Shainne Hostalero

I was then so young, about seven or eight and I still can remember how the rivalry works or perhaps if not the rivalry, a certain conflict that every neighbor goes through. Back then, I was not really paying attention and I did not know where and how it all started. I have never heard his voice, or maybe just once, when he was trying to shoo me away from their backyard. I never had a conversation with him, never. One day, I saw people outside of their home, doors and windows were all open and there were lights everywhere. I saw that it was a wake, someone died. The coffin was inside their home with flowers and sash, Mang  Ben, as we all call him already bid his goodbye.  I just have few encounters with Mang  Ben - when I was a kid, a college student, and the last would be when I was already working. I just heard he was hit by a stroke, maybe two or three years ago but he recovered. Sometimes, I saw him walking around the neighborhood wearing his blue or green slippers; his one

Many of us are still hoping that this catastrophic saga will end; but we just can't seem to be convinced that it will be over soon. We are hooked; the people involved in this case felt like celebrities - having the public attention, concerning about the ratings and faces on the frontpage of every newspaper, feeling like stars and surely is, the apple of everyone's eyes. Well, in fact, this is true to life and not some kind of fiction. While we can't get our money back, we keep on spending more. Spending more for their health care, security services, hearings/trials, everything that they need and yet we can't get the truth. Shame that these politicians are on their positions doing nothing but spending the country's money for their own good, yet they are given consideration on everything. They bought properties - house and lot, vehicles, and other personal stuff while many of us Filipinos are lying on the streets, still recovering from the typhoon that hit us, luc

In the middle of a work-day someone will try to put up a conversation that goes: Friend: How's adulthood treating you so far? Me: Didn't you get the memo? Adulthood is horrible. F: But you are one and you know a lot about it and about stuff, in general. M: Yes, you're right. I know, a little... but do you know that I wish I didn't know the things I know now? F: And why? M: Because it sucks. When you know a lot of things, you also know that what you know isn't enough or you know that you actually know nothing.

Funny how a writer cannot write on her own blog and update it. I'm guilty. My current work is a combination of marketing and journalism - well, not that kind of journalism you have in mind but a closer to that. I can write many inspirational/motivational and stating-facts articles in a day and can't update my personal blog because, *ehem* I'm dedicated. Yes naman ! I went to Sagada, Mount Province last holy week and that's my next post would be. I was thinking if ever the events and the turn-out of everything would be fresh when I blog about it later than expected; but I thought, yes, of course. Those kind of experience would be fresh always in my head and wouldn't be forgotten except if I'll have an amnesia, which I think I can regain back once my memory is off-the-charts again. So many travel plans this year! Hoping to push through!! You know what they say, "Travel not to escape life but not life to escape you."

"When you write articles for a living, you are giving the readers a piece of your head or yeah, perhaps a piece of you, the whole you. And I guess, somehow, it reflects you, define you and open you up to what the universe is like." As we all know after college we should and must start working - that's the norm. You don't waste time having too much vacation or being a bum because neither you want to waste what you have studied in a college or university for how many years. So, you start looking, you start planning and you start to picture out what you want to become for the next years to come.  Unusual things will come along the way, and like everything and everyone else, it goes to - you not knowing or you totally aware of what's really going on. You will learn the hard way, that's the promise of our lives but you must not despair my dear, for it will be worth it and you will be stronger, smarter and braver than you think. I worked for three (3) di