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…

By Rex Catubig   (Note: This is part of my series on Women in celebration of National Women’s Month) IT’S an oft repeated tale of OFW woe. The domestic helper being maltreated. One is already inured to these stories. Until it hits close to home. Christina Aquino, a single mom…

By Rex Catubig   WOMEN are usually portrayed as mothers or wives, or girlfriends. When they are in an illicit relationship, they are branded as kabit, the other woman. But there are other women, who fall under the tag other woman not because of the implied forbidden status but simply…

By Rex Catubig   IN celebration of the Women’s Month this March Note: A friend posted this poem by Rupi Kaur on Facebook. I googled her: Rupi Kaur is a Canadian poet, illustrator, photographer, and author. Born in Punjab, India, Kaur immigrated to Canada at a young age with her…