Mabuhay!
I’m Gel — a writer, wanderer, and storyteller based in the Philippines.
I believe the best stories come from actually living. From the roads taken alone, the conversations that linger, the fleeting, ordinary moments that turn out to be anything but.
This blog started in 2010 as a requirement for my college online journalism class. More than a decade later, it has become something I never expected. It’s a body of work and the truest record of who I am and who I am becoming.
Where I Came From
I pursued Journalism at the University of the East-Manila, where I became editor of our student publication, founded the UE Journalism Society, and learned early on what it meant to take storytelling seriously. I was that student — joining rallies, writing critical columns, and braving a libel case over a lampoon issue without flinching.
I was fearless then in a different way.
After graduation, I moved toward something that felt more like me: feature writing, lifestyle stories, the kind of journalism that lets you sit with people and learn from their lives. My bylines took me from local newspapers and publications, including Rappler, the Philippine Daily Inquirer, Business Mirror, The Daily Tribune, and The Manila Times and international publications like The Culture Trip and Travel Lens, covering travel, health, and lifestyle — and eventually into the world of freelancing, where I have been ever since.
I found my niche in going to places, meeting strangers, and writing about what I found there. From early morning hot air balloon rides in Lubao, Pampanga, to remote island camping in Caramoan, to the distant highlands and coffee farms of South Upi, Maguindanao del Sur. I also had the opportunity to travel to Hong Kong and Kuala Lumpur, Penang, and Johor Bahru, Malaysia. That decision led me everywhere.
What I Do
Over the past decade, writing has taken many forms.
Personally, it has been this blog — essays, travel stories, poems, reflections on womanhood and being at the crossroads, grief, provincial life, and the in-between moments that don’t always have names.
Professionally, it has been something else entirely — and equally meaningful.
I have written for brands, publications, and organizations across health, travel, lifestyle, and beyond. I have worked with medical societies, digital marketing agencies, and startup founders from different parts of the world — helping them shape their voice, tell their story, and build content that actually connects with people.
I write. I edit. I strategize. I consult. I also train — helping young writers and communicators find their footing and their voice, which is work I find deeply fulfilling.
I work with brands, publications, and individuals across writing, PR, content strategy, editing, and training.
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The Fellowships That Shaped Me
Some of the most meaningful work of my career has happened not at a desk but in the field — as a fellow and journalist pursuing stories that matter.
In 2019 and 2020, I was selected as a fellow for the Uncovering Trans Fats Media Fellowship — investigating health and food policy issues that directly affect Filipino communities. In February 2023, I was a fellow for the Probe Media Foundation’s “Uncovering the BARMM Story” — reporting on peace, conflict, and the lives of people in Bangsamoro.
Perhaps the experience that changed me most profoundly was being selected as a Journalist-in-Residence at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Antwerp, Belgium in October 2020 — in the middle of a global pandemic. It was a reminder of why journalism matters, why stories matter, and why the people behind the stories always matter most.
These fellowships are not lines on a resume to me. They are the moments that sharpened my instincts, deepened my empathy, and reminded me that good journalism — like good writing of any kind — is always in service of something larger than itself.
The Silence That Wasn’t Really Silence
There was a stretch of time when this blog went quiet.
People who have followed me for a while might have noticed. And if I am being honest, I noticed too — more than anyone.
It was not writer’s block, not exactly. The words never stopped coming. I never stopped writing. I wrote every single day — for clients, for brands, for campaigns, for deadlines. I wrote press releases and feature articles and content strategies and newsletters and brand stories for other people’s voices.
Life happened, as it tends to. And when life happens, sometimes the most personal writing is the first thing to go — not because it matters less, but because it requires more. More stillness. More courage. More willingness to sit with yourself long enough to say something true.
So I kept writing professionally and kept living personally, and for a while those two things existed in separate rooms that rarely spoke to each other.
But I always knew I’d come back.
This is me coming back — to the writing that started everything, to the blog that has known me longer than most people have, to the version of myself that writes not for a brief or a deadline but because something needs to be said.
I am returning to my core. And it feels like coming home.
Some personal notes
My father passed away not long ago — from kidney disease, too soon, too quietly. He was the one who taught me to dream big and aim high. To stand up every time I fall. To never let go of the things that make us feel alive.
This blog carries him too, now. In the grief I write about. In the courage it takes to keep going. In the belief — which was always his first — that we all have a place in this world, and if we can’t find it, we create it.
My mother said that too, in her own way. That while we stand at the crossroads, fate finds a way to bring us home.
I think about both of them every time I write something true.
Life, right now
I live with my husband — a photographer and artist — in a small, work-in-progress home in the beautiful province of Rizal, surrounded by our little nieces and nephews as neighbors (their artworks hang in our fridge), some unread books, and the occasional smell of something baking.
In 2024, we did something we had been dreaming about for years. We completed our first Philippine Loop — traveling across the country on a motorcycle for over 40 days, from one end of the archipelago to the other. It was long, humbling, beautiful, and at times completely unplanned. The kind of journey that changes the way you see your country and yourself.
We are still processing it, honestly. And yes, there are stories from that trip that are still waiting to be written — which is part of why I am back here.
We travel when we can, and when we are home, we are building something quietly — a life that looks a lot like everything we ever wanted.
I am fueled by coffee, steadied by writing, and genuinely excited about what comes next.
Let’s Work Together
If you are a brand, publication, organization, or individual looking for a writer, editor, PR partner, content strategist, or trainer who brings both craft and humanity to the work — I would love to hear from you.
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