Without the icing, please! By Emmanuelle Have you baked a calamansi chiffon cake? Or tasted one that had just slid out of a homebaker’s warm oven? Slice a tiny first piece, fork it on your tongue. As the morsel melts, feel your mouth juices burst, gush! Its flavor is as…

Tip Toe pa rin? By Emmanuelle We continue last week’s story of twin brothers Tip and Toe: Up until now, I never could figure out why our parents had this compulsion to parade the very obvious – that Toe and I are twins! If I could still feel this way,…

I tip, You toe By Emmanuelle I am serious. This story happened; these people are real, really. An overseas Filipino worker learned of this column through friends and Friendster. When email messages couldn’t be sent, the worker and this writer conducted a Smart exchange across the Globe through Sun and…

The cheating Heart By Emmanuelle Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), statesman and historian, was the most important prose writer by the end of the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth century, when the Italian Renaissance was at its height. Though he wrote poetry, comedies and historical works, he was best known…

Murphy’s Law By Emmanuelle It is after lunch, just a few hours before the invited guests arrive. The house smells clean and fresh. Why wouldn’t it, after days of endless and vigorous scouring, scrubbing, sweeping, washing, airing, arranging and rearranging? The cake had been ordered days ago and is ready…

September Morns By Emmanuelle IT was four week ago; it seemed like yesterday. Then, this writer was humming the song September Morn, in joy! over the settling in of the -ber morns. Now, September ends. And yet, not. Actually, September in Latin means not the ninth but the seventh month…

His name means Joy; But he is more! By Emmanuelle TO talk to Dennis is not to talk.  It is to listen, and to listen well. For someone so young, he makes so much sense, and after so many minutes of listening to him, you realize that you have spent…

Sure of being unsure By Emmanuelle It’s classically typical. When the legitimacy of your present status and tenure is under a permanent cloud of doubt but still you insist on holding on to your seat through wind and storm, it is definitely certain that you and everyone loyal to you…

It’s All in the Mind By Emmanuelle Being born in Pangasinan, the middle child among five children was not the only edge this writer had over her other siblings. She was also the only child delivered by her own physician-father, in his and his nurse-wife’s own house. Her infant wails…

Led by the nose By Emmanuelle A  story went that upon seeing their daughter’s first born, this grandma nodded to grandpa and said “this child truly is of our clan. It has our characteristic bulbous nose and wide, flaring nostrils”. Then, both looked disapprovingly down their noses at their daughter’s…