Blank is #BetterByBicycle

I am going through a difficult time in my personal life right now, maybe someday I will talk about it here, but the past few days, I feel like even cycling couldn't fix my mood. I still do it anyway because the more I stay still, the more I get restless. I have to move my body and try to shake off the sadness and anxiety. Sometimes, it seems like the world was put up just to nourish loneliness. Then, yesterday, on my way home from my afternoon ride, I saw the Hunter's moon.  It was magical. I continued pedaling but I was also transfixed at the beauty hanging over my hometown. And I thought to myself, thank God I can still see wonderful things despite this gloomy state. I reminded myself, it's a phase and it doesn't last. Things will get better and I have to be in best shape to enjoy it. So just keep pedaling, because one day, I will find my way to a true home. 

Happy World Mental Health Day! This year's theme is about prioritizing mental health in the workplace. A lot of the programs and activities, mostly wellness seminars and sessions at work are being conducted in various organizations. But companies should do more than that. For employees to be mentally healthy at work, companies should create and foster an environment and culture that makes every employee feel valued and nourished. But there's an issue that a lot of us forget because it's not part of our jobs but it affects how our day at work could go because of the stress it brings. I'm talking about the COMMUTE TO WORK. The usual queue of people going to work in MRT 3 For most Filipinos, work stress begins during the commute to the workplace and extends until coming home because of the obdurate transport landscape of our cities, especially in Metro Manila, which is among the worst in the world. I spent a good 'ol 14 years in the Metro, 4 years as a college student

First of all, I'd like to add that grocery shopping is better when you do it in a public market than big supermarket chains like Savemore or Pure Gold, because 1) you support small and local business owners, they need more of our support than the billionaires who own those supermarket chains. 2) The goods being sold in the public market has  no or less plastic packaging unlike the ones sold in supermarkets. The plastic pollution crisis is so alarming and we have to do everything we can in our capacity as consumers to stop the demand to produce more plastics. 3) In public markets, you can haggle for prices whereas everything is fixed price in the supermarkets. Now if you are a budget conscious shopper, then a public market suits you perfectly.  The only advantage of supermarkets that I could think of is that they are airconditioned. No, I can't even count that as an advantage,  it only sounds one at first because of the comfort it brings to shoppers, but the confined and enclos

There's just something special about bridges. I mean the the fact that it connects two pieces of land, once separated by bodies of water like rivers or seas, allowing increased life and activities in the points of places it connects. Bridges also symbolizes life transitions. Just as a bridge takes us from one side of a river to the other, life transitions take us from one phase of life to another. Crossing a bridge can also represent a journey of self-discovery and personal growth. As we cross the bridge, we leave our old selves behind and move towards a new, and hopefully improved version of ourselves. Thu Thiem 2 Bridge in Ho Chi Minh City Lately, most of my bike rides are done in the evening. My reduced workload in the university where I teach meant I have fewer commutes to the campus. I have not been getting laundry delivery calls, my side jobs and masters classes are conducted online, so most of my rides recently were really just to hit my weekly fitness targets. Because I did

Most of the time that I'm on bike, I needed to be somewhere. Be it work, grocery, market, restaurant or bank, anywhere else that I have business. I mean that's the whole point of transport or utility cycling, being somewhere you needed to be. But the truth is I don't always have to be somewhere, sometimes I ride the bike without any particular destination, I just needed to work out. That might come as a surprise if you know me because I'm not really an exercisey or a fitness buff kind of person. I only work out to complete my wellness app's weekly fitness challenge. This wellness app is called AIA Vitality. Now full disclosure here, I sideline as an insurance agent for AIA Philippines. Three years ago, at the height of the pandemic, there was a downpour of crowd funding posts in my Facebook feed. So many people are getting hospitalized and a lot of them struggled financially to keep up with the medical bills. It was a wake up call for me. I thought to myself, if I

When I was still studying, I often hear from other people that high school is the best part of a person's academic journey. My teacher once said that during grade school, we're still quite ignorant about much of the real world while during college, we had to be really serious with our studies because the success of our career will heavily be determined by the kind of self-discipline we instilled in ourselves in college. And high school? Well exciting things happen during our adolescent years. We've got a rage of hormones that make us feel all sort of things towards other people. And the good thing about high school was, there's just enough dose of seriousness with our studies and fun with our friends that allows us to have a balanced life. For most people anyway. See, I have always been an introvert and I didn't really have so many friends in high school. My life then was a cycle between home and school. I don't hang out with friends after classes. I bonded with