Merry Christmas, everyone! I hope you are warm and cozy as you’re reading this. My blog is now coffee-focused, but I still aim to drop a few personal posts occasionally. I’m writing this on Christmas day, at my cousins’ house in Quezon City. It’s time for a life-lately post, and while I’m on it, I’ll be sharing…
I was strolling through the Podium Mall one day when I noticed some people waiting in line outside this newly opened cafe. I frequent this mall and have never seen this cafe before. Is this cafe famous? Why was there a long queue? A quick Google search answered my question. It turns out that it…
Despite being a self-proclaimed coffee addict, I didn’t know damn much about coffee. I couldn’t tell coffee beans apart, I’m always unsure whether my coffee was from Robusta or Arabica, and I didn’t know the most basic information of them all, who invented coffee? So one day, I decided to research everything, which is how…
In the 1900s, the French colonists started building coffee plantations in the northern part of Laos. Later, they discovered that the Bolaven Plateau in the south has a much better environment for growing coffee beans due to its mineral-rich soil and the region’s high elevation. This is how the coffee industry in Laos began. Today,…
When I was on 3rd grade, our class had a tour in our school’s library. The librarian, Ms. Bautista, a stern-looking woman, probably in her early 40s, had just informed us that we were free to borrow books from the library. Each one received a library card to use for this purpose. I was so…
![Dark and beautiful Barcelona [story and places to see]](https://www.coffeehan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/3-sagrada-de-familia-60-scaled.jpg)
I often wish I am as brazen as most of my girl friends when it comes to love. I wish I grew up with the kind of spontaneity that makes for titillating and embarrassing stories to pass on when I’m old. A femme fatale, a seductress who lives on her own terms and doesn’t lose…
![12 Grapes And Greeting The New Year Twice [New Year Spain Tradition]](https://www.coffeehan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/new-year-eve-madrid-scaled.jpg)
I have a cousin who likes to make a shrill noise; that high-pitched scream of a person usually induced by pain. Only she is not in pain, she just (only God knows why) likes doing this and uses every chance she gets like New Year’s eve. She does this every year, as soon as the…
![The Sun Is Shining In Madrid [Places To See]](https://www.coffeehan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/madrid-parque-de-la-montana-1-scaled.jpg)
Rice, Tagalog, familiar faces, these are the things I thought I would yearn for when I go to Europe. But I ended up missing the only thing I detested all my life, the sun. Having been born in a tropical country where the sun is always shining and white skin is considered beautiful, I grew…
![Traveling The City Of Wine, Bordeaux [Story And Guide]](https://www.coffeehan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/bordeaux-france-cite-du-vin-marjorie-gavan-scaled.jpg)
I wish I could tell you it’s all about the wine, but that would be lying not to mention pretentious. Bordeaux made it into my itinerary because I thought it would be a little warmer than Paris in winter. I wanted to go someplace where my figurative balls would not freeze. Google searches yield Aquitaine…
![Solo Trip Guide Paris, France [And Tips To Make It Happen]](https://www.coffeehan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/eiffel-tower-paris-france-scaled.jpg)
I shared my financial woes with a close friend, hoping to find encouragement that my trip to Europe would still happen. Instead, he mirrored the doubts in my head, “I guess your Europe trip is not gonna happen anymore,” he said. Logic dictated it would be unwise to pursue but my heart couldn’t take a…
I have revised the lead paragraph of my Siquijor article 3 times and yet I’m still unsatisfied. My writing mojo is drained. In between dealing with work and laziness, I lost the drive to produce content. And so the days went on with the blog sitting in silence, paid but not used to its full…
The Filipinos are raised bilingual or multilingual, the latter most true for people born in the province. Our ethnolinguistic nation has two official languages, Filipino and English, and an estimated number of over 187 dialects. Metro Manila, also known as the National Capital Region (NCR) is inhabited by the Tagalogs, the second largest ethnic group…