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Tuesday, July 8, 2025
Petty Is As Petty Does
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Are Filipinos Overdressed When They Travel Abroad?
I prefer to be overdressed, which is 100% better than those Gringos who show up at the airport in shorts and tank tops and old, filthy, and crumbly flip-flops looking like they just got out of bed and didn't even bother to shower and brush their teeth. Or, at the very least, put on deodorant.
Saturday, May 10, 2025
Professional Is, as Professional Does
Sunday, May 4, 2025
On Teaching

SeƱor Manuel
What he'll leave them is a legacy of a decent, hardworking man who made sure his family wanted for nothing. A father, husband, and brother who was always there when it counted. A mentor and friend who was quick with sage advice when it was sought out, and it was sought out frequently.
It hasn't been an easy past few years for my father-in-law, someone who still enjoyed walking and playing music in his retirement years, someone who loved driving cars as much as he admired them, someone who actually bought his own small plane many years ago and learned how to fly it -- eventually inspiring his only son to want to become a pilot.
But while his body deteriorated, his spirit never wavered. He couldn't play the piano anymore, or walk -- much less drive -- but he could still tell his stories. And boy, could the man tell stories. He has a published book of those stories -- those memories of many years ago -- and it will be an honor to finally read it -- in Spanish.
His stories -- from him, and about him -- are all we have now. But that's enough. For someone who lived his life the way my father-in-law lived his, that's more than enough.
Descanse en paz, SeƱor Manuel. Gracias por recibirme con los brazos abiertos y permitirme formar parte de su hermosa familia.
Thursday, December 12, 2024
On Poetry
Many years ago, I tried my hand at poetry.
A couple of my early “poems” were published in the student paper back in college, and I thought I could probably develop my poetry writing skills more, try to improve on my fledgling attempts.
I dropped it. Never tried to write a poem ever since.
I used to love reading poetry too. (I still enjoy the occasional poetry collection now and then, but fiction is still my go-to read.) I loved trying to make sense of the meaning of every poem, because to me a well-written poem should be metaphorical. What you see isn’t what you get. A well-written poem is a puzzle to be solved.
But ironically, the biggest reason I quit trying to write poetry is I couldn’t make use of metaphor or simile well. To me, my poems seemed superficial, shallow. Best leave it to the experts, I thought.
Through the years I’ve come across writers who’ve argued that poems should be more “accessible,” and I’ve appreciated these “easy to read” poems as well. In Stephen King’s celebrated memoir “On Writing,” he narrated how he fell in love with his future wife, the novelist Tabitha King (who, back then, was still using her maiden name, Tabitha Spruce).
Wrote King: “We met when we were working in a library, and I fell in love with her during a poetry workshop in the fall of 1969, when I was a senior and Tabby was a junior. I fell in love with her partly because I understood what she was doing with her work.”
Specifically,
in discussing one of Tabitha’s poems, King argued: “Her poem made me feel that
I wasn’t alone in my belief that good writing can be simultaneously
intoxicating and idea-driven . . . . There was also a work-ethic in the poem
that I liked, something that suggested writing poems (or stories, or essays)
had as much in common with sweeping the floor as with mythy moments of revelation . . . . In the discussion that followed Tab’s reading, it became clear to me that she understood her own poem. She knew exactly what she had meant to say, and had said most of it . . . . The point is that it was a reasonable poem in a hysterical time, one sprung from a writing ethic that resonated all through my heart and soul.”
There’s this popular Filipino writer and creative writing professor that I admire and whose work I’ve enjoyed reading—he has written fiction, essays, plays, screenplays, and poems—who has, himself, been pretty much self-effacing on his attempts at poetry, even though he has already successfully published a poetry collection, along with his novels and essay and short story collections, and his drama. I’ve also read poetry by Neil Gaiman (full disclosure: I’m aware of the recent allegations of sexual harassment against Gaiman, which has devastated me because he’s one of my favorite writers; I hope to write about this in a future blog post) and Chuck Palahniuk—none of whom are exactly known for their poetry. Their poems, at least in my estimation, are very accessible and are devoid of metaphor and simile.
In Gaiman’s case, I read some of his poems when he decided to sprinkle them throughout his first short story collection, “Smoke and Mirrors,” probably as fillers. In Palahniuk’s case, his poems served as the framing device—or connecting tissue, if you will—for a collection of his short stories that he tried (quite unsuccessfully, in my opinion), to turn into a novel because that was what his publishers wanted him to put out for his next book, not a short story collection.
Gaiman’s and Palahniuk’s poems reminded me of Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry, probably because all three of them are known for writing about horror and the macabre—in both their poetry and fiction. And sure, a lot of Poe’s gothic and love poems require some moments of careful dissection (which is fun in and of itself), but a lot of them are of the WYSIWG (what you see is what you get) variety too.
And of course, there are the so-called Instapoets, Lang Leav and Rupi Kaur, whose work has polarized readers worldwide. The Instapoets tag came about because their fans often describe Leav’s and Kaur’s work as “Instagrammable,” with quotable lines that are perfect for sharing.
While some critics of the two Instapoets argue that their works lack complexity or depth, their stans assert that the emotional impact and relatability of their poems are what matter most.
I have a huge problem with the gatekeeping of poetry; for me, Leav’s and Kaur’s poems make poetry accessible to a broader audience, particularly the younger generations.
Or would we
rather have them reading memes exclusively instead?
Thursday, November 14, 2024
The Third Laptop
Lately I’ve been using three laptops.
One for my full-time job, one for my freelance gigs, and one for my personal (and, I’d like to think, more creative) pursuits.
The most powerful of the three is the newest, although I could tell right away when the IT guy handed it to me -- when I first visited my new place of employment -- that it wasn’t brand new. The second one might be significantly older than the first, but it still has enough juice to play old games with, and index books with, and listen to streaming music with -- I just have to leave it plugged in, because the battery has seen better days. The third one is the oldest, running on an ancient Pentium processor, but still better than the PC assigned to me many years ago when I used to work for a publishing company in the Philippines -- but that’s another (hilarious) story.
When I fire up the first laptop, which I do every morning from Monday to Friday (but now, more increasingly, also during weekends), I feel a sense of dread. I use it to write, sure, but also to attend Teams meetings and reply to emails and take what seems like never-ending online trainings. The writing part is increasingly being overtaken by the other non-essential things, which makes me wonder why my newest place of employment even bothered to hire a writer in the first place. But then again, that’s another (sad) story.
When I turn on the second laptop, there’s no sense of dread -- I index books on autopilot now; it’s like second nature. Many years ago when I worked as a copyeditor for that publishing company with the crappy PCs, there was only a handful of us who genuinely enjoyed indexing books. We used to joke that it was a menial job -- not as “intellectual” as editing -- but that someone had to do it. That someone was -- still is -- me. I relish indexing now as I relished it then, and I relish it more than ever because it’s a break from all those non-essential things I do on my first laptop.
It’s when I use the third laptop though -- the oldest and slowest, I don’t even connect it to the Internet anymore; it’s strictly a tool for writing and nothing more -- that I feel the most joy. It’s when I feel I’m making a difference, even though I haven’t gathered enough confidence yet to show the world the stuff I’d worked on all these years.
I remember a scene in one of the episodes of “Better Call Saul” when Jimmy McGill reluctantly accepted a job at Davis & Main, and Jimmy stumbled upon founder Clifford Main playing the guitar in his office. Clifford said he plays music “to blow off steam” and advised Jimmy to find a similar hobby, as working for a high-powered law firm is a stressful job. Jimmy eventually found and bought a used bagpipe from a pawnshop, which in turn he played in his own office (Jimmy being Jimmy – or, should I say, Saul being Saul?), but -- as viewers who’ve already seen the episode know -- not to blow off steam but something else.
Anyway, I fired up the old laptop to blow off steam myself. I’m the type of person who can’t sleep when I’m stressed, and when I overthink I tend to write. But for some reason the words to build one of the things I’m not ready to show the world yet wouldn’t come. So I decided to pivot (I hate this fucking word; it’s one of those words I frequently hear when I use my first laptop, along with “bandwidth,” “core competencies,” “leverage,” “low-hanging fruit,” “deliverables,” “synergy,” “deep dive,” etc.).
This decision to “pivot” is a plea to everyone out there who has their own version of my third laptop: a guitar, a pen, a paintbrush, a tennis racket, a book, a gaming controller or, heck, a fucking BAGPIPE.
Go to that version of your third laptop as frequently as you can. And relish it as much as I do whenever I build one of those things that I’m not ready to show the world yet. Relish it as much as Cliff Main did with his guitar, as much as Jimmy McGill relished playing his bagpipe just to fuck up the establishment.
Maybe someday we’ll wake up, and by a miracle of miracles the world won’t require us to fire up that primary laptop anymore (full of those “essential” non-essentials and hated corporate jargon) -- or whatever its equivalent is in your own working life -- just to help keep those poor billionaires (who, by the way, love funding genocides and wars) “afloat,” eh?