By Joan Lopez Flores

Summer is the perfect time for new beginnings. It’s the time for beach parties and sun and sand. So what better way to relish it than shedding off a good 10 pounds, pronto? Check out these three easy tips you might already know but just need to carry out with more gusto.

Ni Jose Bimbo Santos

In this literary piece from Kanto’s third issue, Tag-ulan, Santos wonders, with the killing of journalists, is there anybody who still wants to be a reporter?

Noong isang araw diyan sa may kanto, binaril sa ulo ’yung mamang reporter. Sa radyo? Sa diyaryo? Sa TV? Di ko na matandaan kung saang reporter siya. Basta binaril siya. Noong isang araw lang. Di ko tanda kung anong petsa. Basta binaril siya.

Tatlong putok ’yung narinig namin. Tatlong putok ’yung tumapos sa kaniya. Hindi. Hindi naman mabilis. Parang may ilang segundong pagitan ’yung mga putok. Siguro pinagmasdan muna ng pumatay ’yung mamang reporter. Siguro, sa pagitan ng bawat kalabit sa gatilyo, sumusubo siya ng pulutan na nasa mesa. Siguro shuma-shot din siya ng serbesa. Nagtakbuhan daw kaagad ’yung mga kainuman ng mamang reporter pagkatapos pakawalan ’yung unang putok. Sumara kaagad ’yung bintana at namatay ’yung ilaw ng sari-sari store na pinagbilhan ng alak ng mamang reporter ’tsaka ng mga kasama niya.

By Clara Santos

My senior year was coming to an end and I couldn’t wait for it to be over. After those rigorous exams, I finally packed my summer clothes and headed off to the island of Boracay. That was pure fun! All I cared about was my nine full days on the beach under the blazing sun and nothing else.

Among the popular merchandise at the Celadon young entrepreneurs’ show were bags, clothing, and fashion accessories. Photo courtesy of Ateneo Celadon.

Many of the student entrepreneurs at the recent Ateneo Celadon Young Entrepreneurs Show started with as little as P20,000 (US$490), selling imported merchandise or original designs through social-networking Websites.

By Joan Lopez Flores

Yesterday morning, I was walking along Emerald Avenue on my way home from work. I decided to drop by Starbucks–I thought that was the best way I could be sentimental about my late dad who had died a week before.

In recent months, my dad developed pastries for the company (as well as for its most obvious competitor Figaro, and Red Ribbon, Dunkin Donuts, Mister Donut, and many others), and so I decided to buy myself a treat he himself made and pretend that, hey, Dad baked this for me! Yay! He didn’t really just leave without baking something for me . . . Right?!

“Surfacing,” a photographers’ initiative led by the Free Jonas Burgos Movement and the Desaparecidos, shows the lives and struggles of thirteen families of the disappeared.

Some of them were activists wanting to change society by arousing and organizing the masses. Others were ordinary folk who went about their daily lives. Suddenly they were gone. We call them desaparecidos.