000-07:002010-03-28T00:02:50.933-07:00

IN our household, I am the harvester of water. That’s a piquant name for a “disgusting” habit: reusing as much of the water I use while bathing. I don’t have a complicated bathing ritual but I do shampoo my hair every time. The wastewater I harvest fills up about two small pails.With the wastewater, I flush the toilet or water the plants. Now that it’s summer and my 11-year-old son plays from

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-37692540237318672902010-03-20T20:21:00.000-07:002010-03-20T20:24:28.031-07:00

FIRST, they gave hoses and pumps to the parched uplands. Now, the Cebu City Government is relying on “water psychic” Choleng Legaspi, 80, to point out where the water is hidden so deep wells can be set up. According to Sun.Star Cebu’s Mar. 20 article written by Linette C. Ramos and Rene H. Martel, Cebu City Mayor Tomas Osmeña and businessman Andrew Gotianun Jr. are chipping in their own money

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-30594812239040421832010-03-13T23:54:00.000-08:002010-03-14T00:03:13.251-08:00

I HAD lunch with a dun-colored bird this week.Under the trees, I spotted the small bird hopping on the carpet of parched ground. I forgot the shedding trees, the air that crackled as if a bonfire was licking the dead earth from below with greedy tongues. The bird and I were on a park. Was the fellow too tired to fly and forage amid the food left behind? Yet, if I also tossed it a few grains, the

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-48164854522448304632010-03-06T23:40:00.000-08:002010-03-06T23:45:39.096-08:00

When I read the banner story of Sun.Star Cebu’s Mar. 5 issue, I instantly thought of you. “Higher tuition in 15 schools” is the kind of headline that might as well bleed in great gouts of red on page 1 for the fear it strikes in parents. But it’s news, too, that can chill a young person’s heart. In her Sun.Star article, Princess D. Felicitas reported that the Department of Education refuses to

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-11885110996471522702010-02-27T22:07:00.000-08:002010-02-27T22:09:23.027-08:00

NOT all booksellers are created equal. Years ago, my grandmother came home, empty-handed, from New York. She could not find a copy of a book I implored her to find, Joan Didion’s “A Book of Common Prayer.”It seemed she trailed behind clerks in two bookstores, peering up and down interminable shelves. Didion was a no-show in the “Religious” section, where my grandmother was invariably led.Until

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-31253114275707855472010-02-21T05:34:00.000-08:002010-02-21T05:39:27.574-08:00

IN the pilot episode of a TV drama series, a doctor helps his wife deliver their baby in an emergency. The baby girl turns out to be healthy. Before the doctor can relax, his wife bears down again. It’s not just the entry of a twin daughter that’s unexpected. She is aqueous in form, assuming flesh only when she’s immersed in water. By some coincidence, I finished “The Memory Keeper’s Daughter,”

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6516954851679191760.post-76653697796564163532010-02-13T22:19:00.000-08:002010-02-13T22:23:30.637-08:00

CAN anything be more surreal than hearing the government announce it will enforce fairness during this campaign season? The past nights, I caught TV reports showing mobilized teams of youths grab and tear campaign materials declared illegal by the Commission on Elections (Comelec). Newspapers and websites also carried photos of election officers and their brigades “liberating” city walls and

Mayette Q. Tabadahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10141943030271421908noreply@blogger.com0