By Rex Catubig   I often wonder what spell it casts, but among the months, May is embedded in our consciousness, not for the colorful events it celebrates– the fiestas, Flores de Mayo, Santacruzan– but for the simple memories it holds amid the flamboyance of summer. May is youth remembered….

By Rex Catubig   IT’S a morality tale for all time. And it runs the length and breadth of the years—from the bible story of Judas losing his mind and killing himself, to the Greek dramaturgy of antiquities, on towards unraveling history and the present. It’s the same throughout, with…

By Rex Catubig   SHE is a creature of habit. And the habit that drives her to the point of obsession is what has defined her– Unliserbisyo—the expeditious delivery of basic services not to the public in general, but to those most in need—the indigents and marginalized sector– the children, the…

By Rex Catubig   THE recent Placemaking competition organized by trailblazing creative Cong Toff de Venecia, whose culminating event was held a few days ago, harks back to the street art exhibit and installations that transformed an otherwise abandoned and lifeless shells of what was the OVR or Office of…

By Rex Catubig   I had high expectations. The Abet abet ed Olin Inbilay that we held on Easter Sunday last year was a crowd drawer. Impressed, the Mayor enthused: “Let’s make it bigger”. I started to work in earnest. After working on successive big events, my adrenaline was still running…

By Rex Catubig   JUST like in earlier times when they first met Jesus, after His resurrection, the disciples went out to fish but had no luck. The resurrected Jesus who they had not recognized, called out to them from the shore to cast their net again. Miraculously, they were…

By Rex Catubig   IT was 2,000 years ago when a Johnny-come-lately with his posse of peers, ventured out on a foot excursion across 91 miles of mountainous wasteland and desert from Nazareth to Jerusalem, walking 30 hours to their destination, to spend the Passover—a freedom celebration. From the Mount…

By Rex Catubig   TO prepare for a reluctant friend’s birthday dinner, I cruised around to scout for some down-home stuff to make into hors d’oeuvres and crudites as a prelude to dinner. I found the “biggest oysters” in town. Not homegrown as I had wanted, but imported from neighboring…

By Rex Catubig   IT was sometime in the mid-1990s that a friend of mine, while I was on my holiday vacation, invited me to join him and a couple of other friends to do some charity work for the season. He warned me, however, that it would not be a…

By Rex Catubig   (Continued from last week. Last in the series on women for Women’s Month) WHEN Christina was relocated from Riyadh and reassigned in the remote township of Bisha, her life as an OFW changed forever. She was supposed to work for a family of 6, but she…