By Rex Catubig   “IT’S a constant battle, a war between remembering and forgetting.” ~E.E. Cummings. Aside from family, my brother had three great loves: politics, women, and food. It was his love of food that forged the bond between us. As kids growing up in the barrio, we were…

By Rex Catubig   IT’S just an ordinary day for these mothers — just one of those unexciting Sundays, perhaps just hotter, but no different, really. No Facebook posts, no Instagrams, no flowers, no greeting cards, no Tik Tok; maybe not even a bag of pancit and tasty bread to…

By Rex Catubig   IN days primeval, man was without the concept of sound. Because he had to deal with wildlife most of the time, as he listened to them, he began to imitate the sounds they made to one another.  And doing so, he uttered his first words, and speech…

By Rex Catubig   “WATCH out, you will crush the food” Arman yelled as I plopped myself on the passenger seat of his truck. I was taken aback. “How did it get there?”, I asked incredulously, referring to my Sharon loot. “You were holding it and you put it there”,…

By Rex Catubig   APRIL Filipino Food Month’s celebration of our culinary heritage takes me on a gastronomic reminiscence of the food on our table in our barrio. Barrio Calmay was a Lilliputian town, where one could buy cheap home-cooked food in little pakanan or carinderia. Mama Bestre was undoubtedly…

By Rex Catubig   FOLLOWING the 7.4 Taiwan temblor, Phivolcs issued an advisory citing the imminent danger arising from a strong earthquake up to magnitude 8.2.  Responding to the possible scenario, Mayor Belen Fernandez held an urgent conference to discuss Disaster Preparedness. Actually, in January, the City already held a…

By Rex Catubig   SHE is known as a shrewd businesswoman, a smart entrepreneur, an astute politician, a public servant nonpareil. But behind all this, is a facet rarely seen, thus, unappreciated. She hardly stays put in City Hall. Because the city is her office. And she’s always on the…

(Easter Sunday in Blue Beach)   By Rex Catubig BY the time the Sunday PUNCH reaches the newsstands today, morning has broken  and the traditional Abet-abet  depicting the encounter between the Risen Christ and His beloved Mother Mary on Easter Sunday would have already taken place at the Tondaligan Ferdinand…

By Rex Catubig (Last of a series on ordinary but exemplary women in celebration of Women’s Month) AT the beach where a naval landing had made history, the same beach that has produced the legend of a rags-to-riches Matutina, other enterprising women vendors today do not even come remotely close to…

By Rex Catubig   SABEL, for her part, chooses to set up her “pakanan” — a street version of fast-food, further down the main street, in front of a store that is already closed for the night, and just slightly across the CSI Square. In a departure from the carinderia-caldero-caserola…