The Reading Barrio Girl

31 October 2016 Payawin, Gubat, Sorsogon, Philippines In today's selfie age we can take thousands of photos instantly and publish them online any time of the day. Or we can just archive them in our devices and get back to them whenever we want. Worst, they can be buried in the archives forever. But I think the mind is a more powerful photographer. It takes photos that are never forgotten, of moments forever etched not only in our minds, but in our hearts as well. However, this ability to remember 'heart photos' can both be a gift and a curse, for there are moments we'd rather forget but we can't. Also there are life moments that we would like to progress and develop more, but they are already stucked for some reason. And that's even more frustrating. But you see, we still live in the same planet. It's not like we have to pass through a wormhole to get there. We could always just hop on a plane and see that place we always wanted to visit, or see th...

26 October 2016 Payawin, Gubat, Sorsogon, Philippines Dreams. Aspirations. Longings. We all had those, in several forms, throughout our lives. Dream job. Dream house. The perfect family. But even dream jobs have their downside and no family is perfect.  But we accept what we've been blessed with. After all, who are we to complain under this vast universe? If God can provide for mere birds and bees, humans can rest assured that they will be well provided as well. But then we never get everything we longed for. There is a 'rule' that we are given according to what we need and not what we want. But wanting something we don't have (yet) is a clear reminder of our human-ness. No matter how we made ourselves believe that we are just fine with what we have currently, with the status quo, something happens to remind us that we are not.  Then we start hoping again. But some things are just not meant to be, I suppose. Those that pass our way may be meant for us,...

October 20, 2016 Payawin, Gubat, Sorsogon, Philippines When I caught the blogging bug way back in 2004, I had nobody to talk to. Blogging became my therapy, at a time when my heart and mind were in turmoil and I was in my, should we just say, lowest of lows. But sending out your honest thoughts randomly out in the worldwide web without knowing who might read them brought me some kind of comfort; and in the process unloaded the burden somehow. Then writing online became a source of income, and I swear, it had its rewards! But some good things never last I suppose, the US economy crashed years later and Google changed its algorithm affecting page rankings. Eventually, all that brought the blogging moolah into an all time low. The rest, as they say, is now history. Since then, like some of my blogging contemporaries, we've all went back to the 'day job' and actually found legit writing and editing jobs. Today, while young folks (the millennials) are caught up in a worl...

October 1, 2016 Thaltej, Ahmedabad, India The last time I published a blog post was in 2010 and I can't remember why I stopped. I guess life happened, like it does to most of us. Today, I'm bursting with lots of things to say, for public consumption (and not enough for a Facebook post), so let me start by sharing a bit of my soul journey to India... I've been here in India for 15 days now and one thing is for sure: I will NEVER, EVER, look at anything Indian the same way again. That is my karma. I've been to total of five cities: New Delhi, Agra, Mohali, Chandigarh and Ahmedabad, in three states  ̶  from Uttar Pradesh and Punjab in the North, to Gandhi's state of Gujarat down south. Somewhere between Agra and Ahmedabad, like the Philippines, the country clearly displays a great divide between rich and poor, of development and under-development, and everything else that all of that entails. But I've also seen a country so hugely rich in culture and tradi...