Help! I've crossed to the other side of my century!





Oops. Where did all those years go?

And no. I don't like to think of fifty as the new thirty or the new forty.

Fifty is fifty. And most of my 50 years were GREAT. So I would never want to pretend they never happened! (most of the time anyway)

Thanks to all the people who rang and texted and posted birthday greetings on Facebook. It was a lovely day.



This was a Philippine Airlines commercial that was playing on British TV when I first moved to the UK in 1989. On that first year, I was incredibly homesick and that advert had the power to reduce me to tears.



The beauty of the Philippines, shining through. In fact, I found myself reflecting on that very line over on Rappler, the Philippine News and Features website, after a mobile phone was stolen from my suitcase at Manila's international airport. Read my column here.