The Bicycle Diary
The immortal words of Bruce Lee come to mind as I pedal my way through the daily chaos of the city streets.
May 4, 2014
The immortal words of Bruce Lee come to mind as I pedal my way through the daily chaos of the city streets.
HE HAD to be at least 60 years old, gnarled hands twiddling a cigarette stump, face etched with the lines of wisdom. Still, his eyes were young—and they always scanned the sea.
MONSTERS play a big part in the enduring thrall that Philippine mythology has over us. From the giant ogre smoking a fat tobacco while perched on a tree to the winged half-woman flying in the night in search of human prey, to the wizened dwarf living in an anthill, these creatures have populated Filipino tales through generations, usually and remarkably in classic bedtime story form.
WHAT to do now that temperature has been averaging 33 degrees Celsius, with predictions of the heat rising to 40 degrees these sizzling summer months?
April 6, 1924
To commemorate the birth anniversary of Filipino poet Francisco Balagtas, a group of poets hold the first “balagtasan” in Manila. Jose Corazon de Jesus, a.k.a. Huseng Batute, and Florentino T. Collantes square off in what might be called the first Pinoy battle in verse, though definitely, they did not “rap.”
La India Brava. If I were a painter, that is the title I would choose for a nude portrait of Mercedes Cabral.
When the smartphone was in its infancy and app stores were not yet operational, its best built-in app to help travelers was the Maps app. There were no walking directions provided, just a map that you needed to interpret to help you get to your destination.
India: Love it or hate it. It is the liveliest place I have been to so far. The craziest. Cows in the middle of the road, the traffic, the honking, dust, garbage, vendors, Hinduism, motors, tuktuks, touts, crowded trains—the moment I started walking the streets of Delhi, this mix dazzled me at every turn. Walking was like negotiating a maze as I sidestepped cow pies without getting hit by a motorcycle or tuktuk or bumping into people. Locals, especially men, stared while touts and vendors hawked their stuff and beggars followed at my heels. Being a tourist, I found out, meant being the attraction du jour.
One of the key elements to living healthy is eating fresh produce to minimize our intake of preservatives and processed foods.
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