Down the Rabbit Hole

Remembering the lines "I simply remember my favourite things/and then I don’t feel so bad" from the  Sound of Music , I list down a partial list of my favourite activities, which do help me lift my spirits when I feel sad and lonely and stressed out. Finding reasons to be happy everyday is a blessing; and I’m amazed and thankful because God never lets the day end without giving me a reason to be happy. Why did I write them today? To serve as a reminder of what I am thankful for despite the difficult circumstances that I know will come my way. Spending Sunday evenings with my siblings and my cousins. I always look forward to the Sunday dinner and coffee. This has become a standard weekend activity for us (which started when I was a college freshman). We miss the old days when Cinnzeo and Powerbooks branches in Alabang Town Centre were open up til 2am; when we exchanges stories while sitting on couches at the Starbucks branch at Madrigal; and when there was a whole ...

When my dad was teaching me how to drive, he always reminded me to stop, look, and listen at railway crossings because on my way to Los Banos, I have to pass three crossings (and more, depending on the route I would take). I shouldn’t only watch out for the train, but also for ‘ghosts’ - train cars that get detached from the lot - that usually issue no warnings to travelers. I was reminded of this one strange day this past week. I drove to IRRI and had to go through Pili Drive. But I had to stop right before the IRRI gate because a train was passing by. Strangely, the barriers that were usually down when a train passed weren’t down. That night, as I was driving through Pansol, Calamba, I heard the first warnings of an oncoming train. The horn (or whistle, or whatever it’s called) was louder as I approached the crossing at Bucal, Calamba, but the traffic enforcer was allowing the traffic to move (therefore the train was either still far off or had already passed). But I couldn’t deter...

I was dreading the broadcast of Rotary at Your Service during this year’s February Fair. Why? Because I never forgot that last year, I was learning the ropes at the LBFM radio booth, and I was committing major blunders on air… many seconds of dead air, leaving the microphone on while the music was playing (therefore, the supposedly off-air discussions were broadcast live), and appearing obviously rattled about it while continuing the broadcast. I had no excuse, except that I was learning how to operate the consoles on my own, without any formal training at all. To add to the pressure, I was co-hosting with one really good journalist (Tito Johnny, of the Rotary Club of West Bay). Fast forward to 2006. I have been going on board on my own for many episodes (when Tito Johnny was covering news assignments in Manila), and I was gaining confidence in the format of the program, and in my skills. After all, I was more relaxed and I no longer needed to prep the night before just to check if my...

Defensive driving… people had mixed reactions when I told them (animatedly) that I was attending the seminar. My officemates asked why I still needed to attend the class… the same one is offered at work. And a friend had a good laugh.  Anyway, there was no big reason why I attended it: I just went there for the fun of learning something new. For instance, there’s no such thing as  beating the red light . It turns out that it’s impossible to beat the red light. Drivers beat the  yellow  light! But I digress from the point. The seminar turned out to be a refresher course to everything that I’ve learned while on the road; only this time, I was sitting in a classroom with other drivers who have driven for a longer time (and yet they were attending the seminar). And I was taking time to listen to a formal lecture about it. So, what did I actually get during the seminar? The most important point of the lesson, aside from being reminded about proper behaviour on the road,...

It has now been three weeks since I’ve started using the Honda Jazz… and what a delight is it to use! There is no point in comparing it with the Honda Civic SiR because the Jazz has a 1.3 engine while the SiR has a 1.6 one with a DOHC. Therefore, performance-wise, the Jazz is obviously beaten by the SiR by a mile. For example, on my way up the mountainous PCARRD road to UPLB, nobody can normally pass me while I’m en route… it takes me seven minutes on average to drive from the turn at the national road to the Main Library parking lot. That’s with the SiR. That car can accelerate from 0 to 60kph in a span of less than 10 seconds. No wonder I’m hard to catch! On the other hand, I find myself driving slowly up the same road with the Jazz because of the weaker engine. Don’t get me wrong… the engine is as strong and as powerful as the Toyota Corolla 1.6 I was using in 2001, but it’s a tad slower than the SiR. I found myself being passed by faster SUVs through the long stretches before the w...

Fascination to geography has led me to a very amazing program called Google Earth, which I know everyone has seen. It’s so great because you can point at a city and have a top view of it. Thanks to the numerous satellites circling the Earth (which I thought was science fiction as recent as the premier of the movie  Enemy of the State ), I can now glimpse at the houses of my relatives who happen to be on the other side of the world. Though the pictures are pretty new (Google claims that these photos have been taken as early as three years ago), they are not captured in real time, so I don’t expect to see my dad’s SUV parked along Colfax St. But even then, the picture has high resolution. And there are other places too! The cracks made by the Mount Saint Helens explosion and the crevices of the Grand Canyon can be seen… and toured with the program’s enhanced features. Other continents are also seen. Many cities in Europe are visible, but most of the world is still blurry...