I came across a viral Facebook reel recently telling people that hard work is not enough. I agree. The woman in the reel said there are three invaluable skills we should learn if we want to get ahead in life: speaking and communicating, writing, and selling or marketing. Again, I agree. But I have a…
Looking back, I can safely confirm that confidence is one hell of a course that couldn’t be taught in school. It’s a series of life’s missteps until you can separate healthy self-confidence from self-importance.
Not necessarily because we go somewhere specifically to serve. But because how we travel can either take from a place—or contribute something to it. You buy lunch from the little carinderia instead of a chain. You hire the local guide. You buy the tomatoes from the roadside vendor. You stay in the neighborhood rather than…
When you eat at a neighborhood batchoyan, buy bread from an old family bakery, pick up fresh batwan from a market vendor—or buy a small pile of tomatoes from somebody who grew them or carried them all the way to town—your money does something.
Thankfully, no. Save your breath first. I am truly blessed with friends—a widow, her two sisters and their husbands, a niece and her two very young, lovely daughters, and a grandkid—who got so invested in ensuring I had a temporary home during a brief visit to my hometown, Iloilo City. Let me name them: Maribel,…
The good we can do—with what we already have. Could somebody use this? I have been thinking about that question lately. Maybe because I reached a stage in life when I had something I once desperately wanted: Time. A little too much of it, apparently. 😂 My sister regularly suggested that I might consider using…
Health is not the absence of sickness. Health is the presence of balance — in body, community, and spirit.
There’s a popular saying that goes: At 20, food is pleasure. At 40, food is fuel. At 60, food is survival.
It’s not a scientific law, but it does echo what researchers observe across the human lifespan — how our motivations for eating shift from the brain’s reward centers, to metabolic efficiency, and eventually to physiological preservation.
The most expensive thing you can lose is your health. The Truth We Learn Too Late We spend our lives building—careers, savings, homes, dreams. But one medical emergency can wipe out decades of effort in a single week. In the Philippines, where healthcare often means cash on hand, illness isn’t just a physical burden; it’s…
Before we ever lived in childhood houses, rented apartments, or ancestral homes with capiz windows, we lived in one place: our body. It is our first home — the one we wake up in, break down in, heal in, and carry through every storm.