And almost every day, stories about the abuses committed against house helpers are in the news. These helpers, who mostly don’t have formal schooling, come all the way from the far provinces just to seek better opportunity in the city. But alas, some of them end up with abusive employers who degrade them and treat [...]
As the leaves began to fall from our Sanggumay, I started to doubt the promise of the vendor at the Los Banos garden show. My cynicism grew proportionately with the number of leaves that kept falling to the ground. I felt so downhearted when all that was left of what was once a blossoming spray [...]
My friends and I were laughing over how we people are never satisfied with ourselves. People with dark skin bleach themselves. The fair ones spend a lot of money on tanning lotions or go sunbathing. The rich have few children while the poor have dozens. When we have curly hair we have it straightened but [...]
One day, when we were teenagers, our father asked my younger sister Rachel and me to go with him our mother to a birthday party of one of their friends. Rachel did not want to go. I begged her to come with us. “There’d be only old people in that party. If you won’t come, [...]
I have a friend who is a contributor to a weekly magazine and the editor assigns him to cover press conferences. In one of the conferences he attended, he happened to sit with a writer who kept grumbling about her job. Accordingly, she is a regular employee so she has to report back to the [...]