The first time I heard Ramon Zialcita I was a college freshman barely versed in the ways of the world. I had no musical preference whatsoever, and I pretty much ate up as much bubblegum pop as could be shoved down my gullible teenage throat. I was a mindless preppy happy to eat up the inane banter that passes for proper English in this social stratum.

Then I met this pretty girl who thought herself the next reincarnation of the Goddess of Pinoy Rock (I have a sneaking suspicion most girls in the nineties felt this way–admit it, even you had your own band) and was nothing but a loyal and avid listener of the only “real” radio station that paid her satisfactory supplication. Determined to impress her, I tuned in one day to see what the fuss was about. Ramon was on air.

“Students these days are distracted by so many things,” bemoans mathematics and psychology professor Queena Lee Chua.

In her twenty years of teaching at the Ateneo de Manila University, she has discovered that more than television and computer games, family problems and relationship issues also stand in the way of good academic performance.

Many times, students would run to her not for help in homework but to seek advice about a father having an affair or parents not having the time for them. Learning all this was “shocking,” Queena says, and she admits she was not prepared to deal with the issues at first. “If it was just mathematics, it would be easy,” she observes, which is what led her to study psychology.

Running a restaurant in the Philippines is not easy, what more running a Filipino restaurant abroad. Foreigners find Pinoy food too oily, too sweet, or too salty, and most Filipino restaurateurs have found it difficult to market our cuisine outside the country.

In New York especially, “It is never about the food,” says Amy Besa, who runs the 12-year-old Filipino restaurant Cendrillon in New York, with her husband Romy Dorotan as head chef.

“Mabuti pa ang mga paintings namin nakakabiyahe,” painter and CCP 13 Artists awardee Elmer Borlongan jokes.

Two of his paintings are in the Singapore Art Museum, while one is at the Fukuoka Art Museum in Japan.

There will be another Borlongan piece in Singapore soon, as Emong leaves for his first exhibit there at the Art Space, Royal Plaza, organized by Art Sentral Asia. The show, entitled “Beyond Borders II,” will feature artists from India, Indonesia, and the Philippines.

Emong has been called the “prize of collectors.” It seems everyone, here or abroad, wants to have a piece of him. Locally, morning show host Kim Atienza and broadcast journalist Julius Babao are among those who have authentic Borlongans in their collections.

What is it, indeed, about Borlongan’s pieces that catch attention? It’s probably the realism in his work, how he captures local scenes so unpretentiously, how each little detail is injected into the scene so naturally.

If there’s something that Electrolychee does best, it’s melding Pinoy pop culture and art without being artsy-fartsy about it.

“We make wearable art,” explains Bru, who holds up half the sky, the yin to Marcushiro’s yang. Both artists in their own right, the two met at the workplace. Perhaps there were stolen glances or passing of artwork; we can only surmise.

Long story short, they decided that there was something more they could both do other than play beautiful music together. And that’s how T-shirts emblazoned with snakeman Zuma doing jump rope (“Zumasaya”) and “Adobo All-Stars” came about, as well as colorful buttons word-playing on a showbiz heartthrob (“Bitter Ocampo”), a national hero (“Boni Fasyon”), and a major thoroughfare (“Kamias You Are”). Their “Just-Tiis League” (a 3-D project still in progress, a preview of which was shown at Graphika Manila 2007) is a chaotic mix of characters in the typical Pinoy neighborhood, including the labandera (laundrywoman), the butcher, and the pedicab driver.

Filipino voters must have thought gay rights advocate Danton Remoto had come out of nowhere when he showed up at the Comelec office earlier this year to represent the party-list group, Ang Ladlad, in the May 2007 elections.

But really, this English professor from the Ateneo de Manila University has been around.

Her bags have found their way into the hands of celebrities and royalty such as Kim Basinger, Princess Stephanie, Elizabeth Taylor, Queen Sylvia of Sweden, and the princess of Thailand, but former criminal lawyer Cora Jacob, head of a multimillion-dollar bag empire now on a comeback after a decade’s hiatus, is as grounded as ever.

“I never meant to go into business,” she says. “Cojac Leather Products (from the combination of the first syllables of her name) was a cottage industry that grew and grew until it became global.”