Life, Day by Day

I love history and learning about culture, and whenever I get the chance to travel in the country or abroad, heritage is the first thing I look for. One does not have to go far to see heritage sites, because there are plenty of these in my country, the Philippines. Just to name a few, we have in the island of Luzon, the Banawe Rice Terraces, The City of Vigan, the Municipality of Taal, Pila in Laguna and The Walled City of Intramuros; in the Visayas, we have Cebu City, the town of Carcar, Dumaguete City, Iloilo City and of course, my very own, the “Paris of Negros” Silay City where we gave blogger friends a mini heritage tour in 2012 ; and in Mindanao, there is the town of Dapitan and Zamboanga City. In fact, many of these are still on my bucket list of must see places before even embarking on another Asian trip. It ’s almost the end of the year, and it is time to plan for summer travel. There are so lots of places to go to, but  how do I decide where to go first? These are the...

The whole province of Bohol has been devastated by the 7.2 magnitude earthquake last October 15, 2013 . Centuries old churches have been totally destroyed or damaged and 200 people have lost their lives. Damage to infrastructure, property and agriculture is estimated to be P900 M.  Aftershocks continue to this day.

I spent 6 nights in Manila from June 17 to 22, 2013 to attend a Trainors' Training for the Zuellig Family Foundation's Health Leadership and Governance Program.  I was taking the 3:55 PM PAL flight from Bacolod, only it was 20 minutes delayed, so that we departed at 4:30 PM instead.  There was some delay in landing and we finally got out of the NAIA terminal 2 just a few minutes before 6 PM.  We walked to the taxi stand at the other end of the terminal but there were no taxis as it was raining, not heavily but not stopping either.  We finally got one at about 6:40 PM, and the driver asked if we can take the skyway, as traffic was terrible in EDSA and Magallanes.  To end a long story...we got to our destination in Makati Avenue which is a short distance of approximately 10-12 kms from the airport more than 3 hours later!   I think I kept yawning not so much from low sugar (hunger) but from lack of oxygen (CO2 saturated enclosed space).