WITH everyone experiencing quarantine fatigue, taking time out to deviate from our usual activities could help us divert our attention in this time of the pandemic. I am just lucky to be invited by friends to venture into these "diversions" to escape the boredom created by this crisis.
My friend, Toto Mangao, took his bicycle to traverse the highway going to Mabinay in Negros Oriental and later return to his homeplace in Kabankalan City.
RMN-DyHB Station Manager Jeony Bigay and another friend John Gacayan have begun to play golf. They said they’ve just started up and made it their best exercise.
I also did not notice how some friends developed love for plants and are now known as "plantitos and plantitas". They’ve contributed to the popularity of gardening and planting ornamental plants.
Just last week, I decided to travel to the mountains of Don Salvador Benedicto. On the way, I observed coffee shops built beside the highway leading to the town proper.
I take these observations into myself and try to attach them to what is happening at present in the light of our struggle to fight the pandemic. It suggests that our people are trying to innovate into themselves some activities that could help us recover emotionally from this pandemic.
Life is simply put in a process where it is tested to survive or not. Maybe only time knows when this pandemic will be over and we’ll be able to account for ourselves whether we have survived or not. This is too early to celebrate because we are still in this uncertain time where we don’t know what’s going to happen next. Yet in the course of our struggle to survive, it is helpful to make these activities available as part of our life’s choices.
Reading at the function of a simple interaction in our society, this plays an important role in a kind of social balance especially in times like this. As Filipinos we are oriented to our kind of solidarity and that our brand of interaction occupies a part in our outlook in life. But this pandemic changed it all. So to ask how to approach this crisis is probably to try looking at activities that would promote our brand of solidarity while at the same time ensuring safety from the coronavirus. Whether these activities are done outdoors or through social networks, we can do it by having the consciousness about what Covid-19 can do in case we become careless. While we enjoy it as it can take us somewhere to forget about our state with the Covid-19, we can simply maintain that balance.
Let me extend my congratulations to the newly-elected officers of the oldest press club in the country, the Negros Press Club. The elections were held the other day and our friend, Yves Montecillo of RMN-DYHB was elected president, along with Eljohn Castano of Radyo Bandera as vice president. Along with other elected officers they will serve the NPC for one year.
In our radio program yesterday, I said that I joined media many years ago while still a college student but have not joined the Negros Press Club. So with the officers being elected, they can now carry that identity as part of the elite group of media practitioners not only in the province but in the whole country. Again my congratulations!*