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I have a confession to make: I don’t get to read a lot of books anymore. I still get to read a LOT of magazines and news stories and feature articles online, but it’s been quite a while since I last read an actual, physical book. To be honest, I don’t feel too bad about this. I don’t feel bad about myself, too; I don’t think I’m less of a person coz of this. Let me repeat: I still read a LOT. I think reading books for me was a phase. There was a time in my life when I was so addicted to books, obsessively buying them and reading them. One day, I moved on to magazines. And then one day, I moved on to reading websites and blogs and digital magazines. I still very much believe that people should read books, especially the young ones. In fact, this is something I promote at home with my daughter Sadako. I love how National Book Store continues to spread the love for reading with their various activities. Take, for example, their Read Out Loud Challenge (R...

I am a big fan of boybands. As in. During my teenage years (when the term boyband wasn’t really that popular, if I remember it right), I was into boybands just like a lot of my female and gay classmates. I was a fan of a lot of them: Backstreet Boys, N’SYNC, Boyzone, 98 Degrees, Code Red, Plus One, O Town, 3T, Human Nature, 5ive, The Moffats, Hanson, All 4 One, Take That, BBMak, Westlife – just to name some. I bought their cassette tapes/CDs, tuned in to MTV and Channel [V] to watch and even record their music videos, bought magazines featuring them, and watched their concerts here. I think I was into them a little more than most of my peers. This was because I wanted a career in music. As in I wanted to be part of a boyband. I wasn’t just a fan of these cute and talented singers; I wanted to be like them, too. And so I found myself listening to and learning all their songs, released or not. I studied the structure of their songs, the delegation of part...

I loved singing and performing for relatives and guests at home when I was young. One time, when I was about four years old, my mother asked me to sing Tomorrow for our relatives who were visiting. I instantly burst into song. However, after singing the first line with so much passion, I decided to stop and asked to be excused. I went inside my room, did a proper entrance, and then whipped out my milk bottle, which I used as a microphone. I sang “The sun will come out tomorrow” again and finished the song. No doubt about it: even when I was just a kid, I already knew I wanted to sing and perform for others. Fast forward to my high school years. One day, I read in the papers that Ryan Cayabyab was forming an all-male version of Smokey Mountain. Of course, I just had to try out. I didn’t tell my parents about it. My friends and I decided to try our luck. For those who have no idea what I’m talking about, Smokey Mountain was a vocal group composed ...

My aunt, tita My, is so lucky because she was born on October 31. I’d love to be born on the same day—imagine having a birthday party and Halloween party in one! We used to live with her and her family, and we left a couple of months before Honeybun popped, since we needed our own place; a bigger one, since someone was about to join us. After we left, which was almost over a year ago, we rarely got to visit or see her and the kids, who we were very close with (we introduced Danielle and Demon-ique to Lady Gaga and Heidi Montag). And so last October 31, we made sure we dropped by to celebrate her birthday. The kids—who are all so big now—were so excited to see Sadako and play with her. We didn’t have a lot of time together; it was all a blur: pacifying Sadako (who was restless because of the new environment and the new faces), catching up with the grown-ups, exchanging updates with the kids, and eating, of course. We had chicken from KFC (they should have ordered Chili Lime ...