Make Tea Not War

At four o'clock in the afternoon, you can hear a pin drops at davaotoday.com. It's the time of the day when you're supposed to get out of the huge dormitory building to follow the scent of sugar and bananas deep fried in oil wafting down the streets and finally come upon the mysterious place where noisy children gather.
But it's about the beginning of summer--the time when schools close to give time for leaves to sprout---and the maruya makers are gone, trying to find someplace else where to cast their mysteries.
Now, as I contemplate the absence of that sweet aroma that had become part of my day, I become aware of the light coming from the window to the right. The sky beyond the roofs of houses, I can see from here, is gray and white. There's the ceaseless buzzing of the electric fan on the wall to my right, and the rustles of papers on the bulletin board on the wall opposite me.
"Make Tea Not War," says a huge poster on the wall, showing a man wearing a white teacup for a hat. He is tight-lipped and he wears a hard look all over his face. He is wearing black and his right forefinger is about to pull the trigger of the gun he perpetually holds. The iron gate on the groundfloor squeaks. The total absence of human voices allows me to hear voices inside.

Stories

Sometimes, I can almost say, I work for the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Stories like this appear on its pages once in a while to tell the world where I've been spending my weekends. I've been issued the correspondent's ID and an ATM card where I draw out my pay every 15th of the month although fear hovers over my existence most of the time. The fear has something to do with the next pay. And the next stories. I'm scared of the days when I might stop writing these kind of stories and my by-line won't appear on the pages anymore and I'm lost in some remote, unchartered territories of my mind, unable to find my way home.
Those days have finally come. I don't know what to say.