Birit to Love

For Filipino expats, February is always a good month for a balikbayan visit. The airline fares are cheap(er), the weather is not yet too hot and it's a welcome break from the stress of the holidays before the onset of summer activities.

If you're back in the homeland this month, please find the time to watch PETA's hit musical, “Rak of Aegis” (see "Our Lives, with Beer and Birit"), which features the songs of the '90s group, Aegis—they who sang about the melodrama in every Filipino's life and did it with such gusto that the word "birit" was coined to describe it. PETA, acronym for the Philippine Educational Theater Association, also deserves support because as our writer Renato L. Santos says, the theater group is one of the few remaining pioneers of presenting original works in Pilipino (or Filipino as it is now properly spelled).

And, if you're there to look for possible venues for W-Day, make sure you check out our "Top 10 Wedding Destinations" in this issue, which, combined with the nostalgia piece, "Yesterdays in Ermita", will sweep you into the embrace of the country and the culture, and get you in the mood for love.

And speaking of love, we're reposting author Rene Astudillo's menu for a romantic dinner for two for V-Day, which, in the Philippines, is such a big occasion that traffic and tempers get snarled in the rush to celebrate it.