On August 21, 1983. the world I moved around in seemed to have stopped. It was a Sunday. I kept hearing this name, Ninoy, in hushed voices. My mother refused to talk about it in detail. The news  report that evening didn't say much either. It just showed a dead man dressed in white, getting carried off in what looked like a SWAT van. The teachers at school the next day were also curiously mum about the issue. Classes were suspended after lunch, for no particular reason. I knew at the back of my head, something was up. I just couldn't put the pieces in place. I was too young and naive to know any better. But, I was quite sure, I've heard the name, Ninoy Aquino years before.

Days passed, and the hushed voices gradually increased in intensity. I was slowly immersed in "prohibited" knowledge. Facts and data my mother warned me not to dabble with. Information that could get one in trouble with the fascist dictatorship. Thanks mainly to Tita Ester Feir, I slowly realised that society has been lying to me all those years. After a few more days, I withessed the longest funeral procession, attended by millions, and took hours to complete. The last time I witnessed a crowd that large was in Baclaran when Pope John Paul II first visited the Philippines. Those events in August 1983 changed me forever. I am an unapologetic Dilawan!