“Nakakapagod na.” She continued lamenting while still dragging her feet, pushing forward, hoping to not get swept by the bus. Through our short interaction, I learned that she’s from Subic and that she purposely came to Cebu to join the Cebu City Marathon. Oh, the lengths we go to for the things that keep us sane.
Gossip has always been considered an unethical phenomenon but surprisingly, according to research, it has its bright sides and despite its reputation, it can be welfare enhancing. Gossip goes beyond its negative connotation. In some cases, it can provide a venue for conversations on thoughts and feelings about a situation and how it affects the people involved – and even those who are looking from the outside.
But the future I was looking forward to didn’t come into realization. The year 2020 happened. The pandemic put everything to a halt and like everyone else, I found myself in a fork in the road with seemingly dead ends on both paths. I no longer know where I was going and how to keep going.
Here’s what I learned: you don’t have to be like Mulan. You don’t need to be strong. You don’t need to leave home. You don’t need to defeat men. You don’t need to impose physical force. You don’t need to disguise for who you are not. You don’t have to become a legend.
Spice up your online community and make your friends feel that you are there for each other with these interactive Zoom games and activities. Let us normalize conversations with regards to mental health!
Fridates with Kamote is an online support group born to provide encouragement in this time of pandemic. This aims to lighten up the burden of each member by affirming what has been felt all through the week and motivating each other to keep fighting, to keep living despite and in spite of.
Traveling has always been my personal means of escaping the hassles of work and naggings of life. Weekends were my ‘me time’ – a time to recharge, to eliminate the toxics of my life, to connect with nature. But the onset of the coronavirus pandemic has left me constrained within the four-walls of our house, surrounded by concrete buildings, chained by regulations forbidding any geographical movement.
My mind has become a gruesome battlefield for almost four months of quarantine now.
Right now, I should be happily strolling around Beijing and Shanghai – learning about our cultural differences, exploring cityscapes, and finally savoring the fruits of a year’s worth of workload.
But I’m not. Instead, here I am at home, writing all these predicaments. Corona virus pandemic has changed everything that we so long planned for this year. Everything.
Itaewon Class is problematically titled. It’s not your regular high school teenage love story but a rather serious drama that portrays power struggle amidst diversity, prejudice, and discrimination. But what really troubled me all through its sixteen episodes is the battle for the leading lady role. At first glance, it’s easy to spot Cho Yi-seo as the main lead of Itaewon Class. However, there is an overlapping build-up of emotion towards her and Saeroyi’s first love, Soo Ah. Which gets me asking: who really is the second lead of this drama?
Once upon a time, my boss told me that I need an alpha to tame me so that I could get married. I believe otherwise. I don’t need an alpha. In a world of patriarchs, it’s difficult to be a woman. But this drama pointed out how a single woman could create ripples into others. To empower others to makes choices for themselves – to choose themselves first – denying society of what it wants to dictate. The World of Married Couple helps us reevaluate the women around us, the decisions that they have to make, and the struggles they silently battled with.
Dakilanglaagan 