Bruno Mars and Jessica Sanchez: these Filipino-Americans nailed the best versions of "Die With A Smile" (w/ videos)

So for the record, the song "Die With A Smile" was sung best by two Filipino-Americans: 

1. the original version by Bruno Mars w/ Lady Gaga ...

and 2. the rendition by Jessica Sanchez in the finals of America's Got Talent 2025.  

 Just sayin.' 👍

Tayo (ika-2 ng Hunyo, 2025)

 

tayo

 

magkayakap,

sa himpapawid

lumipad, sumirit

 

bulalakaw,

sa kalawakan,

bumulusok.

 

nagbanggaan!

 

pero ito ang nawasak,

at di tayo.

 

ni di tayo nagalusan.

 

at ito pa ang napaso,

di tayo.

 

(paano pang papasuin

ang dalawang

sa simula’t sapul

nagliliyab?)

UPCAT 2026: Nah, we'll take a pass for now and make the most of a gap year

My boy will surely graduate with honors from his senior high school but has been too busy with his robotics team and had no time to spare to review for the UPCAT—having a copy of The Maroon Bluebook notwithstanding. And with the 2026 UPCAT exam date fast approaching (August 2-3), we'll take a pass for the meantime. (Family background: Our clan has mostly UP graduates and a few dropouts, to which I belong, lol!)

Screenshot of my email to my son: 

To make it easier on the eye, click the screenshot to enlarge or read the same email content below: 

Dear Kuya,

You may want to consider taking a gap year: The University of the Philippines is the premier educational institution in our country, and the UPCAT date is fast approaching. In that regard, it is best if we are truly prepared for that test in order to not only pass it, but to qualify for our chosen top priority course. 

Now I'm confident that you can pass it if you take it this coming weekend, but your chances of qualifying for the BA Film program of UP Diliman is much higher if you have spent ample time preparing for the test. We can take the UPCAT only once in our lifetime. And you may want to take it only when you have expended enough time and effort reviewing for it.

Having said that, you may consider taking the UPCAT next year instead. So what will happen is, you're going to take a gap year: instead of enrolling as a freshman college student for school year 2026-27, you will enrol for SY 2027-28. It's only a one-year delay and we'll make your gap year fun and productive:

1. Then you'll have an extra year reviewing for the UPCAT.

2. You can spend the gap year taking short theater and film courses from reputable organizations like TESDA, etc. (So when you finally enroll in BA Film come SY 2027-28, you'll have the advantage of knowing more than your classmates.)

3. You can spend a year doing whatever else you'll find fun. (Going to the gym?)

4. And, if you prefer, maybe earn a little from a side job? (But this should be our least priority.)

And, finally, come SY 2027-28, you'll enrol in BA Film, College of Mass Communication, UP Diliman as the most handsome college freshman of the universe!

Read more about taking a gap year here (it's common among European students and it's becoming popular among American students, too): https://post.edu/blog/pros-and-cons-of-a-gap-year/. 

What do you think?

Love,

Daddy 

 

 

+ + + 

 

 

"A Trifecta For Our Times: two lamentations and a song of hope," my animated poetry collaboration with my son, which is one of my projects as a 2024 International Fellow for poetry of the International Human Rights Art Movement (IHRAM):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I ended 2024 with Tree and Other Poems by Brian Swann

Mid-afternoon, December 31, 2025. I was in bed here at my wife's ancestral home in Roxas, Isabela. I checked on my smartphone and found this email from Evergreen Review bearing, Tree and Other Poems by Brian Swann. As far as I know, it's my first time to read this poet. And I was immediately absorbed by the subdued intensity and restrained beauty that suffuse the poems from first line to last. (Spoiler alert: I'm sharing below the end parts of each poem, so you - who must be my one and only reader - better read first the entire three short poems now!)

From Tree:

where the world opens out to itself so you can go on forever,
a tree is surrounded by trees and this the one, the one
in flame you stand in, no one knowing the difference,
and if they saw anything at all they would see just a tree
and not look twice.

From Three Cormorants: 

they weren’t there yesterday
and there’s no guarantee
they’ll be there tomorrow.
This could be how the gods
might mean, ready for whatever,
marking the unknown,
assuming the blessed.

From The Empty Well: 

                         You turn, want to leave
this place with no sides, an empty well
a stone keeps falling down.

Then I fell asleep. And the tone of the poems set the mood of my mid-afternoon nap dream:

I was driving a public jeepney inside the University of the Philippines - Diliman campus, to take my former coworker at Quezon City Hall to her class one bright morning. Somehow, she was a student again of the university where she graduated from more than a decade earlier - and where I dropped out from almost three decades ago. But I took a detour in the dream to give chase to another vehicle, for a reason I could no longer recall. She ended up late for her class. I apologized. She said it's okay, and decided to just attend the next. 

I don't know why exactly I dreamed about her. But I believe that seeing her post on Facebook before I slept, with a photo of her and her grandmother shoulder-to-shoulder, and with an announcement of the latter's recent passing, must have been a factor. We're not even close friends - more so after I resigned from city hall December of 2013. But I do remember giving her a birthday or Christmas present: a stuffed toy figure of my friend who gained fame as a TV personality and comedian of the absurd. (That was among the merchandise he sold with his wife, before his fatal accident when the public bus he was riding plummeted down a mountain slope February of 2014.)

Anyway, I am delighted to have discovered the poems of Brian Swann. I believe that's all I wanted to say.