About Me

I could not decide whether to become a film-maker or a writer when I finished university in my native Philippines in 1984. The decision was taken out of my hands by events leading up to the People Power Revolution of 1986. I was in the right place, at the right time to become a journalist.

My first employer hired me because of my ignorance. The Special Edition needed writers who were not under the influence or the pay of the dictatorship of President Ferdinand Marcos. So I cut my writer’s teeth mocking Imelda Marcos and being teargassed regularly at opposition rallies, before writing for Asia Magazine, The Toronto Star, The Yorkshire Post and New York Daily News. My big scoop was getting into North Korea just before the South Korean Olympics.

I met my English husband at such a rally a few days before the fall of Marcos – one of 30 or so foreign journalists during the People Power Revolution who arrived with a notebook and left with a bride.

We moved to London in 1989, and after a stint of subbing I became the one-woman-bureau of Inter Press Service (IPS), the news features agency, writing about UK news from the perspective of the developing world, a job that helped me get to grips with UK lifestyle and culture.

I made my first website while avoiding some housework and today, my bread and butter comes from web and graphic design, with the occasional journalistic project, such as Motherless Nation, the programme I wrote and presented for BBC Radio 4 in July, 2005.

But what I'd really like to be when I grow up is a writer of children's books.