I ought to get a massage...

-
I ought to get a massage.

That’s my mantra again Friday night and well into the graveyard hours of Saturday. Well, normally, that’s what I tell myself repeatedly when I drive myself to the point of exhaustion. It’s like an encouragement to something I would do in the future, a commitment if you will, when I am in between Points A and B and I couldn’t see how far off I am from B.

Curiously, I never find myself encouraging me this way when I am running or hiking, or participating in outdoor recreation. I deserve a massage normally sneaks into my internal dialogue when I’m stuck with paperwork, experiments, or anything that keeps me away from home way off hours because of an approaching deadline. There are telltale signs: my shoulders start cramping, my hands start getting tingly, and my back hurts for trying to maintain the right posture while sitting for long stretches of time.

The last time I heard myself justify a massage was back in 2008. I had been writing my PhD manuscript since December 2007; by the time June 2008 walked in, I was wishing that everything was already over. I’d contracted some infection that landed me in the emergency room in 2007; I looked pale, my eyes had perennial shadows under them, and I lost a few pounds in water weight. I hadn’t been in the salon for several months so my hair had grown up to my back and the make-up artist from Clinique was concerned about the state of skin (she dolled me up for a feature in Sense&Style that year). When I finally handed my manuscript over to the reviewers in September 2008, my academic supervisor lectured to me about writing your PhD manuscript is like a terminal illness. Trust me, in those last few days before deadline, I was thinking I was ready to die after submitting my manuscript (I’m lucky I didn’t because a few months after the submission came the review). I was truly on my last legs back then.

Have I actually gone to the spa to get a massage? Not yet. Not after my PhD phase had ended; and not yet now. After getting home from the University, I felt myself loads lighter, no longer burdened with the looming deadline. And now, I just don’t have the spare time. I’ll probably do it when I finish up early.

Here I go again…

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for dropping by!

Before moving on, please share your thoughts or comments about the post. :)

Thanks again!

Popular posts from this blog

Skyflakes

-
One of the more famous Philippine exports is Skyflakes , a wheat-based, salty cracker. It is one of my emergency food items: I typically have some stocked at home and in my handbag in case I become hungry (like in traffic jams). When there's no electricity and it's impractical to cook rice (because the leftover would spoil), I'd open a pack of Skyflakes and generously coat each cracker with Cheez Whiz... if I had a bottle of it within reach. Anyway, each time I spent more than two weeks outside the Philippines, I'd be elated to see boxes of Skyflakes inside Asian stores (particularly when in I was Australia and in the USA). Back then, I took it as a sign of homesickness. When I moved to California, I didn't miss Skyflakes because Mommy made sure that there's a steady supply in the house. Skyflakes is embedded in Filipino gastronomy as a snack, a panawid-gutom , that anyone who reacts positively upon seeing Skyflakes outside the Philippines must have spe...
Read more

10 things I learned while driving on Marcos Highway to Baguio City

-
I went on a day trip to the City of Pines, which was around a 700-km drive from my house. I drove  going up there and then from the city to Victoria, Tarlac. After that, my dad took over the driving duties. It was day trip with Tita Ising and Tito Sibing with us. Anyway, this trip was my first time to go to Baguio City with me behind the wheel. As everyone who drives up knows, there are three main routes to Baguio from the lowlands: Kennon Road, which ascends from Rosario, La Union. It was out of my options because it's too dangerous to use that road in the rainy season. The second route is via Naguilian Road, which makes my trip a lot longer because the beginning of the ascent is in Bauang, La Union (further north). The last route, and the one I took, was the Marcos Highway, now known as the Aspiras-Palispis Highway. This 47-km road starts from Agoo, La Union and is touted as the safest route among the three.  As I drove up and then down (on the same day; we were in...
Read more

Surat Mangyan

-
Image
In high school, part of the Filipino curriculum was learning about one of the country's ancient native scripts called Baybayin . I learned back then that this script was eventually abandoned because the Spanish, and eventually the Americans, encouraged the use of the Latin script for written communications. But that's in the lowlands; the rules were different up in the mountains. In the lush mountains of Mindoro, groups of indigenous people called Mangyans  live largely in isolation away from the Christianised Filipinos. This isolation has led to the continuous development of the Mangyans' old script, Surat Mangyan . As I walked inside the Ayala Museum , I saw this bamboo tube (I'm not sure if it's an instrument) with Mangyan script written all over it. I suppose that this was equivalent to a book or a song. But I haven't figured out what's written yet, despite the translation guide provided. What I can do, however, is write my name in Ma...
Read more