Educating for creativity: A right brain perspective

Educating the creative workforce: new directions for twenty-first century schooling is a journal article which appeared in the British Educational Research Journal in 2008. While this article may seem a bit dated, its contention: are we providing today’s children with education that is adaptive and responsive to the rapidly shifting needs of the times?, remains timely, if not more crucial than ever, given that this issue is largely ignored, or is rarely tackled in depth and in earnest in the realm of education.

So how does Erica William and Sandra Haukka, the article’s authors, describe today’s workplace?  For one, where knowledge base and skill sets were once a priority, creativity in terms of finding solutions, ability to absorb setbacks, and the talent to think on the fly, is now the coveted trait. 

The article cites a Harvard Business Review outlook that a company’s most important asset is creative capital, an arsenal of creative thinkers whose ideas can be turned into valuable products and services.

Daniel Pink, author of A Whole New Mind (2005), puts a monetary value to the creative industry: $6.1 trillion dollars over the next 15 years, or until 2020.  Pink further explains that the world is moving from the Information Age where knowledge workers are highly valued, to the Conceptual Age in which creators and workers with high concept/high touch aptitudes will be most valued as “creative” human capital.

Creativity at work

In real workplace settings, creativity in action may very well be the difference between closing or botching a deal, solving or prolonging, or worse exacerbating a workplace impasse, or satisfying or turning off a customer.  And we are not even talking about the creative individual’s power to think of new products, innovate old ones, or completely introduce a whole new line of products, even a market segment that was never there before.  The automobile, when first introduced was laughed at and ridiculed as critics called it an elaborate and expensive replacement for a horse.  The visionary that Henry Ford was, increased the salary of his workers so that they could afford the cars that they were making, thus becoming the first moving ambassadors for automobile.  The rest, as the cliché goes, is history.

Critics, those who can’t see beyond what’s in front of them, have many things to say about things that were never there before.  Galileo lost his soul to eternal damnation when he tried to prove that the earth revolved around the sun, instead of the other way around.  Magellan and his men did not fall off a raging cliff when their ship ventured too far off to the horizon.  In fact, the horizon kept moving farther away as they sailed until they were able to circumnavigate the earth.  Of course, we know that Magellan lost his life along the way.  Critics said the TV can’t replace the radio in the center of the home, the personal computer won’t find two buyers, the MP3 won’t be a popular format for music because it compromises on the quality of sound, the iPad is not going to fly because it is neither a cellphone, a computer or a laptop, or that Anne Curtis cannot carry a tune. 

Creativity is not just about making new things, or being an artist, for that matter.  It is, more importantly, also about the resilience and fortitude to ignore critics to push for what one truly believes in; and when things don’t work out as planned, the ability to treat failure as merely a reason to look for another solution, or another pursuit to think about.

Everyone is born with the capacity for creative thinking.  Then he goes to school.

Left brain rules

The first thing that I learned in school was what a line was and what it was all about.  First, the line ensures that students can move from one place to another without unnecessarily bumping into one another, or tripping on a potted plant along the way.  Secondly, it is useful in guiding students how to write neatly on a sheet of paper.  Before I became a student, I was happy to move as I pleased, sometimes running, at times hopping, but often with no specific direction in mind.  And when I drew (I didn’t know how to write then), I blissfully ignored lines, or any conventions on what a writing material was.  I did not discriminate whether it was plain paper, book, leaves, dirt, or random objects in our house, where I discovered that pencils and crayons worked better on wood panels than chalk did, which worked best on concrete, but not on slick tiles or metal, which was perfect for marking pen and paint.

It is also in school where I learned that one notebook corresponded to one subject.  I initially thought that there was such a thing as a lucky notebook for the day.  To a teacher who was an expert on lines, I was a severely disorganized student.  To someone with a broader perspective and a more patient disposition, I was a freethinker in training.  Unfortunately, that kind of thinking is almost non-existent especially in the early grades.

High school was no better in fostering a creative mind and personality, at least in my school where most of the teachers, including my mother, had a reputation for being strict and rigid.  I distinctly recall in my practical arts class when we were assigned to make a design for a house, first on a sheet of paper, which we will then construct scaled-to-size in 3-D.  It was a major project, one that I was, uncharacteristically excited to do.  I have never seen a honeycomb before but, for some reason, I was determined to make every room in my house a hexagon, which meant that it was never going to look like any house whether from the inside or out.  I can still remember Mr Navarro’s bushy mustache quiver as he said in his deep, grovelly voice, “Ay pagkahirap gang kwentahin  ng materyales nyang bahay mo.  Ay gumawa ka ng iba.”  And so I did, a square house, with three square bedrooms, just like everybody else’s.  It’s not as if Mr Navarro was curtailing our ambitions.  If we wanted a grander house, then we could just make more and larger square rooms.  But that was not my ambition.

I finished high school with a reputation as that student who was good in sports, drawing, spelling and mischief.  I was the most intelligent student never to have made it on the honor’s list.  To my teachers, I was a major waste of talent.

How today’s learners learn

Today’s creative student can be as easily distracted and defiant of structure in the classroom, if not more so.  But that should not be taken against them given that that is how their environment has shaped their learning tendencies to be, but as a wakeup call for the educational system to really see learning from the perspective and milieu of the learners, and not from a traditional point of view trying to force teaching approaches that are increasingly getting dated with every app being introduced in the digital sphere.  The paper talked about today’s children’s learning environment, calling such system as the knowledge ecology, which consists of blogs, wiki sites, and other sources of instant links to knowledge including those shared on social media, which the learners curate for themselves without much prodding.  Educators thus should not treat the classroom as the Pandora’s box of learning because today’s learners have discovered their own, and it’s up to the teacher to tap into this inner learning drive so that he may be able to add depth, clarity and direction to all these available information.

I consider myself lucky that I survived 16 years of schooling with my creativity, and belief in myself and what I can do intact.  How did I do it?  By not taking school seriously.  Seriously.

Right brain or left brain, versus or and?

Though I am now a graduate student, a serious and committed one, I still often feel like an outsider looking in.  In class discussions, while classmates lucidly and calmly speak what’s on their mind in clear, measured tones, I often find myself speaking rather too passionately, using words that describe not only what I think but also how I feel.  That is also how I write. 

My first course in my first semester was Development and Learning under Dr. Koo, and I was, for obvious reasons, anxious to turn in my very first paper.  I only knew two things about academic writing for graduate school then.  First is that I haven’t done one.  And second is that I should not, under any circumstance, use profane language.  Before the paper on bullying was submitted, I asked a classmate if we could exchange outputs which she, with some hesitation, obliged.  Reading her paper, I was thoroughly impressed and utterly nervous for my work; her writing style was exactly the opposite of mine.  It was concise, organized and authoritative, like an expert wrote it, whereas mine was chatty -- drifting from one idea to another like a Quentin Tarantino movie, and had a tone that alternated between cocky, docile, authoritative and speculative.   She cited empirical evidences, used jargon and tidy words, and quoted big names.   I hinted on the Bible and accused Cain and the Pharaohs of Egypt as bullies.  I relied on anecdotes, some heart-breaking, others hilarious but all true, and strung together words that were raw and colorful, such as crackling knuckles, brisk action and zig and zag.  I also introduced a total unknown – Julius Yago, whom I considered as on top of the bully food chain in my time. 

I praised my classmate for her work and told her it was like reading a well-written academic book.  And she praised me for mine, saying that it was a fun read, and that she could hear my voice in the narrative.  I was not sure if that was a proper compliment for an academic paper.

After two weeks, Dr Koo was ready to return all the papers.  Before she did, she announced the best ones.  My friend’s was one, another was mine.  So what’s the point here?  That both left-brained and right-brained person can both do well on the same task, even while using different approaches.  The problem here is not every student can have a Dr Koo to appreciate both sides.  How many teachers will tell students that there should be a specific way of saying something? Or doing something?

Neon-lighted learning

As we were doing our research on the theses and dissertations compilation and began reading into some of them, which are by the way rich in information, logically written and deeply researched, one thing stood out in my mind:  these brilliant books are written in such a dry, dull and boring prose, no wonder then that they are gathering dust. 

When knowledge is treated as some holy relic, sanitized and bereft of excitement, and yet still expected to attract knowledge pilgrims just because they are valuable, then education is built on an outdated premise.  For me, knowledge should be treated like a commodity, an exciting one.  Most of today’s students try to learn only what they think they can use in their lives, they have no time for boring stuff, no matter how valuable that knowledge is.  Education should compete for attention, not merely demand for it.

Right brain rights

So how do I see an education fit for developing creativity in every student?  Though it would be a more exciting proposition for the creative types, I don’t see any urgency in adding more arts and humanity subjects to the general curriculum as this may only serve to reinforce the stereotype of the brooding-weird-artsy-fartsy-dreamer affixed to the creative type, which, then, reduces the right-brain learner into a caricature -- trivializing the matter all together.

What I see is an educational system not dependent on structures and standards; where teachers are trusted to facilitate and deepen learning, nurture self-reliance and prioritize learning goals over performance goals.  Carol Dweck, a noted brain researcher, argues that students who strive to look for different strategies and options are also more resilient, active and positive compared with performance goal oriented ones who shy away from challenging situations in fear of failing.  For the latter group, the battle cry is: If you can’t look smart, then try not to look dumb.  They become their worst critics.  And as I mentioned earlier, critics don’t see beyond what is in front of them.

I want to see teachers who are more relaxed, and not afraid to admit that there are a lot of things that they don’t know, so that students will realize that the learning process is not a one-way, dead-end street, but a busy thoroughfare with an infinite network of possibilities.

I want to see the heavily-crendentialized teaching profession opened to those who did not take up education or haven’t gone to graduate school, but have proven themselves in their chosen domain, and are willing to share what they so richly gained over the years.  They will bring the real world inside the classroom.  Let us not fool ourselves into believing that a 3-day seminar, or semester or two in graduate school can duplicate, let alone approximate the wealth of knowledge and experience the practitioner can bring to the teaching table.  One thing is sure, if the practitioner hears the calling to teach, it is not the sound of cash register making that persistent noise.

I want rubrics to be thrown away or at least modified to include the creative process, the overcoming of challenges, the discovery of realizations and breakthroughs no matter how big, small, trivial or inconsequential they may seem to others – they matter to the student and his learning.  This is heavily reliant on the teacher’s subjectivity, I know, but then didn’t I say that I want a system where the teacher is trusted to do the right thing?

Sure, we can make life better, easier and more convenient by doing the same things over and over again, and then we can convince ourselves that the security of our comfort zone is actually the reward of moving forward.  But if we genuinely want to create an environment where our children can learn, be creative and ready for the world, then we should be prepared to overhaul our mindset, and the way we dispense education inside our classrooms.  It is only when we dare to say, think and do something new can we really, truly, say that we are changing the world.

This is an article I wrote for Issues and Trends in Educational Psychology, for my graduate studies at UP Diliman.

US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines by E. San Juan Jr.: A BOOK REVIEW

       Wearing a Filipino nationalist’s lens, E. San Juan Jr. examines in his book US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines the role of the United States in subverting nationhood throughout modern history by weaving a plot around sound theoretical frameworks from great thinkers fabrics culled from an impressive, if not exhaustive collection of literature written by mostly American and Filipino historians, anthropologists, sociologists and academics, who may or may not have revealed through their writing, their slant on the contentious benevolence/malevolence of the world’s only remaining superpower.

       

The book, which chronicles America’s overt and covert, brutal and diplomatic, local and global participation in shaping the lives of peoples and races across the globe then and now, is written with intellectuals and academics foremost in mind.  However, if the uninitiated to the language of sociology, as I almost am, is able to sift through the jargon and details, one can see a very informative book, thought-provoking in its depth and soul-stirring in its ability to present its case at how America literally and figuratively raped and pillaged the country, and the world for that matter.  Whatever it lacked in narrative appeal, it made up for in thoroughness in detail and consistency in argument.

However, I would like to see this book written in a language and tone that reaches out to ordinary Filipinos, inviting them to examine their view of the world, of being a Filipino or whatever it means and symbolizes for them, of how they were robbed blind of their power over self-determination while they were too busy believing that the unequal partnership with America was the best thing to happen since the Spaniards inflicted on the country its very first myopia – religion.

But alas, the book is what it is: a brilliantly written tome in highstrung language, for the mental masturbation of the learned and erudite who can participate in endless discussion of how the US had gained advantage over every nation by putting everyone else at a disadvantage, impressively punctuated by lines and passages written by such and such authority on such and such fields.  Though no fault of its own, or the author’s, the book ironically manages by omission to distance the issue of oppression and manipulation from the very people who should be able grasp it by heart, if only to spark a little ember of anger, and hopefully, revolt at why they are who they are.  Eerily, this is ironically similar to how America took away the ambit of discussion from the masses by empowering the ruling elite to run governance, dictate social norms, and generally perpetuate the oppressive system which they no longer desired to dispose of themselves.  No, they are above that.

Language has a way of alienating discussants, and making what is plain and obvious obscure and unrecognizable.  The Americans were, and still are masters at this.  30,000 American soldiers obliterated hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, and by many accounts up to a million, or one in seven Filipino, and we were mesmerized by the term pacification of the brigands, as if fighting for your home, for the way you want to live, to protect and exploit your own resources in a manner that benefits you and your kin was a beastly crime that needed to be rustled to the ground, and buried underneath it, preferably with the shovel still in our hands.  No, they didn’t want to call it for what it was – a massacre, a genocide, a most barbaric killing -- words too raw and well, bloody to include in polite, polished, educated conversation.  Didn’t they say we were savages? 

The Americans absconded with our nation’s collective pride, co-opted our minds, and forever changed how we view ourselves and they called it benevolent assimilation, a manifest destiny of a nation bound to be led to a world that is just, progressive, free.  Or at least that’s what the rhetoric wanted us to believe.  No, they wouldn’t call it brainwashing, annihilation of a culture, or disenfranchisement of a nation – words that don’t give justice to the brilliant strategy they employed to systematically and mercilessly strip us of our dignity and pride, first by force, then by guile.  How dare us, we ungrateful bastards?

The white people twisted our elbow with one hand and patted our shoulder with the other and condescendingly called us their little brown brothers, as they carted out our natural resources from our mountains, seas and land.  And we are supposed to beam with pride and expect that snow would fall on our benighted land the moment we all sing White Christmas.  They wouldn’t want to call it plunder, rape or the eradication of one’s belief in sovereignty and patrimony.  They called us brothers, didn’t they?  What were we thinking?  We should be glad that we are able to please our benevolent white mentors who went out of their way, and their country, to show us how to exploit everything we have for their consumption.  So stop using words that cite contempt.

All throughout its history, Americans have shown their propensity for so righteously using might to subjugate races that stand in the way of their greed.  They drove American-Indians from their land, which happened to be oozing with gold and timber, decimated their ranks with superior firepower and shackled their pride in far-flung locales euphemistically called reservation, where curious tourists may visit them to marvel at their culture, like children gawking at colorful fishes inside an aquarium. 

They went to the Korean Peninsula to fight off the “evil” communists; and they sent mayhem to Vietnam, except that their napalm bombs were no match for the grit of the Vietcongs.  They did not win these wars, but they didn’t lose either.  They simply managed to ensure that the world will be a more dangerous place.

Ironically, even as America is at the forefront of every significant war in modern history, not one of the significant battles occurred in its soil.  And no war is considered significant without the stars and stripes involved in it.  Why?  Because America, inspite of its posturing as the protector of the free world and the ally of the burdened, chooses which war to use its ammunition on; and this is mainly predicated on what good, and in what quantity can they gain from such an incursion.  And when they can’t be in the battle zone, they conveniently supply weapons and resources to those willing to fight for them.  They supplied weapons to Nicaraguan rebels trying to overthrow a communist regime, to the mujahideens of Afghanistan who would later become the core of Al Qaeda, to the warriors of Israel who promise to defend its territory, and it goes without saying America’s interests as well, against any and all forces.  They sent warplanes and boots to Afghanistan and Iraq when they lost trust in local militias to get the job done, which is to actually install a regime that is willing to satiate its thirst for oil until it can take in no more, or until a more effective and renewable energy source is discovered – whichever came first.

America must get something, preferably everything from its effort.  Victors, after all, devour the spoils of war.

America watched in mock horror as Rwandans killed each other by the hundreds of thousands with machete, clubs and bare hands.  They did the same when fragments of disintegrating Yugoslavia drew genocidal blood across the Balkans.  They continually thumb their noses at North Korea as its population die from hunger even as its demigod leaders gorged on caviar, expensive wine and everyone else’s pretty daughters.  But why should they lift a finger?  Rwanda was nothing more than a vast untamed forest, it had diamonds underneath its mountains but America had never been enamored with precious stones; Yugoslavia was nothing more than beautiful mountains, ice, snow and plenty of pine trees; North Korea is little more than a barren land in the peninsula – South Korea, its ally is richer in resources, as well as in technology that are aligned with its own.  Why problematize over issues that pay nothing or little in return?

America is not afraid that its bases Subic and Clark have been removed in the 1990s, they still have the Visiting Forces Agreement and a strong ally/lackey in the Philippines to ensure that if any shooting war happens with China, Philippines as a de facto extension of the US, will suffer the onslaught long before any Chinese missile hits American soil.  That’s what small brothers are supposed to do – take up the cudgel for big brother.

Another Filipino, Jennifer Laude, dies in the hands of an American soldier.  America is not alarmed.  A few years back, an American soldier raped and dumped the victim on the road like a banana peel and the soldier, Daniel Smith, is now back in US soil, shamed perhaps but safe and in anonymity in his land of milk and honey.  Meanwhile, the Philippine government plays it cool.  Come on, it is as if this is the only fatality that an American soldier has ever inflicted on a Filipino before.  Remember up to a million Filipinos were massacred between 1899 and 1913, we should be immune to the news by now.  After all, aren’t we supposed to feel that way after the ultimate sacrifice of a million Filipino brigands?  No one remembers because no one knows.

The book under review contains stories about my country: how it was rich and pillaged, how it was populated with a people fighting for freedom and how the fight turned from a struggle for freedom into a battle for racial survival, and of how the mantle of thought was taken away from the masses and entrusted to the intellectuals, the elite, and the academics.  These stories will not reach the masses, the book was never intended for their consumption.

This is a well-written, well-researched, well-argued book.  And I don’t like it.

May Tama Ba o Maling Lingwahe sa Edukasyon?: Why speaking in tongues is essential to national identity

Image not mine

Much has been said – for and against – the Department of Education’s (DepEd) recent shift to Mother Tongue Based-Multilingual Education (MTB-MLE).  Proponents assert that the utilization of the language/s that school children use at home will facilitate learning for students, resulting to more confident, effective and active learners as evidenced by the results of numerous studies conducted locally and abroad, which show marked differences in performance levels of students under the MTB-MLE over students exposed to traditional mono and bilingual education.  Critics, meanwhile, assert that such a move is impractical, even downright ambitious, given the meager resources of the government vis-à-vis the enormity of the required financial outlay and logistical difficulties contingent with its implementation.  At best, they contend, the MTB-MLE program is a noble initiative that will fizzle out in the end because of the above cited barriers.  Furthermore, they argue that it will weaken our nation’s advantage in English proficiency, which is instrumental in the migration of Business Process Outsourcing companies to our local shores and the almost seamless transition of local labor exports to foreign lands – both valuable dollar contributors to the Philippine coffers.

The challenges facing the implementation of the MTB-MLE program are real, varied and daunting.  However, I am of the position that it should be given the best chance to succeed and mature by allowing the program to undergo the process of distillation and fine tuning as it inevitably goes through the initial setbacks and growing pains of its first few years. 

While MTB-MLE is primarily an educative strategy, I believe that sustaining it will result to a much more important and far-reaching consequence – the crystallization of a national identity, something that previous lingual policies, which placed much credence on the dominant language Tagalog and the supposed universal language English, have failed to do.

There are roughly 93 million Filipinos who are fragmented not just by more than 7,000 islands, but also by 180 live languages.  Such is the diversity in our peoples’ ethnicity that it would seem impossible to unite the country, let alone conceive a palpable sense of self.  Attempts to cobble a unified front often involved introducing some sort of symbol that proponents hope will galvanize the citizens into thinking or feeling the same way – national this, national that.  There is no specific designated National language except for the generic term Filipino, which is loosely applied to mean any of the 180 languages.  In practice, however, because Tagalog is the language most used and understood by majority of Filipinos whether as a first or second language, it is often considered as the de facto national language.  This dates back to 1935 when, fresh from the supposed independence from America, the framers of the Philippine constitution elevated it to premier language status.  What this designation essentially institutionalized was to impress on non-native Tagalog speakers, that their mother tongue – and their culture, for that matter -- is not as important as Tagalog.

Language is identity; identity is sense of self.  When you are told to use someone else’s tongue, you lose your sense of self because the validity of your identity is compromised.  We, as a people, began losing our identity some 600 years ago when Spanish colonizers imposed Spanish as the medium of instruction inside the classroom.  We lost our pride in our culture when the Spaniards derisively called our ancestors barbarians for having their own religion, government system, values and way of living.  A new set of Filipinos emerged from this imposition.  They were well versed in Spanish, dressed in the same manner, shared the same value system.  Unfortunately, these new educated and landed elite will, for centuries, define the dichotomy of the Philippine society.

The desecration of the Filipino continued and became almost irreversible when the Americans came and asserted their Big Brother colonialistic approach, again centered on introducing English as the official language of education, even bringing in a boatload of soldier-teachers from the mainland to consummate the subjugation of the Filipino mind.  Like a chameleon, the Filipino elite changed language and colonial preference, even as the societal makeup remain unchanged: A ruling class that is far outnumbered by the poor and downtrodden whose hope for improving their lot in life lies in either serving the society’s cream or acquiring their language through colonial-based education.

The nation would have had the perfect opportunity to reverse this colonial malady when the Philippine Commonwealth was formed in 1935, which came with the chance to forge a new constitution and a fresh start to seek its identity.  But alas, Tagalog, the dominant language, was chosen to represent the nation of 180 languages.  And the Filipino perpetuates colonialism, this time subjugating his own, the result of which we see and feel till this very day: non-native Tagalog speakers being ridiculed for their hard-accented Tagalog, pretentious families in rural communities training their children to speak in Tagalog rather than in their mother tongue, and hardluck probinsyanos flocking to Metro Manila, where they are misinformed that progress and a better life remain in wait – all because they are made to believe that their mother tongue should take a back seat for a dominant language.

It is about time that we acknowledge our country for what it is, and its people for who they are.  We are a nation of 7,107 islands. There is nothing wrong with that. We are a people 93 million strong, speaking 180 languages.  There is nothing wrong with that either.  We lost our identity and pride through language and education.  We will regain them the same way. MTB-MLE should be given the chance to prosper and work its effect on our collective pride, one language at a time.

This is an essay for my graduate school course Socio-Cultural Foundations of Education at UP Diliman.

Values miseducation in advertising: Teaching kids the concept of shame

You must have seen this on TV.

Shot opens to a boy emerging from the gate of a nice house in what seemed like an upscale subdivision.

He is next seen at the back seat of a car, with his apparent father navigating an old model car around the neighborhood.

The boy then sees a pretty girl, his crush, loitering about her home’s front yard, and he promptly slinks into the back seat, away from the gaze of the girl that makes his young heart flutter.

The father notices this and is devastated that his son is embarrassed to be seen riding in a car that has served the family well for a very long time. He had to do something.

In the next frame, the boy proudly banners his face on the window of a new car, hoping that her girl crush sees him aboard, this time in a nice, new car.  Of course she did, and he slumped back on the backseat, on cloud nine.

The father was, too.  The loan he made for a downpayment on a car, that won’t be totally his for the next few years, is all worth it.

I don’t know if it’s just me but this TV commercial makes me sick.  The message that it is pushing is this: If what you have is not new, branded or expensive, then shame on you, you poor you.  But it’s alright, you insecure you, because if you can’t afford it just yet and you can't wait to save for it, then you can always take out a loan that would assuage your poor ego that, yeah you can keep up the veneer that you belong to a class that comes and goes in style if you are only willing to pay the price of being indebted for a purchase that you don’t even need to do if you are not so damn insecure about how people would look at you if you don’t own something new or expensive, you poor insecure you.

No,  you don’t explain to your son that your car is way cooler and infinitely much more priceless than anything new or expensive because that’s the car that has brought his mother to the hospital when he was due for his first day to cry.  Or that it is also the same car that has brought the entire family to endless journeys, resulting to countless smiles and fadeless memories.  Or that it is the same four wheeler that you hope he learns to drive and take care someday because it simply has the entire family history etched in every kilometer logged in its odometer.  No, you don’t do those things.   Instead, you want to teach him that what is important is what is superficial, nice and new.

Then you grow old, faded and a bit clumsy because you can no longer tell whether you are entering your front door or getting out of it.  And in your lucid moment, you would wonder why your full grown son does not drop by to visit you even after you have thought him everything he needs to know about valuing and accumulating new and expensive things.  You taught him well.  You are old, faded and you smell like years compressed in one prune-like shell of your old-self.  That’s why. 

Halo-halo fur sil, ice bonding and a photo tour of an old bike route

Pinoy entrepreneurs are known for coming up with attractive names to rein in customers.  This one did not only catch my attention, it also forced me to a full stop coming from a sprint, which rarely happens, like when a vehicle on the opposite lane decides that my bike is not incoming traffic and veers into my lane to overtake a slow moving one.

Another trait of the Pinoy entrepreneur is that he/she is quick to spot opportunities, madiskarte kumbaga.  And this Ale is madiskarte.  She actually made a waiting shed right in the corner where tricycles make a turn as her de facto store.  As they say in business: location, location, location is everything.

I’ve already motioned for one halo-halo even before I could park my bike, and it was on my hand even before I could settle down.  Apparently, Aleng Halo-halo had already filled cups with measured rekados.  All she needed to do was scoop pre-shaved ice from a styro-box into the cup, pour milk and hand it over to the customer.  But the thing with pre-shaved ice is that they would clump together, which would make it more difficult to break down and mix with the rest of the ingredients.

As I was jackhammering the ice with my plastic spoon, my eyes were on two men seated on a bench across the road.  The two seemed like celebrities for just about everyone – men, women and kids on foot, tricycle or four-wheeled vehicles -- either waved at them or honked their greetings.  I’m envious; not of their celebrity, but of their bench.  It has always been on my wish list to eat halo-halo like a neighborhood tambay watching the world go by.  So when the two men decided to hop on to their tricycle, I immediately stood up and eagerly parked my butt on the still warm bench.

I must say, the bench is nice, so is the almost road level view that allows for maximum eye contact with passersby on foot or machine.  But I was having a problem with the darn ice; minutes have past and I was still waging a war with crushed ice particles that have decided to stick to one another no matter what.  Mercifully, the afternoon heat got to them and melted whatever bond they had with each other.  I welcomed them into my mouth.  They were refreshingly cold, but I was not impressed with the halo-halo.  It contained chunks of kamote that were boiled but not with sugar, leaving it wanting in flavor.  It helped that it had sweet nata de coco and some melon strips, which just about saved the entire halo-halo from turning into a disappointment.

As I was eating halo-halo like a tambay, I noticed I was getting a lot of attention just like what the two men before me enjoyed.  A car passed by and I made eye contact with the driver which prompted him to honk his horn and nod his head, which I also did.  Before a tricycle made a right turn, a boy riding behind the driver waved his hand and smiled at me.  I also did the same.  Another tricycle driver going the other way, slowed down and offered me a ride.  I would have taken his offer had I wanted a joyride with a stranger but I was only halfway through my halo-halo and I was raised by my parents to finish everything before proceeding to doing something else.

So this is how the neighborhood tambay feels.  It’s good.  Perhaps, that’s why a lot of tambays don’t want to do anything else.  I can’t do that.

I paid 15 pesos for my halo-halo.  It was not good, but not bad either.  It could have been worse.  Thank God there was no fur in it. 

Orange halo-halo and Sunday Morning on a Friday afternoon

I don’t know if it’s because I got stung by a bee on my right eyelid or because my body thermometer is saying that it was the hottest day of summer so far, that I decided to grab a quick ride on my bike.

I wanted to start off trembling so I opted to take the San Salvador to Tibig road which gave me almost 3 kilometers of ro-ah-ah-ah-ugh road before turning right to Tangway and exiting to the main highway.  I dropped by La Salle for a quick spot check of the Green Wall then proceeded to Lodlod via Villa Lourdes.

I like this loop going toward San Jose, passing by Lodlod and Pangao.  It is fast, with a lot of downhiiiiiillllls that will generate enough momentum for the uh-uh-uh-uphills, and not to mention the occasional aggressive-looking dogs that amp the adrenaline rush a notch.  But I also was on a mission to sample halo-halo, any halo-halo, which turned out to be a problem because the more I thought of it, the more I got thirsty.  So when I saw the first halo-halo stand as I reached Pangao, my thirsty instinct was to pull over.

I knew I was making a mistake when I slowed down and made a motion of stopping because some 10 meters ahead to the left was another halo-halo stand which looked more interesting.  Unfortunately, a thin man lying across a bamboo bench, alerted by my presence, suddenly sprang up wearing a welcoming smile.  We made eye contact and it was clear that he was prepared to serve me halo-halo.  I was trapped.

I saw the man spoon one color of gulaman after another, then red sago, then what looked like minatamis na saging, kamote, corn, ube and brown sugar, which he topped with shaved ice and milk.  It looked like any halo-halo, but this one was different in that every time I stirred the mixture using my spoon, something was spilling over the lip of the plastic cup no matter how careful I was.  By the time I was ready to sample the halo-halo, my hands were all gooey and wet.

I think the halo-halo man played some sleight of hand on me because I was so sure he put in assorted colors of gulaman, but I only saw orange.  I fished them out first, planning to move on to a different color.  But lo and behold, every time I spoon orange gulaman into my mouth, more orange morsels appeared.   I was holding a cup of miracle in my hands.  I really don’t like gulamans in halo-halo, lucky for the thin man it was the right color – my favorite.

In my headset Adam Levine was crooning “That maybe all I need, in darkness she is all I see,” and I was nodding and weaving my head to the tune.  Unfortunately, the thin man gazed at me as I was doing this and again we made eye contact.  He smiled the smile of a satisfied host.  He asked, “Ayos, sir?”  What can I say, “Hindi?”  So I gave him the thumbs up sign.

I paid the man P15 for my halo-halo.

Like a shopper not satisfied with his find, I pedaled slow as I scanned the other halo-halo stand.  It was beside the road with a long wooden bench adjacent to the table where the condiments were neatly placed.  I said to myself, “Sayang, nakaupo sana akong parang mukhang tambay lang.”

And I saw the halo-halo man in that stand, bald (shiny kind of bald, not like my shaved kind of bald), dark with a big belly menacingly protruding from his waist.  He was wearing dark-colored sando with his nipples poking fun at the thinness of the cloth.  And I was thinking, “Sayang! How cool would it be to be served halo-halo by this tough looking dude.”  And I imagined how he would react if our eyes met and he sees my head bobbing up and down to Sunday Morning, would he smile or would he ask, “Ayos ka lang ga?” with a growl?

Oh well, as they say, good things come to those who wait, or in my case, pedal some 10 meters more.

#100Happydays, joys and hushed tugs to the heart

Rockies, Mt. Maculot

Lately, I’ve been encountering a lot of #100Happydays from my friends’ facebook posts, and I am thinking, “Huh, do you actually count the number of days that you are happy?”   That is sad, because as far as I am concerned, I prefer making lists (But I don’t have one written down, and if I did, it would run up to 365) over counting.  But that is just me.  Easter came and it produced even more counting numbers, and since I am a newbie (and blissfully ignorant) to a lot of things modern and current, I decided to use Google to discretely satisfy my curiosity (and ignorance).

Ahhh, yun pala yun.  #100Happydays according to 100Happydays.com is actually a challenge for anyone to post a picture on facebook and Instagram -- any picture, of any place, of any person, of any event, of anything, really -- that has made a participant happy.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Not really. According to the website, a full 71% of those who decided to participate in the challenge failed to complete the task primarily because of their lack of time.

The rationale behind the challenge: to make people realize that happiness is literally just around the corner  – runs smack against the pace by which people run their lives nowadays, which is too fast, too frenetic, too frantic and too competitive to be even taking track of happy occurrences, let alone snapping a shot.  Sad but true.  People have become too enamored with the pursuit of happiness – however one defines it – that they fail to realize that it is not even running away from them.  It is just there.  If one learns how to slow down.

In Dingalan Bay, Aurora

My Harvard-educated graduate school professor always says that for anyone to be truly happy, he/she must be able to live with himself/herself first.  I love being alone.  I guess this makes me a happy person.

I like to keep things simple.  It is no wonder then that the things that give me the greatest joy are right wherever I am; or at the very least will take some effort to get and some luck to come across, but they never cost much.  I just have to be ready.

When I am alone I get to notice fleeting moments that will not necessarily alter my life noticeably, but will certainly warm and enrich my soul no end.  I once saw a hummingbird as I was coming home from a bike ride (click here for story), and for a few seconds I was mesmerized by the beauty and stealth of this amazing bird that was no bigger than a wasp.  One of my earliest recollections of amazing bird encounters was of a blue kingfisher that was snappily searching for prey in the small fishpond that my father dug in our family farm in Pangasinan when I was still in elementary, but the rich hue and majestic flight of the bird are still vividly etched in my mind.  Recently, in a hike along Maculot, two birds, perhaps owls, suddenly took wing not far from where we were treading; undoubtedly disturbed by our footfalls.  It was a magical moment for me. And so are the frequent sightings of birds, of all colors and sizes, in our yard, some giving us the privilege of a few minutes, others are content to letting us hear their songs.

I love random things that I see.  In my head I paint pictures, framing scenes that otherwise would look ordinary.  These scenes are precious because I may never see or experience them the same way again.

At a  secret bike getaway

UP Sunken Garden

Dingalan Port, Aurora

Nueva Ecija

Taal Lake, Balete, Batangas

It's not only the sight that inspires me, but the scents of the road as well.  I remember during one span in our epic Manila to Dingalan, Aurora ride where we passed by a citrus orchard that seemed to stretch up to a kilometer, thrilling my nostrils with the sweet smell of citrus blooms.  It was heavenly.  And so are the smells of Narra flowers, and Ilang-ilang which waft in the air in some of my secret bike routes in Lipa.  And when the air does not host any memorable scent, it would suffice if I can hear it swiftly whistle past my ears as I zip by at some speed.

It does not take a lot to make me happy -- joyfully happy.  Leave me alone and happiness will take care of itself.  I guess that's what #100Happydays is all about.  I hope you also have a limitless share of happy stories to tell.

Dirty Halo-halo Ala Pacquiao

Distance from home: 22.9 kilometers

Place:  Barangay San Lucas

Establishment name:  Apartment for Rent

The back story:

I have the road literally to myself because it’s Pacquiao fight day; proof of this is the 35kph I registered along the normally busy stretch along De lasalle where, on a normal day, one would be lucky to do 10 without stopping or pulling over to give way to tricycles or motorcycles who are themselves being muscled to the side by jeeps, cars, buses and trucks.  So while Pacquiao re-established himself as a boxing icon, I was king of the road.

The Stopover:

The halo-halo stand I chose was not my first option.  The first, which came at around Km 20 into my ride, turned me down because it had run out of ingredients.  The store, I suppose, is either doing good business, or must have a store policy against serving halo-halo to tall, sweaty bikers.

I knew I had a winner when I passed by this particular stand with an Apartment for Rent banner to call attention to its ware.  Anyway, aside from not saying it sells halo-halo, what sets this halo-halo stand apart from any I have seen is that the number of children gathered around it was greater than the number of ingredients in the halo-halo itself – I counted 10, all below 5 years old, 11 if you counted the baby inside the womb of the woman shaving the ice.

Now, you know that when there are so many tykes gathered in one place there must be a birthday party somewhere, right?  I don’t know.  I can’t tell.  There were no balloons, spaghetti or cakes, only kids getting their hands all over the big block of ice used for the halo-halo.  I understand the relief the freezing cold must be to the kids who are sweaty from running around and playing hide and seek --  they were squealing in delight -- but hey, as long as they are happy then I can forego my concern with sanitation.  At least the ice was kids-tested and found effective in bringing cheer.  So this must be a fun halo-halo.

The Candidate:

The halo-halo looked, well, like any regular halo-halo, with ice on top and colorful rekados at the bottom.  I stirred and swirled the mix until the colors at the bottom had generally spread around the plastic cup.  I could see langka strips, minatamis na saba, melon strands, pinipig, minatamis na kamote, and colored sago.  I’m pretty sure there’s also ube in it, or at least some purple colored goo that has lent its color to the mixture.

The first spoonful was satisfying enough.  It could have been better though if the jueteng kubrador, who was passing by, announced that the store owner’s bet won; I could have gotten the halo-halo for free as a balato.  But no, I wasn’t that lucky.  But still, the halo-halo was satisfying, it was not too sweet nor too bland.  Though the number of rekados paled in comparison with the number of squealing kids, the halo-halo however came with a two-year old playing with my bike’s rear tire and a grandfather asking how much my bike costs.  Now, that's something you don't get everyday.

The Verdict:

Because of the overall impact of small children cheering me as I spooned the rekados and drank the liquid, this Halo-halo is a winner, as far as I am concerned.  Perhaps, the kids are pleased that I am taking in the product of their dirty hands with considerable gusto.  And at P15 a pop, this halo-halo is not a bad deal at all.  I even asked for some extra kids-massaged ice shaving for my water bottle, so what more can I ask for?

How to cook ube and the back story of a comfort food

STEP 1: Dig for Ube.  If none available, source from the palengke.

No food reminds me more of the happy times of my youth than ube, specifically the ube jam that my Tia Lulu makes when we visit or take vacations in Pangasinan. 

I came across a mound of this root crop in our backyard the other day.  When I began digging for it, little did I know that it would be huge, or that it would send me on a sentimental journey as I try to recreate this favorite treat from my youth, using Tia Lulu's old school recipe.

STEP 2: Wash dirt away and boil in a vat till flesh is soft and flaky.

In the olden days, we would begin loitering around Tia Lulu as soon as she sets the wok filled with grated ube, milk and sugar over the blistering wood fire that would turn the goo into spoonfuls of heaven.  She would promptly shoo us away, admonishing us to instead do something worthwhile.  And by this she meant  go play, climb a tree or swing yourself to a stupor in the duyan.

STEP 3: Peel the skin then grate

Tia Lulu is my Nanay’s elder sister and she is, in many ways, our second mother.  She has no children of her own.  In fact, she didn’t marry, nor did she finish or even step into college unlike most of her siblings who became professionals and played the important role of providing for the food that we ate and the general upkeep of the house where we stayed, which, by Amagbagan, Pozorrubio standard was comfortably well-off.  For some reason, and certainly not lack of intellect or the willingness to immerse in learning for she is a very intelligent and perceptive woman, my grandparents decided that Tia Lulu was not higher education material. 

 

STEP 4: Mix in milk (Condensed and Evaporated) and sugar.  Sorry, the proportion is a closely guarded secret.

Whatever income Tia Lulu generates for herself she gets from making and selling tsokolate tablea, and bamboo poles and other products and fruits that grow in abundance in the land that she and her siblings inherited from their parents.  Because she does not have the financial means to bestow generous gifts, let alone buy simple ones, she often thinks that she has little of value to offer.  I don’t see it that way.  When I think of Pangasinan, I think of her and her selflessness.  And that’s more than anything that money can buy. And it is through her example, and that of my Nanay, that I try to live a life for others not with the material things that I may or may not have, but through the innate resources that I may have in abundance.

In my youth, I can climb trees because if I fall, she will be there to soothe the pain away.  I can roam around the fields all day, chase grasshoppers and hop on a carabao's back knowing that when I get home, a warm meal is guaranteed to be waiting.  I don’t mind getting sick because she will be there to take care of me.  I don’t care about prickly heat and the summer humidity of Pangasinan because she will scratch my back till I say, Sarap!  I don’t lose sleep about not knowing things I could use in school because she teaches me skills I can use in real life: How to skin a live frog, How to fry fish without the oil scalding your skin, How to crack roasted cocoa bean shells, How to hold a piglet while its baby teeth are being pruned.  And when I do sleep, I’m not afraid of getting nightmares because I sleep on the floor, on a banig in Tia Lulu’s room who, in her bed just an arm’s reach away, always prays at night that all will be well so that she can wake up early the next day so that when I open my eyes, breakfast is already served on the table.

STEP 5: Cook over wood fire while continuously stirring.  This make take more than 3 hours.

We would hover around Tia Lulu from time to time and she readily knows that we have a spoon in our hands.  She would allow us to scoop a little of the unfinished ube, which is by all means already good, then tell us to go away and do something worthwhile.

When the ube has thickened to the right consistency, she would call on us because she knows we are eager to scrape out the last of the congealed goo on the wooden ladle she just used to mix the ube as well as around the rim of the still hot wok.  These would be the best tasting morsel ever.

STEP 6: When mixture begins to thicken, add margarine then continue stiring.

There are several dishes that I consider comforting to my soul.  One is a vegetable stew of assorted leaves from the garden which my Tatay handpicked and liked to cook when he was sober.  Another is the macaroni salad with home-made mayonnaise that Nanay used to prepare, hand-mixing it for hours on end, during special occasions. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to replicate these recipes.  But this ube, I can.  And it reminds me of those blissful summers in Pangasinan and of my Tia Lulu.  And my heart sighs a deep, contented smile.

STEP 7: Happy eating!

Jogging sucks!

I hate jogging.  It is dangerous and I think the most pointless way to get from point A to point B. It ranks way up there with sitting through an entire Lito Lapid film, volunteering for board work for an algebra class, and fighting with a neighbor’s short-legged dog who always threaten me, and only me, with harm in my list of least liked activities; I may be forced to do it if my life depended on it but I won’t promise to do the act well or do it without grumbling or moping.  

I know, I know, hate is rather a strong word to describe my dislike for a pursuit that a lot of people, including many I know, find leisurely and uplifting, but I have to be honest -- I don’t like it with a passion. But before you forsake me or curse me as a clueless biker, allow me to share my back story which I will now, after bouts of inner conflict, declassify from my confidential information folder.

When I was in Grade Six my Kuya Bambi, who was about to enter the Philippine Military Academy, would invite me to go with him on his jog around the Fernando Air Base perimeter to help him prepare for the rigors of becoming a plebe in the prestigious military school.  I was not training or preparing for anything but since I was young and did not know any better, I thought it was a good idea to go with him. After all, my Kuya, who always kept to himself, had never asked me to do anything with him before.

So mindlessly I said, let’s go!

The jog, at first, was fun because it was over a stretch of backroads that featured grass, dirt, and cow and goat dung, which meant that I had an excuse not to run in a straight line, or to insert a hop here and a long jump there. I would stop occasionally, not because I was running out of breathe, but because I would notice a strand of spider thread criss-crossing some withered shrubs, and the urge to search for the arachnid that spun that yarn would be simply too strong to resist.

When Kuya and I had covered around 5 kilometers of the base’s perimeter, we would proceed to the paved roads so that he could do a few more laps around the pine tree lined oval.  By then, my interest in jogging would have waned for there were no more animal droppings to leap over nor spiders to play hide and seek with.  Instead, the oval offered more of the same thing over and over – trees, paved roads, and joggers running around in circles.

When we have reached this point, I would tell my Kuya that I had enough and would just see him at home.  But the house will wait.  I would take one last detour inside the barbed wire enclosed training camp for candidate soldiers where I would encounter more animal shit, dried grass and exciting opportunities to look for spiders.

One time as I was exploring the camp, I noticed from the corner of one eye a cow that was showing interest in my presence.  I initially thought that it was simply warning me not to touch some sacred poop it dropped some place.  But when I saw that it was moving toward me at an alarming pace, I began to pay attention to my life.  I didn’t know what the animal’s issue was against me but the way it was frantically charging meant only one thing: I should run as fast as my feet would carry me.  I bolted like a boy possessed.  I ran without a care for spiders and dung; my entire twelve years of existence flashing before me and it was nothing particularly exciting or memorable.   I knew then that I had to live longer so that I don’t die having lived a pretty unremarkable life.  What’s worse, when people would ask how I died, my family would half-cryingly, half-jokingly reply:  He got trampled on by a cow that got offended over the way he hopped over its shit. That would mean I also died unremarkably and uselessly.  I had to live. I don’t recall how I scaled the barbed fence that was almost twice as high as me, but I did.   I lived.  And one thing was etched in my young mind that day: jogging was dangerous.

But even with that realization, jogging, and running wouldn’t leave me alone.  In grade school, I was widely regarded as an athlete.  I was good at sports be it pencil fights, teks, holen, luksong baka, putbol (our version was kickball married to the concept of baseball), habulan, or – yes – basketball, where I was considered a young Allan Caidic, lefty and dangerous from the outside.  But since there was no elementary basketball varsity in my time, my PE teachers assumed that my long legs would make me a good runner.  And so every afternoon after class I would change into a running outfit (which was anything that was not my school uniform) and do laps around the school oval, which was not much of an oval, but more like a swathe of grassland with a beaten footpath that formed the shape of a weird square.  For some reason, I could not do as many laps as other runners.  Maybe the absence of cow manure and spiders had something to do with my underwhelming performance.  When we were told to do sprints, I was a distant third to Robin who was a head shorter than me, and Rene who was about my size but had far bigger teeth.  These two, by the way, also jumped higher.  The only reason why I was better at basketball was because I was much taller than Robin and Rene could only jump but not dribble, or pass the ball with purpose, or shoot the ball with acceptable accuracy.

Yeah, yeah… you could always say that if you work hard enough then you could always improve.  I worked hard, but so did Robin and Rene, so we all improved at the same time.  Status quo:  I remained a distant third, maybe even farther than when we first started training.  It was demoralizing.  It was clear that I was not durable enough to be a long distance runner or quick enough to be a great sprinter, let alone a decent one.  So early in my life I realized that jogging, and running for that matter, was pointless.

But I loved basketball.

My problem was basketball involved a lot of running.  But just when I thought that it could get no worse, my loathing for running intensified when girls watching me play basketball began calling me sexy when I ran.  I didn't know why they would call me that but I considered it an affront to my masculinity.  So while I could not avoid running in a basketball game, I made sure that I generously littered it with tricks and antics that diverted attention away from my sexy way of running and into my silly bag of tricks and antics.

 I employed different versions of running.  I did it sideward, backward and forward with a bit of diagonal movements.  I realized also that girls looked at facial expressions when I ran so I made sure that I also had a wide repertoire of facials.  I smiled a lot.  But sometimes when you are losing, smiling gives the idea that you don’t care or are not competitive enough.  So I adapted the scowl, with crunched brows and glaring eyes to communicate that I was not happy with how the game was turning out.  When I did something awesome like make a kalawit rebound, or block a shot, or in the few occasions that I have dunked the ball, I wore the lower lip-jutting-out look combined with the mean stare to suggest that I was badass.  Of course, I did all those either running sideward, backward, and forward with a bit of diagonal movements.

In fairness to myself, I did try to make peace with jogging.  When I was already working and my only time to play my favorite game was during weekends when I had to hurry home to Lipa to catch the 4pm pickup basketball games at the plaza, there were many instances when I would arrive too late to get any action on the court, or if I did, not enough to shed off the stress of work and the extra lethargy that one gets from too much sitting in front of the computer, pretending to be doing something productive.

Now, when you find the energy to burn when just a few hours ago you were complaining about being too tired because of too much work, you had to find away to release that overflowing zest  one way or another.  Jogging was the most available option.

The oval of my youth was still the same oval for joggers -- paved, scenic and with that sweet pine-scented breeze that invited going around in circles.  But the jogging of my youth was also the jogging of my yuppies years – pointless.  Maybe because jogging sucks when you are dressed to play basketball; high cut shoes and basketball jersey did not respond well with the rigors of running around in circles.  It’s like you are dressed for a wedding inside an elegant church when the event was really to be held on a beach, in the middle of summer.  I felt that the only reason my foot kept on moving forward in front of the other was to keep my body from falling forward.  There was no joy involved, no peace, no rush, not even goat poop to hop over or spider threads to distract my attention.  And I can’t vary my running style either; no backward, sideward or any wayward movement that I normally spiced my locomotion with.   I couldn’t even smile, scowl or protrude my lower lip to project an imagined badass attitude.  I’ve been exposed too much to Makati ways that I knew that joggers would find me silly or, worse, call the police to pick up a crazy man smiling, scowling and protruding his lower lip while running sideward, backward and diagonal, knocking down joggers who knew nothing but moving forward in a straight line.  Jogging was pointless.  And if I kept at it some more, I’m sure it was going to be dangerous because I had to explain to the police why I did what I did, and they wouldn’t understand, and I would explain some more, this time with more passion and vigor, and next thing you know I will be in an asylum, strapped to a straightjacket yelling “All I wanted was to play basketball!”

When I try to pass away time while waiting for my MA classes, I often find myself perched on some bench or protruding tree root around the UP oval where, you guessed right, joggers abound.  I’m no expert at jogging as you may have surmised by now, but I do have an expert eye on what’s going on in a jogger’s mind simply by looking at their faces, or the way their body parts are moving.

There are joggers that you know are meant, even born to jog.  They, with the graceful strides, taut postures and coordinated movements look perfect doing what they do.  Heck, even the way their body would glisten with sweat, or the way they look at their G-shocks without breaking stride, or how their ponytailed hair (I’m talking about girl joggers) would bounce and swish here and there as the soles of their feet make delightful taps on the pavement; these would be exactly how it would be described in a jogging guidebook for dummies.

And then there are those who jog for an assortment of odd reasons: everyone’s doing it so I might as well do it, I need a way to relieve stress, it’s a nice way to disguise being a stalker, the doctor says I should be doing something, I bought a complete wardrobe of running wear and what would I do with them if I didn’t run, etc., etc., blah-blah-blah.

So how do you spot them?  Simple.  Look at them.  You can identify them from afar.  They put one foot forward over the other because if they did not, they would fall forward.  Their body movements are not coordinated; they’re knees either don’t bend enough or bend too much; their arms flair out or move in such a robotic way that would indicate that they are thinking too much of getting the right posture; they don’t look right.  Even how they sweat do not look right – they soak, not glisten with it.

When they are near, you could see it in their eyes; they would look as if they are about to pop out of their sockets. They are either looking down to see if their feet are still there because they are slowly losing sensation of their toes and their gastrocnemius are about to tighten on them.  Or their eyes would squint, an indication that they are only running because of pride (I can’t stop now, I would look stupid) or they are trying to be heroic  (Si Ninoy nga hindi tumigil bumaba ng hagdan, ako pa kaya titigil sa paghakbang?).  If you observe that their nostrils are flaring halfway the entire width of their face, you know they are simply forcing it; willing themselves to like something that their body was obviously revolting against.  They think that the more they keep at it, the more likely that they will actually like it.  Some succeed.

Oh, and there are the special type of runners: those that talk and chatter with themselves, cajoling themselves that they could do it.  Heck, they can even talk themselves into thinking that jogging was the best thing to happen since they discovered that they could talk.  Yeah, I know.  This is UP and people at UP talk to themselves all the time, regardless if they are walking, jogging, or with other people they know.  I even had a professor who talked with himself during class.

So there.  Jogging is pointless.  At times, dangerous.

Cheers! Happy New Year!