Friday, August 07, 2026
1:04 PM |
A Thought About Dumaguete
Because it lies resplendently next to sea, Dumaguete’s water spirit is something I will always cherish: it ebbs and flows, like its denizens do. People come, people go, and that’s fine, although that once vexed me as a native. I know now that most would call it a refuge, an incubator, a haven, then they go; many, however, would it call it home. Dumaguete is sometimes that space where we consider what it is we want in the world.
Labels: dumaguete, life
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Thursday, August 06, 2026
7:39 AM |
Looking for Lost Things
I was unpacking my bag last night, ready to charge my devices. Then I found out I could not find the small black bag that contained my laptop charger. Asked Renz if it's in his car. Not there. So I went to sleep, hoping to wake up early to retrace my steps late afternoon yesterday. In my head, I was already calculating the cost of buying a new Mac charger. [Not cheap.] Woke up very early, a miracle for a someone who is not a morning person. Emptied my bag one more time, hoping that the charger is just in some weird spot hiding. It's not there. Went out and went back to the last classroom I was in, hoping to catch the janitor who I was sure would be cleaning the premises for morning classes. Janitor was very helpful, but it's not there. Went back to the last restaurant I was in where I ate an early dinner before catching Spider-Man. [Is it in the theater?] Finally, it was there, in the resto! Apparently, the small black bag fell to the floor without me noticing. [Sigh of relief.]
Moral lesson: I was able to sleep well because my laptop was dead.
Also, I'm glad Dumaguete is small enough to allow this adventure of retracing our steps to find lost things.Labels: life
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Sunday, July 12, 2026
1:15 PM |
My Mercury in Retrograde Story
What’s your current Mercury in retrograde story? My mental health spiraled at the beginning of July [essentially, a patch of burn out], and yesterday, my Mac Air kept restarting. Was awake most of the night to figure out what to do, then around 3 AM, found a solution by going on Safe Mode and reinstalling my old OS, which took two hours. And after doing that, immediately installed Tahoe. Problem solved, but what hassle that was.Labels: burnout, computers, life, macbooks, psychology, retrograde
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Friday, July 03, 2026
We just had our closing ceremony for Pamati: Let the River Rest tonight, and tomorrow, the Puerto Princesa Underground River reopens and this will be my first time to experience this natural wonder. This has been a satisfying work trip for UNACOM. Every time I get asked to speak, my ADHD brain always wallows in some form of impostor’s syndrome. Will my talk make sense? Will I impart usable knowledge? Do I have the right to talk about the things I am asked to talk about? Tonight, a huge part of that doubting got erased by the responses some of the participants gave. [One even quoted me!] So, yes, I’m happy. And I’m glad I took part in this pursuit of using art and creativity to do environmental conservation. Would love to do something like this for Lake Balinsasayao. Padayon!Labels: environment, life, teaching, UNACOM, UNESCO
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6:19 PM |
The Universe Has a Sense of Humor
The truth of the matter is, I was most curious to visit Puerto Princesa, because this is the hometown of my first boyfriend, my, ehem, college sweetheart. Thirty years have since passed those days, and sixteen since I last saw him. So I finally went to Puerto Princesa proper today, and when I got off the van, guess who the first person I saw was.
Him.
It was ... an awkward reunion. But I think this officially closes a chapter in my life, hehehe. The universe has a sense of humor.
Labels: life, love, travel
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Wednesday, July 01, 2026
9:56 PM |
In Puerto Princesa
Just hazily documenting my first day in Puerto Princesa today. I flew in very early, after spending a very short night in Manila in transit to Palawan. Did not get to see much of the city proper of Puerto Princesa because I was soon whisked away by the service van provided for by UNACOM, all the way to Daluyon Beach and Mountain Resort in Sabang. I thought it would be a short ride, but to my groggy surprise, it took almost two hours to get to our destination — 75 kilometers away from the center of the city — and I thought we were in another town altogether. But nooo, I would later learn Sabang is still very much a part of the city.
I'm here for UNESCO duties, to be one of the resource speakers for Pamati: Let the River Rest, a cultural festival honoring the closure of the Puerto Princesa Underground River for three days, with film director Dante Nico Garcia as lead coordinator. [The Underground River is one of the UNESCO-designated natural heritage sites in the Philippines.]
When I arrived this morning, however, I was practically a zombie from lack of sleep and the general tiredness of travel, that I purposely missed the morning session, and staggered to my assigned room, where I immediately took to bed and knocked out for five hours. Later in the day, I attended parts of the afternoon session, and tried my best to finish my presentation due tomorrow morning, but residual sleep also took over. I finally joined the screening of a documentary titled Fragile Frontier while having dinner with the rest of the participants. The film is about the impact of Typhoon Odette on Palawan, directed by Jessie Cereno and produced by the UNESCO National Commission for the Philippines [UNACOM]. [It is narrated by Silliman author and cultural worker Jane Timbancaya-Urbanek.]
I will always find travel to be essential in my work in culture. When you are surrounded by like-minded people of other places who share your passion, and finding them doing their thing in surprising ways you never thought possible, it’s a charge that rejuvenates the often flagging spirit. I’m privileged to be able to do this, and now I’m here in Puerto Princesa. I needed this injection of inspiration after the relentless barrage of June.
Labels: art and culture, ccultural work, life, travel, UNACOM, UNESCO
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Tuesday, June 30, 2026
They’re implementing a new online system for faculty loading. And I was like, yey. Then I find out they’re making it three times more difficult with all these roundabout way of approvals and signatures. And I was like, grrrr.
Labels: life, silliman, teaching
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Monday, June 15, 2026
6:47 PM |
Hinay-Hinay Lang...
Finally letting my mindscape, and my life, return back to normal after the beautiful tumult of the past two weeks: a workshop and a home improvement project following each other was an upheaval I had no idea would take so much out of me, I actually ended up sick for a day or two, mostly from the stress and the unbearable heat. But I’m happy with the results, and I’m about to pick up where I left off…
Truth to tell, when I was in the middle of the grind, of the mess of home improvement last week — for example, bringing out all my books slowly, by small batches, to a corner of the anteroom so that the carpenters and painters could do work — I had to summon all the patience I could muster, despite being so tired and stressed out, by repeating a simple mantra: "Hinay-hinay lang." [To translate: Just surrender to the slowness.]
It helped.
It kept me sane.
And that is what I'm also telling myself right now as I return back to normal: hinay-hinay lang.Labels: life
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Sunday, June 14, 2026
11:00 PM |
Apartment Reveal!
Finally done! After nine days of repainting, renovating, reshelving, and replacing things where they should be, I’m finally done with my small home improvement project. [My scheme of red and black together feels like me, now.] Spent two days of those nine flat on my back with fever, however. But today, I finally got my new bed, and the last touch I needed was flowers to brighten up my small apartment. But everything’s done, and tonight I hosted a small dinner for Renz and Tita Melisa to celebrate. This 50th birthyear has really been something.
Labels: life
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Friday, June 12, 2026
9:00 PM |
Shelves Reveal
Everything’s in place. Red walls, black shelves. It took four days of painting and carpentry and three days of arranging everything. This is the Filipiniana part of my library, and for the first time all the books are in their rightful places, arranged in alphabetical order by author. My new bed arrives on Sunday, but for now I’m done. But then suddenly I’m also getting feverish now. Oh, man.
Labels: life
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Friday, June 05, 2026
10:21 AM |
Lutang, Post-Lutang
I am resolutely not a morning person, but starting yesterday, my body finally adjusted to the early schedules of the past few days because of the workshop. I have been so lutang since Sunday, and the worst of it was Tuesday when I excused myself in the afternoon because I was crashing out hard. But now my brain has begrudgingly started to function. I finally have some energy to also take care of other things, thank God.
Labels: life
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Thursday, May 28, 2026
1:39 AM |
Life with Adult ADHD
The funny and often frustrating thing about having adult ADHD — aside from such fun things as executive dysfunction, time blindness, revenge bedtime procrastination, and rejection sensitive dysphoria — is the utter truthfulness of the phrase, “out of sight, out of mind.” Which explains all the open tabs on my browsers, and my meticulously composed calendar and notebook filled with to-do lists, which works better for me than Post-Its.
Still, the unfortunate happens, which I’ve learned to just laugh over. I don’t see you for six months? I’ll forget your name. Your Messenger missive got buried under 20 other messages? Best forgotten. The leftovers in the refrigerator? Does not exist until thrown out a month later, because moldy. The cup of hot cocoa the waiter in the cafe gave to me tonight but was blocked out of sight by my laptop? Invisible until Renz came over and gently nudged it to my line of vision. “Oh, my cocoa!” I responded, and happily finished it.Labels: adhd, life, mental health
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Saturday, May 23, 2026
What a day. Three different social interactions, all of them somehow satisfying. Started with good friends around a pool in a village west of Dumaguete, talking about literary stuff. Proceeded to an exhibit opening, surrounded by other good friends of the artsy variety. Ended with a subdued nightcap with glittering people from the national social register, including the editor of a fashion magazine, talking about interior design over white wine. All while I’m dressed in my Dumaguete-style purontong shorts and Lady Gaga shirt.Labels: life
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Wednesday, May 13, 2026
I knew eventually that my body would demand rest after the roller coaster of the first third of this year. Last night, I thought I was succumbing to the flu because my bones were aching. The unbearable heat was partly to blame. Took Biogesic, slept early, and when I woke up, I was fine. Thank God for small mercies. But now, here’s catching up on all manners of backlog!
But to be honest, this heat has been something else. For the first time in my life, I actually Googled this query: “How much does an airconditioning unit cost in the Philippines?”Labels: life
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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
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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
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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
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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
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Sunday, April 12, 2026
I missed my connecting flight from Iloilo City to Dumaguete via Manila, and rebooking, in this energy crisis, would have cost an arm and two legs. This was bound to happen. I’ve traveled considerably all of my life, both domestic and international, and I have always been on time for every flight, with time to spare—but for some reason, this time around, I misread the “flight time” on my itinerary as “boarding time.” I casually arrived at the counter of Cebu Pacific at the Iloilo Airport, ready to come home to Dumaguete, only to be told that boarding time happened 45 minutes ago, and they had already closed the plane door. There was no chance I was getting on board. What do I do know? I asked the check-in girl, who was in no rush to be empathetic. Buy another ticket for Manila, she said, for a flight scheduled later in the afternoon, and then manage my Manila to Dumaguete flight by rebooking. The thing is, I couldn’t do that, because it wasn’t I who bought my ticket. And again, all these would cost an arm and two legs.
So I opted to do the land trip home, via ferry from Iloilo City to Bacolod, and then the mind-bending six-hour bus trip to Dumaguete. It wasn’t the most comfortable way of getting home, but it certainly was the cheaper option. A part of me was also curiously pragmatic: at least, this way, I’d know the land and sea route from Negros if I wanted to visit Iloilo City again.
I Bonamine’d through the rough seas, and the Oceanjet took about an hour and thirty minutes to cross Guimaras Strait, docking in Bacolod. I immediately flagged down a taxi to take me to South Bus Terminal, in order to catch the next available aircon bus bound for Dumaguete. This part of this trip would take more than six hours, and I wanted to be as comfortable as possible. I toyed with the idea of hiring a car or a van, but the leasing company was asking for seven thousand total for the entire trip—which I understand in the parlance of an energy crisis, but much too much for me to even consider as a viable alternative. In my GC with friends, Ernest told me, “The Ceres bus is comfortable naman.” That gave some comfort. Plus I’ve always loved Ceres buses. As a Negrense, I grew up riding it.
I was lucky to get a good seat in the bus. My body, reeling from the subterfuges of sudden travel changes, was too wired up to even be bothered by the fact that two Pentecostal preachers came one after another to offer visions of fire and brimstone if there was no salvation for us, and then handing out envelopes for charity. I ignored both of them so very thoroughly. I needed sleep, not a promise of flimsy salvation. After almost an hour of marinating in the confines of that bus terminal, we finally felt the movement of the bus moving quickly along half-deserted highways. The energy crisis has a silver lining: no traffic as usual.
I would go back and forth between waking and sleeping while the bus plowed its way down south of the western side of Negros. It was mostly nighttime, and there was only darkness staring at me from my window—so sleep was preferable. I was growing hungry though. I had only eaten one ensaymada while in the pier in Iloilo.
All told, the sea and land route would take about nine hours of my life, but at a thousand pesos in total fares, this was preferable than forking over almost twenty thousand pesos. [P20,000!!!] In that sense, the hassle was not quite a hassle, to be honest. And something else entirely different didn’t make me mind everything at all.
The reason was this: I am endlessly fascinated by the mealtime stopover in Mabinay—always in Mabinay—the halfway point in the mountains between the two Negros capitals. When I go to Bacolod, this happens around lunchtime or maybe in the early afternoon. That night, however, it occurred around half-past 9 PM—and I was already thinking there was to be no such stop and I was already very hungry and I’d eaten all the butterscotch squares that Leny Ledesma, our Iloilo host, had given me. I calculated there were two more hours before arrival in Dumaguete, and my hunger could wait.
But there was a stop, finally! Somewhere in the mountain darkness, the Ceres ground to a halt and I heard the bus driver say, “Manihapon ta!”
I bolted out of my seat to exit and line up at this well-lit carinderia whose existence seems to primarily depend on regular bus loads of hungry people coming its way. It had about fifteen tables for the taking, most of them already occupied. Somehow I remembered the protocol of ordering: at the counter, I pointed at my choices of viands—a plate of two pieces of fried chicken and a plate of bihon—then to another table where the plates of rice were, and I got one serving—then to the refrigerator at the side to grab a sakto Sprite. Having gotten a table shared with another hungry passenger—a girl—I proceeded to eat, and after a while, someone came over to check what I’d gotten, and issued a bill written on a small, green Post-It note: P170.
I was happy and full. “But was it delicious?” someone asked me on Facebook when I recounted all of these in a short post. My answer: my hunger told me it was delicious.
I don’t know why I look forward to these mealtime stopovers on my Ceres trips, because there’s no such thing as taking your pleasurable time to eat, since you have to finish your meal before the conductor and the bus driver finish theirs. It’s also a very simple meal, not even hot—but it does feel to me like some culinary version of an oasis in the desert.
It’s sustenance in the middle of a very long trip.
It’s also a chance to awaken your sleepy legs.
And it’s a moment to reflect, while eating, on the realization that you’re almost home [or near your destination], which is a kind of excitement all its own.
Labels: food, life, negros, travel
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Tuesday, March 31, 2026
7:52 PM |
Floating and Surviving
Last night, at the end of a twelve-hour work day, I was walking home completely floating because of so many things I needed to do and finish, and the anxiety was high. Took me forever to go to sleep, but I think I finally slept knowing that I did what I could given my limitations, and I refused to worry about things beyond my control, e.g., the Middle East crisis, which has been wrecking havoc on our literary fest programming. Sometimes you just need to refuse to worry.
Today, I did not even think about my to-do list. I had one goal: to clean and arrange things in my office at the English Department, which has been just a repository of unpacked boxes, and cobwebs, and dirt. A big win! We don’t have to slay dragons every day [although this one has been a tiny, pesky dragon].Labels: life
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