“Siblings are forever teammates, your most trusted ally. Someone who would stand up for you when no close friends would” said my late grandma {paraphrase mine} when my 7-year old self complained about having too many sisters and brothers. I've protested here and there but I always knew she was right. We’re 8 by the way. Before me are 5 older sisters and...

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Twenty-two years ago, I can clearly remember feeling very frightened at the thought that the world was ending. “Are we going to die?” my 6-year old self asked my Pa on the evening Typhoon Diding (international name, Yunya) produced heavy rains that prompted significant flooding at the time the Mount Pinatubo erupted. “No” he replied while he led us, kids, to take refuge in the washing...

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Walking into a room full of animated kids, whose age range from 6 to 12 years, for my first stint in the ministry as a children’s choir teacher was a life-defining moment. Clueless of what to expect, my heart was racing and pounding. Excitement, edginess, anxiety, delight and the what-nots were tangled into one big ball of perplexity that when I opened my...

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When the school year ended last March, I already lined up in mind the things I wanted to pursue for the rest of the year… numbers of more appealing somethings, none of which involved teaching. This is not to say that teaching isn’t appealing to me anymore. It still is. I suppose you can say that I am at a point in my...

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In my attempt to prove my romantic sensibility to my friend, Sab, I wrote a sappy poem some 2 years ago about an Ube bar. Ube bar, in actuality, is a purple yam bread cut into bars, sold for Php3.00 each to any bakery in the Philippines. So basically, this is the inner fat kid in me, pulling off an Elizabeth Barrett Browning......

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{Originally posted on the eve of my 27th name day on http://anieordillo.blogspot.com/} Here's my perspective on things and the oddities that life has taught me, because let’s face it, one way or another, we all learn something. And as I enter my late 20’s (three years shy of that one birthday, oh gosh!) I started to see the beauty of getting older... that...

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In life, you learn how to love, how to laugh, cry your heart out, get your heart broken, learn how to forgive, smile in the rain and in life, you also learn the value of measuring cups and its power over a good pancake (or any cake/desserts for that matter). My third year in high school taught me a significant deal about measuring...

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To Nathaniel Hawthorne’s most complex character, the Puritan Minister, Rev. Arthur Dimmesdale, I seriously think you were a fool for falling in love with someone like Hester Prynne. I suppose my repugnance towards your lack of common sense and how it affected me terribly is because outside the literary/fictional world, I am admitted to the fact that there STILL countless people like you...

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I have so much love for Adele but you know that already so, I guess that’s not something new anymore. I love her like I love wearing flat shoes and sundresses even on the monsoon season. Yeah, something like that and that love by some means fueled me to sing Rolling in the Deep to a school event last February before a score of audience while laser lights...

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There are no words to describe my unadulterated liking for Stephen Frears 1996 feature film, Mary Reilly. No matter how dark, sad, frightening and gloomy of a story it was (as told by the legendary film critic, Roger Ebert) I am still fully drawn to it. The film received countless negative feedbacks from the public, critics and movie-goers alike, yet I fancy the...

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“Happy name day to me.” I softly told myself as I glared on my iPod screen that reads: 12:00, Saturday, April 20.  A silent sigh followed while I sat comfortably on a folding foam bed watching ‘You’ve Got Mail’ with two of my closest girl friends on a very random sleepover. Ate Tin and Sab greeted me in a jiffy as soon as the...

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“Download Complete: Casual Vacancy (Unabridged) J. K. Rowling” says a notification on my Taskbar. My heart beats wildly upon seeing the notification. In haste, I transferred the audio file, grabbed my earphones and finally pressed play on my mobile as I lay comfortably on my back. “This is Audible. Hachette Audio Presents: The Casual Vacancy. Written by J. K. Rowling. Read by Tom...

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With a serious streak of introversion going on with yours truly, I was this close in blowing off my morning run with the girls. Our last run was a disaster and I was pretty determined to stay in bed all morning and snooze my time away, probably dreaming Gotye-like videos kind of dreams... you know, the creepy ones? 😆However, persuasion, in the form...

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If someone had told me that cutting back your social media consumption and production could be so refreshing, I wouldn’t have believed them but coming off from a two-week social media leave, I must say that it is. In every sense of the word, it truly is… and that, coming from a girl who practically lives on Twitter, is quite sobering, don’t you...

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4 months after I hit my late 20's, I get to be an aunt all over again. These past weeks, I spent some quality time with my youngest niece, who gets so adorable by the minute. After spending the day with her,  I'd lay on my bed scrolling through the newest photos of her on my mobile phone and instantly, my brain floods with so much endorphins....

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Even for someone like me, who shamelessly loves her job, getting back into the work-groove could also be a little painful. Add eating a lot of food into the muddle, hanging out with the girl friends and staying up late, it just seems almost impossible to come back to work all fired up. So, as the holiday break draw to a close, I’ve...

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“Anieeee!” my sisters called from outside and bellowed something I hardly picked out.  Grabbing my full-zip pink hooded sweater from my bedroom, I shrieked “Waiiiit!”  In my hand was my happy pink Avon lipstick and swiftly, I slapped some life on my seemingly dead lips.  It’s been an hour and a half past midnight and our New Year’s Eve dinner table has already...

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