The speechwriter

EMMANUEL was a young man from the windblown island of K in the Bicol Region, an island seemingly adrift in the Pacific Ocean. After graduating valedictorian from high school, where he edited the student organ called The Mighty Pen, he applied for a journalism scholarship at the University of Santo Tomas. He was accepted.

Into the vortex of that world, the young Emmanuel plunged, finding the city as if it were another world. But soon he grew tired of school.