As soon as I heard the landing gear deploy, a burst of happy memories came rushing back. I hadn’t set foot in Hong Kong in ten years, which explained the sudden, overwhelming wave of excitement that hit me the moment we touched down.

Hong Kong holds a special place in my heart. From 1982 to 1994, our family spent every Christmas break there before returning home to Manila for New Year’s Eve. Like many of us back then, I grew up viewing Hong Kong as a capital of consumption, a place whose sole purpose seemed to be indulging Filipinos with brands that weren’t readily available back home.

As souvenirs, I would always collect the free city guides from hotel rooms and hoard maps and flyers from the airport. I’d even pack away unused wet towelettes from Cathay Pacific or PAL flights, carefully preserving all these ephemera in my red plastic suitcase.

Shopping for toys was always the ultimate treat. By the end of each trip, I’d be taking home handheld mini arcade games like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Cobra, along with Family Computer cartridges that I couldn’t wait to pop into my console back home. At night, we’d head to Mong Kok for cheap finds. Watching annoyed traders react as we bargained fake goods down to half-price, walking away until they chased us down to give in, was always a sight to behold.

One special place we visited every single trip was Hengton Perfumes, a tiny perfume store in the Holiday Inn Arcade on Nathan Road. It was owned by Newton, a short, stout, bald Chinese man. He was a jolly person, always smiling, a total opposite from most Cantonese merchants we have dealt with. Right beside his shop was a funhouse-style novelty store for kids and adults. That was where I’d stock up on stink bombs to pop in our school canteen. Once, I set one off inside Mrs. Rita’s store, a communal lunch spot across from my elementary school, and within seconds, students and their yayas came bursting out, nose covered, complaining about the stench.

I also bought itching powder and sneezing powder, and I claimed quite a few victims with the itching powder, including Newton himself. One afternoon, while my family was browsing another store, I walked into Hengton alone. I called Newton over to the entrance of his tiny shop and told him I wanted to look at his head. Confused, he leaned down anyway. The moment he lowered his head, I sprinkled a pack of itching powder over his bald scalp and bolted. I didn’t know any better; I was eight years old. Minutes later, my family and I returned to his store, only to find him furiously wiping his head with a towel while telling my parents what their naughty kid had done.

Newton and his family eventually left Hong Kong around 1992 in anticipation of the British handover to China in 1997. On the day of the handover itself, I was sitting in my college class, discussing the massive changes that lay ahead for the territory.

It wasn’t just the shopping I looked forward to, either. There were the cartoons on cable TV: The Smurfs and Disney classics, all dubbed in Cantonese. Then came the thrill of watching trailers of pay-per-view adult films as a young kid, alongside obscure short videos warning about haunted hotel rooms where guests had died.

Hong Kong wasn’t just a playground for shopping; it was also a place of learning. This was where my dad taught me to wait a few days and canvas prices before buying so I could get the best deal. I remember having to wait a whole day before I could buy a pair of high-top L.A. Gear shoes I’d spotted on day one. It was the longest 24 hours of my life.
This was also where I first realized I wanted to be seen. During a meeting with a banker when I was seven or eight, my parents forgot to introduce me. It made me feel so utterly invisible that I sat sulking on the sofa. That was my first lesson in what it felt like to be ignored.

Yet, it was also where I first tasted independence. By the age of twelve, I was navigating the city on my own, shopping, bargaining, and canvassing. Once, while browsing video games, I accidentally bumped a game case, causing it to fall. The shopkeeper yelled at me, demanding I pay for the damages. I didn’t back down; I talked right back, telling him nothing was broken and it was just a case.

Now that I’m back, I am still thrilled by its unrelenting consumerism: the mix of small gadget shops and massive retail stores, the street peddlers, the Indian tailors, and the Chinese shop owners. Yet, I realize I don’t miss the Hong Kong of ten years ago; I miss the Hong Kong of the 1980s. I miss seeing people dressed smartly and fashionably on the way to work, walking at a frantic pace with hair so heavily gelled and sprayed it felt harder than concrete blocks. I miss the loud, fiery conversations in market places that used to startle me as a child.

Hong Kong holds a place in the heart of most Filipino ’80s kid. It may have changed in how it looks and moves, but its materialistic soul remains delightfully intact.

I have seen how people pray. When I was young, we would go to Baclaran on Wednesdays and there I’d witness people walking on their knees, people who look very sad touching feet of saints. I got the impression that prayers are for sad people and people with problems.

Then here comes pastors and even Bo Sanchez, Mike Velarde on TV who would ask people raise their umbrellas, wave their bandanas and ask for money and healing. One time I was in a charismatic meeting and there was a pastor who would do slain in the spirit and people would fall on their back, some shaking and others fainting. Then at times I’d hear people say to religious people, Panay dasal mo, hindi naman nagbabago ugali mo.

The thing about prayer is that we think it must be heartfelt, sad, dramatic, or emotional to be effective. This is why when I first heard mass in the US as a teen I was surprised how joyful they sing the papuri song in English compared to how people sing it here, maawa ka, maawa ka with matching sad face. I think that’s a misconception, and it only makes prayer and evern praise harder for us. Another thing about prayer is that we expect an answer, because it is a conversation.

To a young boy like me, because of what I saw, prayer became mysterious and confusing; to a young teen, it became cheap. To an adolescent, it made God weird, it made God a genie, it made God transactional.

One lesson I wish I had learned earlier is that prayer is not measured by intensity of feeling. Tears are not proof of faith, just as dryness is not proof of God’s absence. Some of the sincerest prayers are spoken through joy, gratitude, boredom, confusion, the ordinary routines of life, or even silence. The saints often wrote about seasons when God seemed distant, yet they continued to pray. Prayer is not effective because we feel strongly; it is effective because God is present. What matters is not whether our hearts are stirred, but whether our hearts are willing.

This is why a sharing by Dennis a few months ago struck me. He spoke about his grandmother, whom he would often see praying. Looking back, I think what moved me was not what she felt while praying, because no one could know that, but that thing which Dennis calls her posture of prayer: her faithfulness, her consistency, her willingness to keep turning toward God. Sometimes the deepest prayers are not dramatic moments but ordinary acts of showing up before God day after day.

As I mature in my faith, which I hope I am, I now understand what they mean when they say prayer is a conversation: converse and convert. To converse is to talk to God, to be grateful and to ask for petitions. This is where majority of us are at. The second is where our prayer life should bring us – convert, and that entails listening and hearing in quiet solitude. It may be in your room or in a chapel as advised by my spiritual director. But it requires that we know the God of the Bible from priests or theologians so that we do not project our biases.
In the convert part, this is where prayer teaches us to hope, because in prayer we beg and ask and wait for the answer, and in prayer we practice faith in God who we do not see, and in prayer we become charitable because we ask not just for us but for others as well. So prayer fully converts us when we accept God’s will when we do not get what we want and when we let go of control.

Those two words, converse and convert, share the same Latin root, vertere, “to turn.” To converse is to turn toward someone in speech; to convert is to be turned around, turned into something else. We can say that prayer is turning to God as we are turned around by God. And this converse and convert is what can turn our prayer from commanding the genie-god to listening to the Biblical-God who longs for our ears and our hearts.

I felt the truth of this most clearly in a season of my life I’d rather not detail here. I have spoken and listened to God many times, I poured my heart out and stayed quiet trying to listen to words. No words were heard, no burning bush, but there were grace and peace in my heart after I let him do his will and not mine.

I think back to those scenes from my childhood: knees on the pavement of Baclaran, sad faces, hands reaching for the feet of saints. Those were postures of begging, and begging is real, but it is half of the conversation. What I couldn’t see as a boy was the other half, the turning that happens while praying in silence, where nothing visible changes and yet something does.

So I end this by encouraging you in your quiet moments of prayer with God: as you turn around, tell Him—
I need you now tonight
And I need you more than ever
And if you only hold me tight
We’ll be holding on forever

So Turn around.

I loved the Masters of the Universe live-action movie. It brought me right back to my 1980s childhood.

This is the kind of message we don’t often see in movies today—the classic 80s “never say die” spirit, where the protagonist faces impossible challenges and transforms through courage, determination, and sheer willpower.

Last June 12, we watched the movie as a family. We do this from time to time whenever there’s a good film showing in theaters. Movie tickets now cost around ₱600 per person, a far cry from the ₱25 tickets I remember growing up. But hey, this one was worth it.

In the middle of the movie, Iuri even took a photo of me completely absorbed in what was happening on screen. The film had its dull moments—some scenes felt longer than necessary, with too much dialogue. But then again, if you grew up watching cartoons in the 80s, you know there were plenty of dialogues and scenes that could have been edited down too.

One thing I appreciated was how the director managed to bring the cartoon’s humor into the live-action adaptation. Skeletor’s laugh and comedic moments felt authentic and captured a side of the character that many of his villains never quite matched.

The best part, of course, was when He-Man raised his sword and shouted, “By the power of Grayskull… I have the power!” That gave me goosebumps.

It was a fun movie that took me back to my childhood. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I certainly enjoyed it. In fact, when the movie ended, I raised my water bottle and shouted, “I have the power!”