Essays from the Weekend

  Image from Apple Once upon a time, a friend of mine, let’s call her Rachel, felt miserable because she got realized that she got sucked back into being hooked on social media for the past few days. She had been on a social media break for months. It felt liberating not feeling that strange and persistent impulse to reach for her phone and mindlessly scroll. It felt like she got a God-given time refund of a couple of free hours each day. It was peaceful. It was peak contentment.  Then she had her last day with her company, and, feeling a little sad she couldn’t say goodbye to her work friends in person, decided to add them on social media so that they could maybe keep a digital connection alive while they wait out delta before having drinks in person. She posted a picture to commemorate her last day too, her first post in almost a year. It had likes. Interesting. The feeling of wanting to check likes came back. People kept adding her. Pretty soon she found herself reaching fo...

Image from Headspace In the middle of mentally trying to survive the pandemic, a couple of big, probably lasting, realizations occurred: (a) kindness to yourself is a real thing to be done every day; and (b) “setting your intention” can be as straightforward as “still being okay at the end of the day”. Kindness to self was previously an alien subject to me. And silly. Why does one have to be intentional about being kind to yourself? It sounded like pure fluff and something that’s already automatic anyway, didn’t Nietzsche or somebody say that we are subconsciously acting out of self-interest underneath it all? What does this even mean, in practice? After months and months of being bombarded with the subject on Headspace, I realized that this means being self-aware enough to intentionally take care of yourself like how you would take care of a beloved parent, friend, partner. Making decisions about myself as if I’m another person I care about. Take a nap when I’m tired, not push myself ...

All you need for a home gym For general health, doctors tell us that one needs: (a) 30 minutes of cardio at least 5 times a week and (b) 2 to 3 times of strength training in a week. I wanted to establish a mindless, frictionless routine of getting the requisite cardio and strength sessions done in a week. My fitness goal will always and forever just be general health - no “gains” targets, no gimmicks, no fitness cults (though I would love to go back to group workouts with friends just for fun, like spinning and Lagree, when the circumstances allow). The 30-minute cardio requirement is a no-brainer thanks to my Apple watch (my best exercise motivator!). I just run for exactly 30 minutes when I wake up in the morning. Another thing already in my system is that most afternoons, I take a yoga class  from my favorite yoga teacher which helps with stress and anxiety and physical symmetry. The challenge for me is getting a consistent strength training regimen in. I think it’s essential in...

Photo attributed to pressureUA/istock Headlines this week: congressional probe sought on a COVID-19 research agency. A certain political tandem was announced. With all these fantastically outrageous news and the public outcry they regularly produce, Carrie Bradshaw couldn’t help but wonder: were we this annoyed pre-social media? I read somewhere just this week that posts and articles which have headlines and/or content that rile up readers generate good income. Logically, social media companies make good money from politically-annoyed people. More posts, more user engagement, more eyeballs, more clicks. Logically, if it makes money, there’s an incentive to encourage these kinds of content and to foster irascible characteristics in social media users. Perhaps it’s not too unreasonable to speculate that the more reactive, knee-jerk, denouncing posts you make on social media, the more you feed money into the machine, the more you do your part to keep it going. In other words, the angrier ...

  What a wonderful day it was yesterday to find out that Hidilyn Diaz earned the Philippines’ first Olympic gold medal! Let me break down this joy: 1. The first Filipino to get the gold is a Filipina! 2. In weightlifting, no less! She disregarded all the Filipina mothers’ advice that “ women shouldn’t lift weights, ang matres mo! ” She disregarded the pressure to conform to the Filipino conventions of what a woman should look like, what a woman should focus on. Hidilyn did Hidilyn and she embraced her strengths and unique qualities, conventions be damned. This is what it looks like when we embrace our true strengths and strive to be the best that we can be, without listening to what the rest of the world thinks. 3. Beating the world’s number 1 from China in the process, and the contestant from Kazakhstan too! Those countries are known for the strength of their athletes, and 4 foot 11 Hidilyn beat them! 4. She maxed out at 125kg in training but heroically managed the record-beating ...

  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 he...

Image from NYT For the past few weeks, I’ve been taking a sort of course from Ateneo on how to be a global citizen. At least that’s what I’m telling myself the course is really about. So far, we have covered history (Philippine, Asian, Western), Philippine public policies and administration, Philippine culture. I’m also taking French classes from Verb Hive every Sunday.  It’s been an enjoyable experience so far, learning so much every weekend, but it’s demanding to keep up with the readings and lectures. Prior to this, I haven’t been into taking weekend classes. I just read a lot in my spare time, and that’s how I learn. Not that I don’t like the idea of taking classes; I do. But in Manila with the crazy traffic? It’s hard to show up to things. My close friends used to live in Muntinlupa and go to Makati every Saturday just to have German classes at the Goethe Institute. Imagine that drive. I’m too lazy to do it. Enter the pandemic. Extremely unfortunate turn of events. It comes wi...