Pounding The Keyboard

       A day before Christmas, I read that hundreds of thousands of Filipinos were afflicted with flu-like illness, with fever, cough, chills and body aches as symptoms. And as if on cue, the next day, Christmas day, like it was my gift from Santa for being naughty, I woke up with a severe cold and cough, and I remembered that few hours before that, I was awakened feeling chills all over my body.      It’s been three days and I still feel sick (with coughs and cold and phlegm), though a little better. I haven’t suffered from fever or body aches, so I don’t know if I should be added to the statistic above (hundreds of thousand of Filipinos sick with flu-like illness).      But this has been a yearly occurrence for me, I think, whenever the cold breeze start creeping into my room during the night, whenever our freezer welcomes some ham, whenever kids start singing Christmas carols outside our door, whenever my sister makes some fruit salad, whenever I have the urge of playing some

       Few days ago, I bought a manga (the book, not the fruit, a one-shot; there were few one-shots in the store), intending it to be a gift. But now, I’m realizing that it might just be stuck with me. And now I’m in a quandary, would I un-plastic-cover it, consider it mine, and read it or just let it remain wrapped and sealed until I could deliver it? I am not a fan of manga (which is fortunate because its price will bleed your wallet dry, and it’s ironic because I tried writing manga stories once and failed), though I watch some anime every now and then ( Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix is brilliant). But then I am a fan of comics and used to write for the local comics dozens of centuries ago, and manga is comics, just Japan-made, and sort of cartoonish, so, yes, I’d probably read it once it’s certain that it’d remain with me.      When I looked, I saw that many reviews of the book I bought, published in 2021, were glowing.      And suddenly, I’m craving for some mango graham cak