great!

my book!

tuesday noon was the RM awards foundation press conference and book launching. presscon to present this year's awardees, including Gawad Kalinga, GK pres. tony meloto, and media maven eggie apostol. also present were the notable board of trustees from RM, cutest and coolest pa rin: JAZA. haha! he speaks so well pa, grabe!
book launching of the 3 volumes, the last of which, abt past RM awardees from northeast asia, features my bio-essay on sadako ogata. anyway, they let me bring guests, so i brought my parents to witness my "big day". i have to say this was the most awaited day of my life--after graduation, of course. papa was my photographer and mama was my stylist. haha!
so many important people were there: christian monsod, emily abrera, lorna kalaw-tirol, ceres doyo, asuncion david-maramba, vicente tirol, sheila coronel, among others. i was seated at a table with howie severino and toward the end of the function, finally got the guts to talk to him. he's really nice. i also approached tita elsie kalaw-santos, who (i knew it!) is the mom of my friend from grade school, massie. she thought i looked familiar, but wasn't sure. i used to go to their house every year for massie's birthday. it was good catching up. she was there with sony maramba, who's the author of our phil. lit. book from high school. she was also a joy to talk with. i also met gissy's kumare christine herrera.
tita angge, gissy's mom, introduced me to eggie apostol. wow! after we had our pic taken together, i told her i admired her work--i mean, my dad even has those mr. & ms. from the time of ninoy! she was very nice too.
as we were having lunch, they said we would get our complimentary copy of the book, and i immediately got mine and asked most of the writers there to sign my copy. yes, once again, i was the frantic literary fan.
my parents pointed out that it looked like i was the youngest writer there. i thought it was so nice that the more established and the not-yet established writers were together in 1 book project. til the next time!
my many thanks again to gissy and rye for "mediating" for me. i'm really looking forward to writing more and more and more. my first love...:D


me with tita elsie, tita angge, RM awardee eggie apostol, and other writers in the series