BUSINESSMIRROR just turned 20 years old the other day, and in this digital age, that is quite a milestone.
By September of 2026, I will have been writing for the newspaper for 20 years now. Not strictly as a sports columnist, but also as a writer in their music section, Soundstrip.
I never thought I would write professionally. As a youngster, I loved illustration and design. Art was my favorite subject, and I attended art workshops during the summer. No doubt, that was due to my love for comics books.
As for design, I made it a habit to visit the annual interior design exhibits of students from St. Paul’s College Quezon City that were held at Greenhills. I spent hours just looking at the exhibits and trying to understand how and why they came up with the designs, the use of space and why specific materials were used.
I parlayed this into designing the sets for our class plays.
Now, my reading skills and comprehension weren’t very good, so my parents enrolled me in a speed reading and comprehension class in Makati on weekends. Furthermore, my dad made sure I read the newspaper every day (news, politics, the economy) where he would quiz me afterwards.
After my graduation from grade school, my mother gave me one hundred pesos as a gift-a princely sum back in 1981.
With that money, I bought my first books-The Lord of the Rings trilogy at National Bookstore Ali Mall that collectively cost less than P70. Actually, the impetus for buying those books came from a Betamax tape of The Lord of the Rings animated film by Ralph Baskhi. My mom rented the tape and I must have seen it five times during that three-day rental period.
I couldn’t stop reading after that.
How that all translated into writing was while reading Sports Illustrated.the swimsuit edition cover dated February 1, 1985. The one with supermodel Paulina Porizkova on the cover.
Does anyone read that?
I did.
One thing that I took away wasn’t just how beautiful and in love I was with the Czech supermodel. It was also the writing. For real!
It was an excerpt from John Feinstein’s book, A Season on the Brink: A Year with Bob Knight and the Indiana Hoosiers. In my young life, I had not read such writing that took you behind the scenes and made you feel like you were not only there but knew everyone from afar.
That school year (I was now in college), we were asked by our English professor during our English Honors Section class to write a ‘sequel of sorts’ to JD Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye.
I struggled in my English class, but the paper I turned in for that got me an ‘A-plus.’
I guess I impressed some people because a year later, my aunt, Nena Olivares, president and co-founder of the Times Journal had me writing sports for their expat newspaper, News Today. Then I became a contributor to the Lifestyle and Entertainment section of the Philippine Daily Inquirer under Llita Logarta and Thelma Sioson-San Juan.
From there, I went into advertising where my writing was further refined.
After coming back from a sojourn in the United States, I followed former Ateneo Blue Eagles manager Paolo Trillo in writing the weekly ‘Blue Eagle Bulletins.’ Believe it or not, that brought me not only the Ateneo audience, but others as well.
Then BusinessMirror’s Ricky Alegre and sports editor Jun Lomibao paid me a visit at the marketing offices of Solar Sports for an ex-deal with their new broadsheet. They also provided me with a newspaper column and more. And that leads to this today.
As a young college student, I purchased Atlas Sports Weekly, Sports Flash and then Champ. I cut out columns from my favorite local columnists. Never in a million years did I think I would follow my idols and be a columnist myself.
Truthfully, my writing has been a gamechanger for my life and career. I wrote for all the big broadsheets and many at the same time making me perhaps the only writer to have done so.
I served as editor-in-chief for the Philippine Basketball Association’s publications. Worked as a sports analyst for ABS-CBN, TV5 and Al Jazeera. I have written 10 books. I have traveled around Asia, the Middle East and Europe covering sports and music. And I have sat down with government and sports officials, celebrities and sports legends.
And I am grateful and deeply appreciative to have been a part of the BusinessMirror-Happy 20th Anniversary-that gave me the platform to write.
So on to my personal 20th Anniversary next year and beyond.