Wednesday, May 13, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 291.
Labels: poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Monday, May 11, 2026
7:18 PM |
My Brain When I'm Cleaning
Currently cleaning the apartment, which means that my ADHD brain is firing all cylinders and getting new ideas, which means that I have to stop once in a while to take notes [or else forget them] or to message someone. This is why it takes me three days to clean my apartment.Labels: cleanliness, life, mental health
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, May 10, 2026
2:16 PM |
Second Chances
I love The Drama for personal reasons, because it gets what has been true in my life: people getting second chances. Emma got a second chance, and in the movie, she gives everyone second chances. We all need second chances. My life has been all about second chances.Labels: film, life, movie log
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
9:00 AM |
Celebrations and Commiserations
April was one big beautiful madness for me. Right from its very start that month, I was in Iloilo City [for the first time ever] to take part of that UNESCO Creative City of Gastronomy’s celebration of National Food Month—a few days of magnificent feasting which more than proved Iloilo City’s point over why it was thus designated as a culinary capital for the country. A week later, I was off doing the 3rd Dumaguete Literary Festival, where I also launched my latest fiction collection, and also got to witness Dumaguete being officially designated as UNESCO Creative City of Literature. On the day the festival ended, I was also part of the UNESCO National Commission of the Philippines [UNACOM]’s writeshop, which gathered together cultural advocates from around the country in a project to foster a book detailing the richness of UNESCO-designated places in the Philippines. And then a week later, after settling down for a few days to start summer school, I was doing a week-long book tour in Manila, from making my debut at Dia del Libro to doing a book talk at UP Likhaan at the University of the Philippines in Diliman. Sometimes I wondered where I was channeling my energy. I am fifty years old, not exactly a spring chicken anymore.
I realized even then that I was very privileged to have been given the chances to do all of these things. But now, on the tenth day of May, I have finally rested enough to do a bit of introspection. It’s a bit jarring, truth to tell, to find myself beholding slower days these days, but thank God for that. Rest is essential.
Last Friday, just for the sake of being around friends in a more social context [besides doing events together], we went for a dinner, a very lovely one, at Mohammad Malik’s farm in Palinpinon, Valencia with Pinspired’s Evgeniya Spiridonova and Max Vasiliev as our guests of honor. This was ostensibly to celebrate their new baby, and so we informally called the gathering “Jane’s Russian Dinner”—simply for the fact that this dinner was supposed to have happened last December, where she promised to prepare a Russian dish called “shuba,” on the very night she unexpectedly gave birth to her second child, which caused its deferment.
The fulfillment of that canceled dinner came five months later, because there was much to celebrate. There was news of new pregnancies, of impending weddings, of new scholarships abroad, and of recent events coming to successful fulfillments—and so we gathered. Aside from Jane and Max, there was Mohammed Malik and Finola Uy, our hosts. And Libraria’s Ernest and Gayle Acar. And the artists Hersley-Ven Casero and Toulla Mavromati-Casero. And Renz Torres and me—really the gay representation of the lot. [Unfortunately, another couple, the writer Hannah Portugal-Magno and her medical doctor husband Pito Magno, had to beg off at the last minute, because of an emergency.] So we celebrated all these over Renz’s grilled bangus and ampalaya salad, and Gayle’s lemon orzo with feta and alugbati, and Toulla’s peanut noodles and Greek stir-fry, Ella’s coffee bake and fresh fruits, Mo’s biko, Hersley’s baye-baye from Baywan, and Jane’s beef stroganoff and the pièce de résistance, her shuba [or “herring under a fur coat”].
The talk over the delicious, very international, meal was celebratory, but we also came to realize that despite all the good news, we were also commiserating over sudden deaths and accidents that pushed us to the edge. One of us on that table actually revealed he almost had a heart attack last month—probably from stress and from the unbearable heat that is now defining the current summer in Dumaguete. This was shocking. (Because what do you mean we almost lost you, and we didn’t even know?)
Then we made a brief recounting of unfortunate things of recent days.
How Onna Rhea Quizo’s father died a few days before the start of the Duma LitFest, but that she still chose to perform in the short play Sisa: Panaghoy ng Pinakamiserableng Babaeng Katha ni Rizal, which we moved from the first day of the festival to the last upon Onna’s request, with the play becoming a good rejoinder to Atom Araullo’s talk regarding writing in dangerous times. [Onna memorized the last page of the play on the day she buried her father!]
How the essayist Rica Bolipata-Santos had to fly home to Manila early in the festival, because her brother, the renowned cellist Chino Bolipata, suddenly died. And then this revealed a strange pattern with her Dumaguete visits over the years: when she was a fellow at the Silliman Writers Workshop in 2010, her father died. When she became a panelist in 2019, someone in her family also died, but she chose to stay for the rest of her week in Dumaguete and kept the news of that death to herself. And now, as a panelist for the literary festival, this recent death of a brother. “Dumaguete does not love me, Ian,” she messaged me after we arranged for her emergency flight back home to Manila. I responded, feebly: “But we do.” How do you respond to this strange happenstance?
Then there was how theatre artist and YATTA stalwart Nikki Cimafranca met a serious motor accident the same week we opened the LitFest—and was in the ICU for days on end, unconscious, with a clot in his brain. [Thank God he has since woken up and is feeling much better.]
Then there was how a few of our LitFest guests, flying home to Manila on the last day of the festival via a certain airline, found themselves in an emergency that necessitated a detour to Iloilo City. One guest in that flight messaged me about how the cabin was a furnace and how everyone was struggling to breath [a baby turned blue!], how the emergency masks dropped from the ceiling in a scene that could only be recalled in movies about plane crashes, and how everyone in the flight were suddenly prayerful and muttering “I love you’s” to each other, getting ready for whatever end might come. Upon landing in Iloilo, my friend chose to fly home in a separate airline from her husband, “just in case.” [Another friend chose to stay in Iloilo City for a few days, in an unplanned vacation.]
It‘s so easy to reduce all these to the simplest catch-all: life is short. But frankly I don’t know what to glean from all these except that in the end, while we deeply mourn the loss of our friends and loved ones, and while we deeply empathize with strange emergencies, ultimately the best of our nature wants us to celebrate our humanity and our art. Like what Onna did. [Which I love her for.]
And sometimes a small dinner with friends, on a relaxed night in a farm, gathered together without any agenda except to foster friendship and camaraderie, can define that celebration.
Labels: death, dinners, dumaguete, friends, life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Wednesday, May 06, 2026
7:00 AM |
Poetry Wednesday, No. 290. For Mother's Day.
Labels: mother, poetry
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Tuesday, May 05, 2026
5:55 PM |
All of April
April was one big beautiful madness, from taking part of Iloilo’s National Food Month celebration, to doing the 3rd Duma LitFest, to launching my latest fiction collection, to witnessing Dumaguete being officially designated as UNESCO Creative City of Literature, to being part of UNACOM’s writeshop, and then to doing a week-long book tour in Manila — plus the start of summer school. I am very privileged to have been given a chance to do all of these things. But now, on the sixth day of May, I have finally rested enough to do a bit of introspection. It’s a bit jarring to find myself beholding slower days, but thank God for that. For those of you who were part of my April adventures, thank you for being there. Labels: life
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
Sunday, May 03, 2026
7:47 PM |
The Devil Still Wears Prada
Fans of the old movie will either love this, or be indifferent to it. As someone who once had a phase in my life where I’d wake up every morning by playing the opening sequences of the 2006 film, to the tune of “Suddenly I See” by KT Tunstall, I am glad to report that I am of the first variety.
I love this film.
It falls short of the perfection of the first one, but who cares? I like that it basically follows the same beats, but explores a sadder [maybe the better phrase is “more serious”?] narrative, particularly the implosion of journalism as we know it, and the takeover of the world by doofusy techbros who want to destroy everything — which is quite reflective of our 2026 realities. I think that for the seriousness of the subject matter, some might find this film a bit off the mark [or a slight disappointment], given the fact that the first one was really a simpler story about a young girl and her post-collegiate coming-of-age surrounded by high fashion.
But I’m glad that this film chose not to delve into similar territory, choosing instead to highlight what bedevils us today, albeit in a lighter way. [I’m sure that if it didn’t, it would attract brickbats about how tone deaf it is to current realities.] But, people, we need to grow up.
But I like that it chose to do this, yet still forges an organic continuity with the older film: previous betrayals find new avenues for redemption, previous anxieties reveal themselves to be analogous to current anxieties [i.e., people never really change, and Andy is still the same Andy], and old comradeships are deepened by astute revelations that do not contradict how the characters were like in the older iteration. [In this instance, it is Stanley Tucci’s Nigel who becomes the film’s heart.]
I love that fashion is very much alive in this film, I love that Emily shouts at Donatella Versace in Italian, and that Lady Gaga hates Miranda. I love that Miranda’s titular devil is purposefully diminished in this movie [she hangs her own robes! she is careful not to say bad words in meetings lest HR intervenes! she flies coach!] — but finally finds a love in a new husband who seems supportive and unfazed by his wife’s power. I love that she still remains wise about how she can survive the demands and the diminishments of the future, that she still remains the vanguard of the beautiful despite the world becoming ugly.
This is a fantastic continuation to an iconic film.
Labels: fashion, film, review
[0] This is Where You Bite the Sandwich
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