The Mark Experience: Insights, Experiences, and More

There was a time when luxury meant acquiring something new. A new phone. A new gadget. A new car. A new upgrade. Like many people, I once associated progress with accumulation. The latest device wasn't just a device. It felt like a milestone. A symbol of growth. Proof that life was moving forward. And for a while, that made sense. When we're younger, many of our purchases carry meanings far beyond their actual function. They represent achievement. Identity. Belonging. Possibility. We don't just buy things—we buy what they seem to say about our lives. But somewhere along the way, something changed. These days, when I look at my phone, I don't find myself wondering what the next model can do. My first question is much simpler: Does this still do what I need it to do? If the answer is yes, then I'm perfectly fine keeping it. What surprised me wasn't that I stopped getting excited about new things. What surprised me was discovering what excites me now. For years, I...

  In 2024, I learned that a business can break your heart. Not because you stopped loving it. Not because you stopped working hard. Not because you were careless with what you built. Sometimes, it breaks your heart because you gave too much of yourself to keep it standing, only to realize that hard work alone could not protect it from everything. That year, I went through one of the most painful and frightening experiences of my life as a business owner. At first, it did not look like a crisis. It looked like a small payment arrangement that had existed quietly for years. A corporate client had an internal setup where their individual members paid separately. Over time, our team became involved in helping coordinate payment proofs, follow-ups, and related concerns. For a while, nothing seemed alarming. And maybe that was the danger. Some risks do not arrive loudly. Some enter the business as exceptions, become habits, and eventually disguise themselves as normal. Because no major p...

  When I watched the 2026 PVL Draft, I felt something I had never felt before. For the first time, I looked at the list of hopefuls and thought: we may have finally reached saturation. There were too many players now. Too many dreams. Too many talented athletes competing for too few opportunities. What struck me even more was where most of the selections came from. The familiar names were there—UAAP and NCAA standouts. But beyond those systems, the door seemed much harder to enter. Players from other schools, alternative pathways, and even those from abroad did not seem to break through in the same way. And maybe that was why the draft stayed with me. Because I still remember when Philippine volleyball had the opposite problem. I remember when there were not enough teams. Not enough platforms. Not enough places for graduating players to go. My own life as a volleyball fan began almost by accident, inside a taxi. I heard radio DJs praising Charo Soriano and the Ateneo Lady Eagles be...

  I have always been fascinated by pageants. Not loudly, not openly, not in the way one easily admits to liking something when one is young and still learning which interests are considered acceptable. There are passions we discover early but only understand much later. Pageantry, for me, was one of them. As a child, I watched women walk across stages as if the world had briefly agreed to make beauty ceremonial. There were lights, gowns, crowns, scores, national pride, and that strangely powerful silence before a winner was announced. I did not have the language for it then, but I knew I was captivated. For years, I watched pageants without really writing about them. I observed them quietly, formed opinions quietly, and kept returning to them because beneath the glamour, pageantry has always been a fascinating study of performance, identity, politics, culture, and aspiration. Perhaps this is why writing about Miss Grand International All-Stars 2026 feels like crossing a small perso...

The call came earlier than most calls do. It was around eight in the morning—too early for casual conversation, too early for small talk. When I saw my ex’s name appear on my phone, I was surprised. We still speak from time to time. Not often, not regularly. But enough to know that life had moved us into a quieter, more mature kind of connection. We had once shared a life. Now we shared occasional conversations. I missed the call, so I sent a message instead. “Ang aga naman. What’s going on?” Seconds later, the phone rang again. I answered, half-expecting a familiar request—perhaps a question about insurance, maybe a proposal he needed help with. That was the kind of practical reason I imagined for a morning call. But instead, I heard him crying. Through the tears he managed to say the words: “My mom passed away.” I froze for a moment and asked him what happened. He told me quietly, almost in disbelief, that his mother had just passed away earlier that morning—around six o’...