It was cold winter. The temperature was dropping to 0 degrees Celsius. The good thing about this kind of weather was the coldness. I would not get sweaty and I would be very comfortable to move around. The bad thing about it was also the coldness: moving was limited and it ironically it was also…
Tag: UNESCO
Culture and Nature, the Everyday and the Holy Day, Bali and Tri Hita Karana Philosophy
According to Julia Roberts in the box-office film Eat Pray Love, Bali is the best place to fall in love. I did not get the reason exactly but I believe the film suggested that a serene and calm heart opens up for love. Bali’s serenity and its sort of calmness are viral infections that ironically the…
The Dead Lives Among Us: The Royal Tombs of the Joseon Dynasty
The International Federation for Theatre Research – Asian Theatre Working Group (IFTR-ATWG) 2019 was hosted by the Korea National University of Arts in Seoul through the Department of Theatre Studies’s Prof. Meewon Lee. The colloquium was slightly different in the sense that the opening program and the opening keynote were scheduled at 3:00 pm. We…
Art Nouveau and Victor Horta
When I was young, my only idea of Belgium was Christelle Roelandts. The year was 1994. And my interest in Belgium began. Christelle Roelandts and 1994? Miss Universe 1994 was held in Manila, Philippines. Christelle Roelandts was Miss Belgium and she was one of my favorites. Unfortunately, she did not make it – not even…
Four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Four Days: Day 3 and Day 4 in Beijing (Part 2 of 2)
In the previous post, I talked about the Forbidden City experience and how we wasted time waiting for two other participants of the group tour. As a consequence, we needed to skip the shopping activity at a posh Beijing street, which street-name I forget. At the same time, we needed to adjust the alotted time…
Four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Four Days: Day 3 and Day 4 in Beijing (Part 1 of 2)
The third day, 23 December, the temperature continued to drop. We were warned the night before that the temperature would reach up to -7 degrees. Jayson even asked everyone to wear our warmest clothes. The itinerary of the day began at the Tiananmen Square, a city square in the center of Beijing named after Tiananmen…
Four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Four Days: Day 1 in Beijing
On 21 December 2018, my colleagues, my friends and my partner traveled to Beijing, China on a tour package. Our flight back to Manila was on the 24th of December, with high hopes of making it for the noche buena or the midnight Christmas meal on our respective homes. The original expected time of arrival…
Le Grand-Place, Brussels: Place Making is Community Making
When my book Performing Catholicism (UP Press, 2016) was chosen by the National Book Development Board to be part of the official book launch event of the Philippine Pavilion at the Frankfurt International Book Fair in 2016, I made sure to do a side trip to Brussels. Besides, the transportation system in this European region (i.e….
The Legacy of the Nguyen Dynasty: Hué Imperial City and Thien Mu Pagoda
Earlier, I wrote two posts about our wonderful experience in Hue! The focus of the earlier posts was the Royal Tombs of the Emperors of the Nguyen Dynasty. In the first post, I talked about Minh Mang’s and Khai Dinh’s. In particular, Minh Mang’s was impressive due to the man-made lake fringed with pine trees….
Baroque Churches in the Philippines: 500 Years of Christianity (Part 1 of 3)
On 21 March 1521, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan landed in the Visayas. Some say the landing was an accident. For others, the arrival of Magellan in Cebu was a necessary event in the history of the archipelago. Whatever perspective one believes, one thing is clear: Magellan’s arrival commenced the 333 years of divide et impera in…
