Because she was there

The town of Barotac Viejo is a coastal town along the Guimaras Strait in the North of Iloilo Province. Many of the villages that make up the town are fishing villages and when my sister Amour and I were little girls, I recall that the fishing grounds were plentiful what with the choice of seafood, especially fish like the snapper, slipmouth and tuna and crustaceans like lobster, crabs and shrimps as well as shellfish like oysters, clams and scallops and cephalopods like squids, octopus and cuttlefish. Eversince I can remember, at the end of every schoolday, either my Tita Bing or Lola Beb would go to the local open-air market, rushing to catch the fresh-food vendors before they close up shop for the day. Fish was generally cheaper than other meats (chicken, pork or beef) and can be bought fresh, dried (locally called tuyo) or smoked (locally called tinapa). All three types of fish sold have their merits and all three can be made into delicious viands (a type of dish that accompanies th...

Where it Begins  I am the eldest of 5, born of highly passionate parents often lost in their passions. Parents so indulged and involved in themselves, their feelings, their situations that often, their children played second, even third fiddle to their needs. Highly educated with much expectations upon him, our father's life plan was laid out before he met our mother, whose youth and beauty literally brought down to ashes anyone ever seeing those dreams and expectations of him come true. Their love was dramatic and in a sense, toxic; much of our childhood my siblings and I witnessed rows so violent and making-up so passionate that it seemed to us their love blinds them to responsibility - of sending their children to school, teaching them, clothing them, nurturing them and feeding them so that at the very least, they might live and have a future. Instead, on those terrible days when Juliet has upset Romeo or when Romeo has been deeply agitated by Juliet, one of us children would be...