All Stories
Everything we've published, newest first.
Manila is the place & Time is the story
Luxury watchmaking was never really about telling time. Sixteen watchmakers from Switzerland, Germany and Japan set up inside the Ayala Museum.
Collected Irritations
A reader once wished my essays were collected in one book so she could hate everything in one place. Her wish is my command.
Why I Am Not A Normal Writer
As the paper I write for marks its 40th anniversary, it seems only fitting to look back at some of the highlights from this gloriously bonkers career.
Eye-catching today, iconic tomorrow: Inside the Ikea PS 2026 Collection
Three days in Älmhult, where a foldable chair hangs like art, a bench rocks like Oktoberfest, and a chair you sit on turns out to be air.
From Malabon to Venezia: Ronald Ventura mounts collateral show at 61st Venice Art Biennale
Four in the morning in Malabon in the Nineties, sopas at Connie’s, and a father who recognises his own town inside a drawing of Venice.
Malabon artist sets sail for Venice
Ronald Ventura transforms boat-body sculptures and lunar motifs into a meditation on water, survival, and the fragile ties between two cities.
‘Something sexy… happening in the Apocalypse’
Somatosonic’s performance wove together technology, sound, pole dance, audio-kinetic sculptures, live visuals, and a darkly brewing storm of sounds.
Pula ang Kulay ng Katapusan
Bakit pula? A foreword to Doktor Karayom’s book of raw, anatomical musings, drawn somewhere between bangungot and alaala.
Why write with the archipelago on fire?
‘Literature is the slower type of art which is consumed in seclusion, a great antidote against the flood of information.’
Cecile Licad’s tones of home
A Hamburg Steinway on the Banaue Rice Terraces, paksiw every morning, and the word motorsiklo written where accelerando should be.
Out to brunch as the world turns
The Great British Brunch at Gordon Ramsay Bar & Grill: unlimited cheese toasties and sticky toffee pudding, and a chef with Ramsay tattooed on her arm.
Inside a kitchen constantly put to the test
Ever the explorer, Chef Josh Boutwood treats The Test Kitchen as a culinary laboratory rather than a typical restaurant.