Valentine's Day treat

The Philippines Post Office (Phil Post) has just released its annual Valentine's day postage stamp issue featuring a "cute" Filipino couple in their traditional dress. Here's hoping that for once, leave your email or stop sending text messages, and start writing "love" letters once more. This tradition would be soon become history.

Ten Things I Love About Bhutan: Number Seven: Postage Stamps

I was introduced in the wonderful world of philately as a child when i discovered my sister's collections in her old cabinet. She was into the hobby as a teen ager and i remembered her excitement when she would write and receive  letters to or from her pen pals all over the world just to acquire worlwide stamps. I would sneak in her room and secretly get hold of her stamp albums. In my childhood innocence grew a love for those tiny work of art depicting the culture, traditions, landscapes, flora and fauna and famous peoples of a specific nation. It seems odd but when i study each stamp details, i would feel i have been in that specific place where the stamp came from. It was from those stamps where i learned the different odd-sounding names, and currencies of the different countries-from Magyar of Hungary, Sverige of Sweden, Hellas of Greece, to Russian name in Russian alphabets or the Spanish peseta, Macau patacas, and Bhutanese ngultrum. But those were years ago. After acquiring a great number of stamps, i stopped for a while when i started becoming serious with my studies. I am sure the love was still there. Until when i saw the Bhutanese postage stamps. My love for philately was rekindled. I have discovered there were stamps in shapes other than rectangular, square or trangular. There were already round shaped stamps, stamps in 3-D, and stamps in khadi cloth (Indian).

In 2008, Bhutan just released the first CD rom stamps which features their monarchy and their traditions.Quite unusual but it was a brilliant idea to introduce something which brings global appeal in the age of yahoo and facebook. It was not very expensive when i bought it at Thimphu Central Post Office. It costs 250 ngultrum/CD.

Now, i am again seduced into rekindling my old original hobby, that is, stamp collecting.