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Just two Sundays ago, an overseas Filipino community in Vancouver, Canada was having a Filipino cultural festival and celebration (the Lapu-Lapu Festival named after our hero), when a speeding SUV rammed into the crowd at the foodstalls and killed 11 people, including a 5-year-old girl. On May 1, in Tarlac, Philippines,…
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On watching movies in the theatre
At film school last semester, I became attuned to the importance of the debate whether movie theatres will still exist or not in the future, and how it’s important to still watch movies in the theatre. (I guess the first time I heard about this debate was in 2021, through my…
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“You can’t perch here”
Plucking one of my stories from wattpad to here LOL. (as an attempt to go back to feeling like a teen writer, my golden years :P) It was from a few months ago. The prompt? Write a scene from the point of view of an animal. Note (also taken from what…
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The Birdkeeper (a short story)
My wife was a free spirit, an independent soul. She had an iron will and was used to carving her own path. When I met her, I wanted her, and she came to me, she came to love me… She went down to earth to meet me. We built a home…
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randomly remembering Robin Williams
I rewatched Good Will Hunting this week at our little cinema club between me, my sister and our Filipina neighbour, and I remembered I wrote something about Robin Williams on my journal some time ago. Here it is… I had a crush on him when I was a kid, seeing him…
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The Past, Present, and Future of Blogging (from my point of view)
I wish I could be a teenager again and blog the way that I used to. I often wrote about this on the old version of this Wonderfilled Issa blog, but yeah. I had so much time as a homeschooler just to rave about football, my favourite shows and computer games,…
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Nolan and the Villanelle (Cinema and Poetry)
So I realised that Nolan’s use of a villanelle for Interstellar is so fitting, considering the poetic form’s mechanics. It’s cyclical in nature, you could say you’re going back in time every stanza…
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The Odysseys of Homeschool Alumni
Homeschoolers are stereotypically characterised as misfits secluded from the world – some as socially awkward, some as geniuses, but mostly as black sheep who don’t conform to more conventional ways of schooling. So what happens to them once they’re pushed off the deep end into the “real world” – the world…
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What It Felt Like to Watch “Interstellar” In the Cinema
I got in just as the trailers ended. I shuffled through my row in the dark, said goodbye to my friend who got the only seat left near the back – I myself didn’t manage to snag a middle seat, but thought it was okay to be near the side in…
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My notes on Tenet: a mind-boggling masterpiece (SPOILERS AHEAD)
I just finished this movie the over the weekend. Initially, it made me fall in love with the action and music, then it engaged my intellect in a way that made me feel really refreshed. It ended with an “emotional gut punch” like the best short sci-fi stories out there, the…