Luningning Tan-Gatue, 86, has kept the Philippine flag flying for decades. Flag-making is her family’s business. And the period leading up to Independence Day is extremely busy for her. Granddaughter Addrianne Marie goes over the orders, which could come in the “hundreds of thousands” during the “peak season” from mid-May to June 12. Addrianne’s twin, […]
The industrialization of Western Europe during the 15th to 18th centuries was one of the driving forces that initiated the development of science and technological innovation in the region. This era saw the emergence of brilliant mathematicians, scientists, and inventors such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo Galilei and Andreas Vesalius who pioneered in the fields […]
When our children were toddlers, my cousin in the United States and I sometimes compared notes. There was one hilarious instance when at the laundromat, someone heard my cousin tell her daughter, “Dyan ka lang. Magpapapalit lang ako ng barya.” The Filipina approached the little girl, “Good morning, anong pangalan mo?” My cousin, slightly out […]
Each Chinatown around the world has a unique flavor of its own, coming from how the local Chinese community blends its culture and traditions with those of the host nation. A good example of this is Bangkok’s Chinatown in the Samphanthawong district. I rediscovered Bangkok’s Chinatown on a recent trip to Thailand. I convinced my […]
Early in my medical career, I had a middle-aged male patient who smoked a pack a day. He was an overweight businessman with high blood pressure. Being a neophyte, I constantly reminded him to stop smoking. After his third visit, he told me bluntly, “Hey young man, don’t tell me to stop smoking. I’m older […]
I’m not sure if it has to do with my cousin and me being boys, but as early as 9 years old, our parents would leave us in the province at our aunt’s house for a few weeks during summer. If they were helicopter parents when we were younger, they eventually threw us off the […]
I spent the Lunar New Year and the succeeding month in a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery in the hills outside Kathmandu. There were no fireworks or astrological predictions, no hopeful statements of and resolutions for a good year ahead. It was, in summary, a nine-full-day prayer ceremony to greet the Lunar New Year. Full without any […]
I’ve always thought of myself as creative. My constantly restless hands have this urge to do some kind of aesthetically productive work. That search for an artistic endeavor led to my discovering Chinese painting. Most Chinese painting exhibited in museums and Chinese homes are typically scrolls of landscape in black and white, or with minimal […]
Each year, smoking-related diseases cause the most number of deaths in the Philippines. What is worse is that smokers actually hurt the non-smokers around them by letting them inhale its toxic fumes. A study by the Food and Nutrition Research Institute shows that 47 percent of Filipino males and 16 percent of females are smokers: […]
Our story now focuses on the return of Chan Bon Kheng’s cousin, Eleuterio “Terio” Alosos (曾榮旋) back to the town of his birth. While still very young children, they, along with many other Filipino mestizo cousins, were sent to China to stay with Chinese relatives. Most, like Terio, never returned. His homecoming is not the […]