Four weeks ago, when my three-member “JP” family of Jasmin, Jana and myself visited my youngest brother Michael, who’s now studying as a freshman at the La Salle-St. Benilde, we chanced upon entering the largest shopping complex in the country—and, according to Forbes magazine, “the 3rd largest shopping mall in the world.” Mall of Asia. [...]

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Did you know that in our country’s capital city, it snows? Yes. Just like in those Christmas movies or, if you’ve been to Boston or Berlin in February, a place where it’s, like the song… White Christmas? I’m not kidding. I saw it, felt it, smelled the white flakes, and slipped on slippery ice. It’s [...]

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Behind only the Olympic Games and the FIFA Soccer World Cup, guess what tournament sells two million tickets and captures up to an accumulated four billion TV viewers in over 200 countries? If you guessed Formula One racing—with Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen sprinting 328-kph to the Brazilian Grand Prix finish line at [...]

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Our bowlers—pardon the pun—bowled over the competition. Really, they did. Led by the husband and wife team (probably the best in the whole country) of Bill (above photo, 2nd from right) and Cynthia Uybengkee, our team composed of Ben Miranda, Ernest Tan, Docdoc Gothong and Sidney Guani won as Team Champion, Team Highest Single and [...]

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Among all the sports that dribble, bounce and fly in our city, one of the newest is Flag Football. It’s been sprinting on the green lawns of Cebu for only three years now. It’s still an infant. Right? Not true. The Cebu Flag Football League (CFFL) now boasts of over 550 active members. Quarterbacks. Wide [...]

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I love reading quotations. They’re quick, at times funny, and always mind-provoking. Take what Muhammad Ali once said: “I’m so fast I could hit you before God gets the news.” My favorite? “I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted [...]

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Name me a child—or adult—who doesn’t like Spiderman. I have one: my mother-in-law, Malu Mendez. She dislikes spiders. No, make that hates spiders. Anything brown and web-like and crawling with eight legs, she stays at least 957 feet away. But Spiderman? Because of Jana, her grandchild, she’s willing to catch a glimpse of the movie. [...]

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When I grew up as a young boy in Bacolod City in the 1970s, our family owned one 14-inch black-and-white TV set. Voltes V was my favorite cartoon show. I also loved how Popeye gobbled up that can of spinach, turned muscular, punched Brutus, then won over the thinnest creature shown on TV, Olive. How [...]

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