Tell us something about yourself that not many people know.
I began writing at the age of 73 when I became sick and had visions. I thought I was about to die. I wrote, not because I wanted to but because I needed to. After two strokes, three mini strokes, and predictions of another stroke, I was hospitalised for 22 days in 2021 – five days as a ‘nil-by-mouth’ emergency patient – when I had visions of my life 40 years earlier as a foreign correspondent in the Philippines. I surmised the visions to be an omen – like a deathly prompt – to tell of my decade-long stay in the Philippines, while I still had time. I asked a nurse to bring me a pen and paper and began to write.

Why did you choose the themes in your book and were you aware of them from the start?
In fact, I have written two books, but I wrote them the wrong way around. My first book ‘Reinventing Marcos – From dictator to hero’ was the product of my hospital bed visions. It was about President Ferdinand E. Marcos who ruled the Philippines for 21 years until he was overthrown in a People Power revolution in 1986. He was a dictator who ushered in a bloody age, but social media disinformation has turned him into a hero who presided over a ‘golden’ age. I was so angry, I wrote the book to tell the truth. This second book should have been the first book. Meandering to Manila is about the 18 months I spent journeying through Southeast Asia before I reached the Philippines. I travelled alone with a typewriter and a cassette recorder in my backpack. I wrote about the things I did, the people I met, and the events I witnessed. That year-and-a-half was my ‘journalistic baptism’. Together, these two books are the fulfilment of my childhood dream to become a foreign correspondent.

How difficult was it for you to write this book? Did you face any obstacles?
Writing the book was easier than I thought it would be. I was staggered and bemused by the clarity of those hospital bed visions I had in 2021. Crystal clear visions, razor-sharp memories of people, places, and events that occurred more than four decades ago that were resurrected at a critical near-death moment. They have not faded. They remain with me to this day. This book is a chronicle of revived and resurrected memories.

Do you always write in this genre or do you like to break out of the box?
Non-fiction writing is all I know. Newspapers and books captivate me. Present day reality holds enough mystery, surprise, delight, and wonderment, as well as anger, disgust, bewilderment, annoyance, and melancholia to satisfy and consume me. Fantasy and stretched credulity serve no purpose in my world and often annoy me.

What are your writing habits or idiosyncrasies?
A single A4 sheet of paper is all I needed for both books. Dot points act as memory jogs. On paper, I think chronologically and fill in the gaps with jotted additions on that A4 sheet of paper as I write. Some of my best thoughts, words, sentences, and phraseology come in the pre-dawn hours. Sometimes, paragraphs and pages that seem perfectly acceptable before bed, are clumsy and unusable on waking.

What would you do differently next time?
I can’t conceive of a ‘next time’. I’m all storied out! It turns out I had two books in me. That’s satisfying.

With hindsight, what would you say to yourself as a fledgling writer?
Keep at it. Trust your capabilities. Pursue your goals. Believe in yourself. Be a realist, aware of your skills-set and doggedly strive to better yourself.

If you worked with a professional editor, what was the experience like?
Being a professional journalist my entire life, I handled the editing process myself for both of my books.

What’s next for your writing?
I think that’s me done and I’m very content with that