An ending (written Nov. 20, 2006)

The minute my younger sister got into the car, she started sobbing.

I felt rotten. It was awkward driving and trying to console her while wondering why I was not as grief-stricken as she was.

Our father had died. She’d flown in from the US to pay her last respects and I was driving her to the funeral home where she would see his remains.

First celebrity fatality of swine flu

I am always amazed by the Filipino's ability to laugh in the face of extreme hardship or to make fun of the most serious of developments, including the possibility of a pandemic.

This picture of a 'dead' Kermit the Frog recently made the round of inboxes at the office. Most of us who grew up with Sesame St. and The Muppet Show immediately got the joke - he obviously got the swine flu from Miss Piggy.

Another world

I met a six-year-old girl at the Marcela Marcelo Elementary School in Pasay City last Saturday.

She caught my attention because she was half the size of my five-year-old daughter and she couldn't read. My daughter has been reading since...I don't remember anymore.

I was at the public school to write about what our employees were doing -- which was conducting a summer reading program for kids who couldn't read or had difficulty reading.