This week, I will finish checking my students' final exams and papers. Also, I will finish writing my final two papers for my Ph.D. Then everything is done. I can now review my Spanish for the language exams. And review, as well, for the comprehensive exams in Literature. But more enjoyable, for me, is the return to writing. Ladlad 3 will be launched late November in Bestsellers, 4th floor, Robinsons Galleria. I have proofread the pages of Rampa: Gay Essays. I have made a final draft of Philippine Gay Dict: The Uncut Version. And the cover for The Best Philippine Love Stories anthology is now being done. These are backlogs. Future projects: to compile all my Tagalog prose (stories and essays) into a book, and then all my English short stories into another book. Then defend my novel, which is my creative-writing dissertation, so Anvil can go ahead and publish it. They have accepted it for publication last year. Why am I doing this? Because we need more Philippine books to fill those

I am moving my blog from www.notphantomvoters.blogspot.com to this new name. People told me I should put my name and that year when I would be running again for elections. 2010. It seems so far, but it is less than 900 days away. And as we speak, or as you read these words in cyberspace, alignments are moving. Standing shakily on soggy soil, political alliances in this country have never been firm, to begin with. When I finally ran as an Independent Congressman in the elections for District 3 of QC, I got lots of offers: to run under this or that party, or to accept this or that set of "incentives" (read: bribes) for me not to run anymore, since I was the front runner in the surveys. Like flakes of dandruff on my shoulders, I just brushed them away, ran, and lost. I thought I could return to my old life as a teacher, but no! As we speak now, or as you read this blog entry, I am getting calls and emails and text messages from this or that politician, asking for a meeting, an