When I was about eleven years old, a big fire broke out in a town outside San Fernando, Pampanga, where I was on summer vacation at the time. One of my aunts, whose friend was a fire victim, commuted to the town in question to visit her friend, and tagged me along,

While walking through the ruins of the fire, I felt an impulse to pick up; a tiny, charred piece of wood and put it in my pocket. Back at my aunts' house, I placed the piece of wood on a shelf and felt some kind of power emanating from it.

I have always been partial to fire wands and my enemies have always been punished with fire, and I wonder whether this episode in my boyhood had anything to do with it.