The only other time I had interviewed him face to face was in 2010 when he was a senator running for the presidency. The late local governments secretary Jesse Robredo had sneaked Jiji Press’ Dana Batnag and I into a Liberal Party meeting Aquino was to attend one evening.

We managed to get 30 minutes of his time before party colleagues shooed us away. As Batnag and I drove off, I looked back and saw Aquino emerge from the doorway and sneak a cigarette in the darkness, as he gazed off into the distance. Is this the next president, I wondered.

As Aquino started inching up in the polls, I repeatedly sought a sit-down interview with him through his chief aide. She always told me the same thing – she would try, but Aquino was just too busy.

Finally, I decided to approach him myself in the Senate. He snapped at me: “You know, you made me tired.”

He was obviously referring to Batnag’s and my ambush interview. I was aghast.

The following year, when he met with members of the foreign press, I managed to annoy him again when I asked about reports that he was playing video games while the Manila hostage crisis was going on. He denied it but the expression on his face showed what he thought of the question.

South China Morning Post editors thought it would help if they wrote letters formally asking for an interview. It didn’t.

I continued to crave an interview – from our 2010 encounter, I knew him to be a blunt and verbose interviewee, prone to talking a mile a minute. Ideas would tumble out of his mouth.

In contrast was his predecessor, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. In an interview in 2001, a few months before she became president, she also had plenty of ideas - but there were certain things she refused to talk about. She said she didn’t want her political enemies to know too much.

Philippine politicians are renowned for their sometimes-colourful private lives, something embodied by the former movie star and president Joseph Estrada. When he was still vice-president, I asked him how many wives he had and who would be First Lady if he became president. He snapped back: “Of course I only have one wife.”

In 1992, when Fidel Ramos was running for president I felt another highly personal question needed to be asked about a certain lady friend of Ramos who was rumoured to be throwing her weight around as a conduit for political favours.

I asked Ramos about “Baby” while he was campaigning from the back of a flatbed truck, winking at people lining the road. Ramos took out the unlit cigarette from his mouth and, without looking at me, said the woman in question was just “a family friend…I am a family man and I would like to assure you that we have a very happy family with Mrs Ming Ramos.”

It was a denial, but the story broke the dam of speculation about “Baby” that had been built up in mainstream media.

The only time I asked a personal question that wasn’t initially planned was during then-president Arroyo’s meeting with the international press to deliver her first speech on foreign policy in 2002.

Ellen Cruz, of Tokyo Shimbun, had asked ahead of me whether, as the first married woman president, Arroyo still had time for her husband.

Arroyo replied: “Well, the husband is in the family. Sundays are my family days.”

On these occasions, journalists usually get to ask only three questions.

I asked on behalf of the South China Morning Post about the continuous presence of American soldiers in the country and her position on dropping the death penalty.

Foreign Correspondents Association president Gabby Tabunar of CBS News told me to hurry up. And somehow, unbidden and unplanned, I asked the president: “I’m sure a lot of women are dying to ask you this question … You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but a lot of women are dying to know – do you still have sex?”

“Plenty,” she said and smiled. The ambassadors and high government officials who filled the ballroom erupted in howls of laughter.

Arroyo grinned: “That’s going to be the headline.”

Then looking at us, she added: “Please make foreign policy the headline.” I could feel the dagger looks from her spokesman.

Later, I asked myself why I had asked such a question and realised that what had prompted me to ask were the rumours that her marriage was in trouble. And since she was expected to run for the presidency again in 2004, any hint of marital trouble could spell political doom.

Last year, after the foreign press met President Aquino, I suddenly got a phone call from him. He told me he had read my blog and he thanked me for articles I had written on his controversial stimulus package, the Disbursement Acceleration Programme.

I nearly blurted out: “Thank you, but I didn’t do it for you, Mr President.” However, remembering my late mother’s admonition to try to be tactful, I said: “The public needed to know.”

And so, with the winds in my favour, I asked him for an interview. He said I should arrange it with his Communications Secretary, Sonny Coloma.

Compared to our 2010 encounter, the atmosphere was much different. I counted 17 men present in the music room of the Presidential Palace during our discussion. Some were manning the video cameras, others were seated with folders at the ready to feed the president papers he needed. Others just stood around.

I was surprised to find Foreign Secretary del Rosario in attendance, sitting silently beside the president.

Aquino exuded more confidence. His shoes were well-shined shoes, and had swapped his cheap Swatch for an expensive-looking watch.

His mind seemed more organised and focused than it had been on the campaign trail.

What was fascinating to watch, though, were his hands. For the first time I noticed he has the long tapering fingers of a pianist, and they were quite expressive.

Do I want to interview him again? Oh yes. As soon as he steps down from office.

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Raissa Robles is a Manila-based journalist who has reported on the Philippines for the South China Morning Post for 20 years