Pounding The Keyboard

      So we sat there mesmerized—six males: two on my right, three on my left, and me—opposite her. We were inside a passenger jeepney. She was, I thought, in her mid twenties, very pretty,   resembling Bea Alonzo a bit, nay, she was probably prettier than Bea. She’s got flawless milky white skin from head to toe, alluring figure that probably measured 36-24-36. She was dressed casually, a tank top and green Bermuda shorts.   The word head-turne r would be amiss in describing her. Even the driver, I thought, was spellbound, as the vehicle would stall every now and then. Within two kilometers that she was inside the jeepney, I knew, the two young men on my right had fallen in love.       Then, she reached for her purse, put out some coins and then, tried to hand it to the driver. “Mama, bayad po,” she said.       And with that, a few hearts were smashed.        Her voice sounded like, I don’t know, it sounded like the mixture of newscaster Mike Enriquez’s grating vo

      Today is Chinese New Year but one of the first few posts that rolled out of my Facebook Newsfeed this morning was this Valentine’s Day-worthy GMA NEWS Video of two unusual lovers . Theirs is one of the strangest love stories you will come across with (probably as peculiar as the love story in the movie The Shape of Water —okay, probably not, my bad).       But it is really unusual, so unusual that at first, I thought it was just scripted to amuse—but it’s apparently real.       He, a small businessman, was 28 when he first saw her, and she, a vegetable vendor who went house to house, was 71. That’s a ginormous 43 years age gap and it was the woman who was older. Okay, I am probably being chauvinistic here, but it’s really more acceptable when the man is older. But he fell in love with her and wooed her, and naturally, his family objected.   They told him to find a younger woman, probably one who’s, I don’t know, 65-68 years old. But no, he refused, he’s so in l

      I was looking for something in my drawer when I chanced upon this illustration (see photo above) of a couple who seemed in love with each other and was taking a leisurely stroll. I was told that it was a drawing by my seven-year old niece while her family was visiting us three weeks ago. It was an effortless, nonchalant and an original drawing, they said.       I know that she loves to draw but this one’s really good—it has character, quite proportionate, a bit detailed, gotta love the girl’s eyelashes and the way she lovingly glances at her man. I don’t know if this is unusual to kids her age but many people in their seventies can only draw stick figures. Me, I learned to draw like this when I was already in college--and up to now, I still draw like this.