sunday semi-sunrise musings over orange breakfast

it's eight minutes before nine in the morning of a sunday as i type this. and this is extraordinary given my circumstances.

i am so not a morning person but since i moved into this condo of mine more than a year ago, i find myself being more active in the morning, especially with my writing. be it journaling, my weekly column or scriptwriting chore and other writing things, i find the cool breeze of the morning invigorating my writing senses. and i like that a lot.

but today is different. i woke up by six or so, mainly because my girlfriend has a big day today and she has to wake up early to go. and it felt like a nice morning to work out, something i've been meaning to do again since the start of this year. i usually walk around marikina sports park which is less than five minutes away from my condo, and i thought i'd check it out and see if i could do that today.

i began my workout by dressing up properly and doing some sitting. yes, zen type of meditation sitting, also known as zendo. two months ago, i began joining the zen center sitting meditations there at provident village. i didn't know that place was there and yet i've known provident all my life, or since our relatives moved there when i was small and we visited them a lot. i was supposed to start on their beginner's module but i became busy that month and so i had to postpone the further sessions. i plan to join them at the next round, but it's sad that the zen center was one of the places devastated by ondoy. now they do the sitting somewhere else, and i did mine here at home first.

it was a good sit, enough to pump me up to walk. but alas, i could not do that at the sports park, still. a third of the middle greenery part is still occupied by tents that housed displaced families from the ondoy onslaught. i saw several morning joggers and walkers trying to get a feel of the sports park inside, from the outside. i actually saw a pair of walkers coming out of the park as i arrived there at the sides outside. i guess it's still not back to normal for some of us here in marikina. i wonder what will happen to those evacuees. i hope they get their lives back on track the soonest. i saw a lot of children there, and it's just not right to have those kids live like that. but what to do? it has been a month since the ondoy tragedy and yet many lives all over are still derailed. a colleague was right -- just what "normal" do we go back to after that? there's no answer for that yet.

so like the other joggers and walkers, i opted to walk around outside the sports park and along the streets near the market area and around. it was a good chance for me to check out our usual haunts, whether they are operational already or still shut down. i also passed some places where i discovered stuff, like a place that sold those tanned puto thingies i bought before, which i could also buy at the market. but this place seemed to be the source of the puto, so i bought it there. that was cool.

all in all, it took me at least an hour to walk all around the bayan area. and i ended up at the market, at the side where the fruits were sold. since i still owe my girlfriend some fruits pasalubong from last week, i thought of buying some now for her, so that when she comes home later, she'll have some fresh stuff to munch on. we've been munching on artificial snacks and processed food all week, since we went on a grocery shopping spree last monday. we didn't buy fruits and veggies because we weren't sure of our stay-home hours this week, but next week we already know, so there. trying out a grapefruit as i type this, along with the tanned mini-puto rounds with a sliver of cheese on top, and the 15-peso market carinderya spaghetti i have grown to love -- hence the orange breakfast.

more of our grocery shopping adventure and other grocery woes during ondoy are narrated here at leaflens karinderya. that's my new blog project, a narration of buhay-pinas and foodie stuff with photos. i've been meaning to try wordpress kasi dati pa pero cumbersome for a not-so-techie like me. kaya nung nagkaroon ng another option (from .org to .com nila) i tried it na. i mean to blog more these days actually, because that's one of the things i miss the most -- writing about stuff and having people read them. nakakatuwa nga na may followers na ang blog na ito officially. thanks for reading folks. and please feel free to comment. dialogue exchange is what i encourage in my blogs, too.

i think this is the start of a lot of starting things in my life. so many negativity has surrounded me this past semester in school and in other places as well, and i plan to shake off those negativity by doing new stuff and reactivating doing old stuff i love doing as well, such as writing here. i was just a bit saddened by those negativity since last wednesday, and i've already ranted about that to my closest friends. and now, i decide to leave all those behind, and leave this whole week -- and the whole bad semester -- behind. life's too short to focus on people whose main objective in life is to destroy people around them. my heart bleeds for them, they who have no happy hearts to begin with. i do not want to end up like them.

more adventures next time.

and thanks once again for reading, and for asking about my well-being and safety during these troubled times. be well, all.