London, Is That You?

 

It was the strangest week. The weather. It has been gray and stormy for about 8 straight days? I don’t recall Manila being this gray. Reminds me of what I keep hearing about London, that it’s gray and cloudy most of the time, and the locals rejoice when the day is clear. It was the same we experienced in Denmark. I never understood why people declare a certain day “a beautiful day” when I was younger. In the Philippines, it’s either sunny or rainy. Sunny days don’t equal beautiful days, here. It’s just a normal day.

When given a choice, I prefer gray and stormy myself. This week should have been a dream, then, but at some point it just crossed the threshhold to being worrisome. How much rain can our countrymen’s houses, dams, rivers, lakes, take? The nation still has a collective trauma over Ondoy and Yolanda, the superstorms which caused so much death and damage in the country.  The newspapers reported today that many crops have been destroyed and that’s the only thing I heard so far.  I will be monitoring the news, so far there are no other untoward reports. 

And so we hunker down and wait for the storm to blow over. On a positive note, this is the only time we can have peak coziness here. Hygge, candles, books, hot chocolate, tea, coffee, blankets, news and all the unabashed tita things in life. Yesterday, after waking up unceremoniously just before 5am because of the 6.7 magnitude earthquake and going down 23 flights of stairs, I went to our home in the south and sat down on our porch with my favorite cup, looking at the trees in the rain. Savoring is the key to happiness, they say. So I sat and savored my hot coffee, produced from a Starbucks house blend Nespresso capsule. I saw a crow fly by, my first time to see one in my village. There were a couple of maya birds sheltering under the awning of the garden shed. So that’s where they go when it rains. There and I’m sure through the gaps in the ceiling in the area to the side of the house. After that, I enjoyed my rainy day read:

When hunkering down and reading rainy days and pandemics away, the best books to read are old ones or those written about old subjects. Where the Internet and personal technology did not exist, where the world was a slower one, where people had simpler but truer concerns and most everyone lived in the moment. It’s reflected in the manner of writing too. The most enjoyable novels for me last year were Jane Austen’s Persuasion and Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. This one, Napoleon, A Life by Andrew Roberts is written so beautifully and has a most captivating subject.

Something not cozy right now: I’m on my first ever juice cleanse from Pure Nectar Co.  Let’s see how this goes. The prospect of going the whole day without actual food is a little scary. I’ve done 16-hour fasts before but that was fine because I knew the exact time that I would stop. Now, it’s the whole day! I know that this will be good for me, however, and I’m excited for the positive effects. Fasting has always been a good experience, with great effects. If this turns out well, I’d want to do this maybe every quarter, maybe progress to the 2 and 3-day juice fasts.

Hesitant to plunge into the coming week but have to. Credits to Glennon Doyle for the mantra “We Can Do Hard Things”. Have a great week ahead!