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Love and Loss
As Mother’s Day is approaching, I would like to honor my mom who had gone home to be with our Lord last November. Until now, months later, I can still feel the ache and yearning in my heart. It’s like what Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler said: The reality is that you will grieve forever. […]
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Compiled Cat Chronicles
No, I don’t have a pet cat. To be honest, I’m more of a dog person, but I do love cats too. Since last year, I’ve had a couple of encounters with these furry felines. When my mother was confined in a government hospital in the province, there was one night that I awoke with […]
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Why Do You Write?
Verba volant, scripta manent. “Spoken words fly away, written words remain.” Why do writers write? Writers write for different reasons. Some write for fame, fortune, fun, feelings, or the future. What’s your purpose for penning poetry or prose? For praise, passion, persuasion, or profit? (Yes, I’m trying to alliterate.) It is common knowledge that feelings […]
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Memory in a Bottle
“Imagine if you could bottle a memory like scent. Then, whenever you wanted, you could open it. It’d be like living the moment all over again,” Lily James’ unnamed character (later in the film she would simply be referred to as “Mrs. de Winter”) mused, as she lay on the beach, in a perfectly serene […]
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The Pursuit of Happiness
One of the most memorable students I have had the pleasure to meet as an ESL teacher is a Taiwanese girl, whom I’ll call Eliza here (not her real name). She was in her early 30’s then, single, and was in-between jobs. Whenever we had run out of topics to converse about, her go-to is […]
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First Love and Second Chances
There’s the kind of love, the passionate kind, where you can’t breathe when you’re with him, you feel giddy, ecstatic, and intoxicated. And at the same time, he’s the very air you breathe. You love and hate him all at once. He’s both the cause and the cure of your heartbreak, aches, and ailments. He […]
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Remembrance of Days Past: Game Over
The cumbersomeness of adulthood, along with being confined at home for years (even before the pandemic happened), has imbued my soul with a yearning for childish pleasures past. Way back before the advent of the Internet as we know it now, we had simple joys: playing outdoor games like hide-and-seek, hopscotch, jump rope, and the […]
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Lost in Translation: Musings of an Online ESL Tutor
As an ESL tutor on an online platform, I’ve had various students ranging from 3 to 70 years old. Going from an absolute beginner to a fluent speaker was definitely challenging. I handled Japanese, Koreans, Taiwanese, Chinese, Thai, Indonesians, Vietnamese, Spanish, and well, just one Turkish to date. Students could choose their lesson for the […]
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Love in the Time of COVID
Fresh from getting off a long-term relationship some time ago, I jokingly told my friend, “I just want to get married to a widower, so then I can have instant children.” Who would’ve thought? There were three things I asked God for in a man following a harrowing heartbreak: First, I told God I want […]
A Sojourner's Soliloquies 