On the road

Life's journeys are worth sharing.

recent posts

  • “Big Sur”

    For the past two weeks, I’ve been taking my daily walks around the neighborhood in the company of Ben Tucker, more precisely, his mesmerizing voice reading the 1962 novel Big Sur by Jack Kerouac.*

    Big Sur is a first-person stream-of-consciousness account of a summer the alcoholic writer Jack Duluoz spends in the San Franciso-Monterey-Big Sur area in California, as he sinks into more drinking, depression and insanity. Big Sur supposedly being a sort of autobiography gives me the feeling Kerouac himself is telling me his story. 

    Big Sur has been called a masterpiece of the beat generation and revolves around Duluoz’s circle of friends, based on real people in Kerouac’s life, mainly his beat generation comrades. In fact, the Wikipedia entry for Big Sur lists the fictional identities alongside their real names. And then there are actual places like San Francisco’s iconic City Lights Bookstore whose founder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is portrayed in the novel as Lorenzo Monsanto, owner of the cabin in the Big Sur district Duluoz stays in, so he could write. 

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  • Mysemite, Yosemite*

    Mysemite, Yosemite*

    Around this time last year, my family made a three-day/two-night trip to Yosemite National Park in California, and among the hundreds of images I took home were variations on this one. Only when I was reviewing my photo gallery much later did I realize that I had seemed to capture at least three pairs of people representing different kinds of love—paternal love, romantic love and marital/conjugal love. Trite, I know, but that was the thought that crossed my mind when I had the chance to examine the images more closely. 

    At that moment, I was just trying to take a photograph of the scenery in that part of Yosemite known as the Valley, where the terrain was flat and friendly to the general tourist. Like many others that day, we parked by the roadside to capture from the ground the famed rock formations that towered over us: Cathedral Rock, Half Dome, Glacier Point. 

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  • 48 hours in Poland

    48 hours in Poland

    When I planned my short side trip to Poland in October 2023, it was with fear and anxiety, but also a little bit of excitement. I had never been there, knew no one from there or anyone who had been there, except for an old friend of Polish ancestry previously based in the UK and currently in the US but with whom I was now out of touch. The parameters of my trip were the cause of my worries: I was traveling solo on a tight budget with limited time. The side trip was designed to fit into the 48 or so hours I had, between the end of a health conference in Berlin that I attended and my scheduled flight back home, and my concern was that any misstep or mishap, a missed or delayed train for example, would cause a domino effect and make me miss my flight home.

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  • Misadventures in Deutschland 

    Misadventures in Deutschland 

    My trip to Berlin and Krakow in 2023 took all of a week, but the backstory and the side stories that came with it made it seem much longer and left some lessons for travel.

    At that time, I wrestled with the decision to take a trip abroad, mainly out of guilt that I was leaving behind family responsibilities and that any time away seemed undeserved and selfish. But I had work commitments to fulfill, among them travels out of the country. Family members convinced me I deserved a break and that I actually wouldn’t be missed, since, as one of them liked to say, things had been set up with “automaticity” in mind. Point taken. It simply meant worrying was useless since the family had already arranged to address all its needs, whether I was home or away. 

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  • Oświęcim/Auschwitz

    Oświęcim/Auschwitz

    On Jan. 27, 2025, the world marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the day the United Nations General Assembly set aside to remember the victims of the Holocaust. The U.N. chose that date because it marked the day in 1945 when Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau from the clutches of the Nazi. Auschwitz-Birkenau, located in Poland, was the largest complex of concentration camps Nazi Germany set up to carry out what it called the “Final Solution” of exterminating Europe’s Jews. I had a chance to visit Auschwitz in 2023, and I am sharing some thoughts and photographs from that trip.

    ——————-

    I was headed for Berlin in October 2023 to take part in the World Health Summit, and when I got there, I told the German friend who invited me that I was visiting Krakow after the event. 

    “Krakow?” she asked. She immediately knew what my ultimate destination would be. “Are you going to Auschwitz?”

    “Yes,” I admitted. “It’s not often I get the chance to come to Europe, and I didn’t want to just breeze in and out of Germany.” 

    I had hoped to make full use of the trip and visit one other country, preferably some place meaningful, and when I was looking at the map, I contemplated either Prague or Poland. Eventually, I decided on Auschwitz via Krakow, because I wanted to see first-hand what the Holocaust was about. 

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  • An Eraserheads Memory

    An Eraserheads Memory

    The Eraserheads held a well-attended reunion concert Dec. 22, bringing to mind my own memories of the band and their songs. More specifically, one song. 

    I know of the Eraserheads and listen to their music because my children do, and not because I’m a fan. Let’s just say I’m a listener whose taste in music could be eclectic. But there’s this one particular song of theirs that’s sort of seared into my memory. 

    I was producing a newscast sometime in the mid 1990s. It was the height of the Eraserheads popularity. Suddenly we received a story from the Senate that Senator Vicente (Tito) Sotto wanted one of the group’s songs, Alapaap (Cloud), banned.  We’re not talking here of digital storage devices or computing services which wouldn’t appear till decades later but of those white things floating above us in the atmosphere. 

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  • Acid pain

    Acid pain

    It’s the season for Christmas parties, reunions and get-togethers and also a season for hyperacidity due to the ingestion of caffeine, wines and spirits.  Hyperacidity also due to stress, as we struggle to fulfil various commitments before yearend. 

    Hyperacidity sufferers like me are glad there’s Tums, an antacid med, two bottles of which I recently received from a loved one. How I wish I had discovered it years ago, during the countless attacks I’ve had. Actually, it’s almost predictable and inevitable. After days of (over) drinking coffee or soda, I’d be sure to get hyperacidity spasms. And then I’d stay away from these liquids and once the coast seems clear, I’d fall back into the habit and then get spasms again. 

    I’m taking this opportunity to post a story about a hyperacidity attack I had sometime in October 2019. I wrote down what I remembered and filed it away in my computer. I’m publishing those notes here. 

    ———-

    The stress and tensions of the past weeks, months, and maybe even years seemed to finally choose to surface in the form of excruciating stomach spasms that left me tossing and turning while stifling my screams and moans, in mid-air.

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  • An “Instagrammable” tour

    An “Instagrammable” tour

    I just returned from a trip to Bali, my second this year, and my third in all. To be honest, it felt like an obligation, something I was forced into because my officemates wanted to travel and needed me to meet the minimum number of persons required for a promo price (super low airfare + accommodation + tour) offered by the travel agency.

    Although they were planning the trip with much excitement, to me it felt like yet another expense that I could have skipped. Also, Bali again. They could have chosen another destination, but I let them decide since we didn’t have an office R & R this year, and Bali was the choice. And as it turned out, one of them had never left the country before and this was her chance.

    In the interest of peace and harmony, I agreed. But what really changed my mind and mindset was a TED Talk by Dr Saundra Dalton-Smith I listened to just days before we left, in which she enumerates the different kinds of rest exhausted people need to be able to recharge and restore their energies.  

    Thanks to the talk, my view of that trip changed from one of being an expected hassle to one that would genuinely restore my depleted energies. True enough, the trip provided creative rest, connecting me with art and nature, and allowing me to behold places with childlike wonder and awe. And yes, despite it being my third visit to Bali, there was a lot more to see, especially since the first two visits were mostly work-related. This third one was devoted solely to sightseeing. We watched the traditional Balinese dances, visited temples, viewed Balinese architecture and sculpture, and sampled the cuisine. 

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  • The gift of one’s self

    The gift of one’s self

    Photo credit: The Long Lunch

    It’s the Christmas season and time to talk about gifts. 

    I admire people who have their recipient lists and gifts ready as early as July. I’m not one of them, obviously. For many Christmases, my job and the pressures of raising a family denied me the luxury of surplus time and income needed to do advanced shopping. But I know friends who have perfected the practice. Technology and smartphones automated it, with apps now letting you create the list, keep track of past gifts given, note what your recipients like and how much of your budget you’re likely to burn.

    I’m thinking about this, because every year, the question has been what meaningful gift to give family and friends, and for Christmas 2021, someone provided an answer: the gift of self in the form of a book. It was an anthology of newspaper columns written by someone I once knew and worked with. He self-published and asked friends if they wanted a copy. I raised a virtual hand.

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  • A Coffee Night

    A Coffee Night

    B and I went to Starbucks because I needed a change of setting so I can write and meet deadlines. In the big table where I sat, there was a man talking to his computer, apparently in a zoom meeting, so noisy I could not hear myself think. So we decided to transfer to another table.

    The closest empty table was still full of the dirty cups and saucers of the previous occupants, it was overflowing! The Starbucks guy started clearing the table. While trying to set my bag down, I accidentally tapped one of the glasses which was half filled with something like frapuccino and it fell, the contents spilled, and drops of frapuccino landed on my legs.

    So I was muttering to myself what a bad, unpleasant experience this was. The Starbucks guy gave me tissues but i already cleaned my legs with wipes. We sat instead in the next table and i proceeded to work.

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