A mom at a youth congress

Students today are so lucky. They have access to so many learning opportunities outside the classroom - virtually through the Web and via face-to-face academic gatherings like the 3rd Shell Sustainable Development (SD) Youth Congress last September 28.

The Shell SD Youth Congress is a one-day forum conducted by Shell companies in the Philippines in partnership with the Center for Research and Communication of the University of Asia and the Pacific (CRC-UA&P). 

The songs we sing

I heard the song “All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You” on the radio a while ago and I just had to smile.

Even in my younger years, the powerful vocals of Ann Wilson, lead singer of the rock band Heart, always made me want to sing along to this song.

Batangas papers

A friend who is into public relations recently asked me for a list of Batangas papers. She was exploring the possibility of promoting her client’s product in Batangas publications.

Sure, I said. Armed with a list of Batangas papers that I culled from the Web, I go to the nearest newsstand in the neighboring barangay and find out that they do not carry Batangas papers. Nor do four newspaper vendors at the public market in the city proper. One newspaper vendor on the same road as the weekly “Sun.Star People’s Courier” tells me they ran out of stock. “They don’t print a lot,” he explains.

In the Tagalog hot seat

I like being open to new things and I sometimes pay the price for it.

Just recently, I found myself serving as a judge for what I thought was a singing contest in a public elementary school. Except that it wasn’t just a singing contest. It was also a poetry recital contest, a group oration and had the teachers not anticipated the lack of time and held them earlier, it would also have been a story-reading and story-telling contest - all in Pilipino.

This trio of Grade 5 students was amazing while
doing a Balagtasan (debate in poetic verse).

I had unwittingly said yes to all these contests that were part of the school’s Buwan ng Wika culminating activity.  The principal had visited us while we were helping serve some of their students under the feeding program conducted by the Shell Tabangao Ladies Circle (STLC) and asked us to judge a singing contest in August. 

Family photos

Take them while you can.

Maybe this isn’t really relevant today since everyone takes pictures of just about anything with the advent of camera phones, tablets and low-cost digital cameras.

But in my time, not all families had cameras. And those that had were not so free in its use because (and I am dating myself here) it was the type that used rolled photographic film which had a limited number of exposures. I remember that it was a luxury to get a roll of film with 36 exposures.

So when I looked for a picture of our basic family unit (before everyone upped and got married), the only one I found was taken decades ago. The most recent one I could find was missing a family member because it was taken when all five siblings came together --- to bury our father.

The last time all five of us sisters were
together was when everyone came home
for Daddy's burial.

Just recently, my daughter asked for a family picture for a school project. Easy enough, I thought until I found myself looking through several folders before I found one of all three of us. That’s because her Dad and I take turns taking shots.