MARICAR: As a child I felt very distant from my father. Strange, because he would often say, “I love you.” For a precious few seconds, he would gather me in his arms and pepper my cheeks with kisses, saying I was his one and only baby girl. Once in a while, he would come home […]

 MARICAR: —The curious case of Sandy Rindy (Names are fictitious, of course 😀 ) My friend, Sandy Rindy is married, like me. Unlike me, her husband Andy has a “9AM to 5PM” job. He leaves their small apartment at 6am to go to his Makati office, and returns often around 10pm. Andy was just given […]

MARICAR: The night before the wedding, my mom was a bit sad. She felt like she was “losing her daughter.” To feel better she would say to herself, “No, I’m gaining a son.” However painful it was, her first thought was very true. I was “leaving” the family, just as she once “left” hers to […]

RICHARD: One afternoon, I heard a story of a lovely mother telling us how she and her husband fell “out of love”. She said their first 10 years of marriage were good when they were still living abroad together. Trouble started when they moved back to the Philippines to live in a house RIGHT BESIDE […]

RICHARD: I once heard finance advisor Chinkee Tan say in his seminar “If you have a debt to pay, you should refrain to watch movies in the mall.” I thought it was harsh. Until he turned the question around at me, “Richard, how would you feel if you saw a man who owed you 20,000 […]

MARICAR: When I was still studying, my family had financial problems. Good thing I had earned some money through modelling so I had enough to pay for the final installment of my tuition. But a few weeks before the due date, my parents had borrowed the money, and promised to return it in time. They […]