The story starts at a high end hotel on Drury Lane in London one summer day in June of 1997. Regina ‘Regie’ Laborce, then 31 years old, was scrambling to get in contact with someone she knows in the United Kingdom. If they don’t answer their phones, she has nowhere else to go. The fancy hotel was…
Tag: London
A London Busker: Chinese Music in the Streets
Busking is how they call it. It is the term for musicians playing in public places for voluntary donations. I see buskers in London everyday. Sometimes they’re just the right fillers for a Londoner’s short attention span, a pleasant entertainment for three seconds before rushing off to catch the train or the bus. I hear…
Escaping Syria: The Journey of Death
“We can call it the journey of death,” 35-year-old Mohammad Alzen said. He has come from Syria to seek asylum in England, and he has plenty of stories to tell. Even with all his hardships, he’s quite fortunate — his other countrymen did not survive to tell their own stories. Alzen was a tailor in a…
If You Want to Study Abroad
International students bring in £10 billion to the United Kingdom each year, according to estimates from the British Council. I am part and parcel of that economic drive, thank you very much. It is what I remind myself everyday as an immigrant living in post-Brexit UK. I feel a sense of pride for five minutes…
From Duterte to Brexit
I stepped out of our house in Hertfordshire at 8 o’clock in the evening to buy a bottle of softdrinks. It was still very bright out and usually a walk in any part of Hertfordshire is a welcome break. Except that there were around ten rowdy teenagers spread on both sides of the alley and I had…
We Are the Yayas of the World
It’s 1991 in the modest town of Moncada, Tarlac. Her husband just died. Her father followed shortly after. She’s 30 years old, a mother of two — the youngest just 6 months old. And up until that moment, she has not worked a day in her life. She could take over the family business —…
Kung Paano Ako Naging Leading Man
Opening Act The curtains rise, the music plays, the backstage hushes stop and the house lights dim. You step onto the stage and the spotlight is on you. That moment, you’d feel infinite. It’s one of the idiosyncrasies of theatre. At any given point, you could be anyone or anything. You could be a king, a peasant,…
Where Shakespeare Lived, Loved and Died
Editor’s Note: Last June 21, 2014, Lian Buan visited Stratford-upon-Avon in England. This town is the birthplace of William Shakespeare, the celebrated bard and wordsmith. His grave is also here. Today is the longest day of 2014, the start of summer. It is the midsummer day and I luckily experienced it here in England, where the…
Love Letter to England
I lived in England for a year in 2003, went to school here and have been coming back every two years since. This is now my fifth visit after leaving and deciding no other place could replace the Philippines as home. But that’s not to say I don’t like it here. I love England and the…
SubSelfie.com 
You must be logged in to post a comment.