Biking, walking, reading – New Year, old habits!

G-SPAT
Grace Bandoy

A whole lot of us have probably forgotten about this thing they call New Year’s Resolution. I haven’t had any of it for the past couple of years. But this year, with all of you reading this as witnesses, I vow to go back to reading (a real book – cover and paper pages and all), do a whole lot of walking and to learn how to ride a bike.

A lot of us, who are not going to school, very rarely read books anymore. Magbasa man tayo ng newspaper, yung favorite pages lang natin babasahin natin, we go to the horoscope first and then the Entertainment/ Tsismis section, tapos ayun na!! That’s all we read!

Why will any of us waste time reading di ba? If we can watch the news on TV anyway, and watch the movie version of our favorite novels na lang. Two hours lang natapos mo na panoorin yung nobelang babasahin mo pa ng ilang linggo. Today, reading is considered a waste of time. Isip po yan ng mga taong tamad. The last book I read from cover to cover was the Da Vinci Code some four or five years ago. Isa po ako sa mga milyon milyong tamad out there hehehehe.

I mean, really, nakakatamad magbasa promise! Masakit pa sa mata di ba!? Kaya po naging taglish ang kolum na eto coz Bulgar newspaper na lang po ang binabasa ko, I lost my teeny-weeny literary knowledge sa katamaran magbasa at matuto sa mga binabasa. Bumobobo po pala talaga tayo from making our brains idle and useless and feeding it with puro kababawan from Bulgar and The Buzz lang.

All of us should go back to reading. Everything we know in this world right now was learned from everything we read during our lifetime. Lahat po ng nalalaman natin ngayon galing sa years ng pagbabasa natin ng kung anu ano. Nakalimutan na po natin yung fact na yun. So we shouldn’t stop reading. We should continue learning.

Pinagtitiyagaan ko po tapusin basahin ang Love in the time of Cholera (stuck in my house for ten years) right now, even if I am very tempted to just watch the movie version starring the delicious Javier Bardem na lang.

Reading is fun and educational and emotionally enriching and it keeps our brains busy with imaginations. Things we all have forgotten to do – have fun, be educated, be moved by the things we read and use our imagination. So, with you as witness, I vow to read all the books I have hoarded from Book Sale for the past eight years. Also, I promise to walk more instead of riding a jeepney or a cab. Walking is healthy, except on highly polluted areas. Mas matipid pati maglakad. So let’s all walk if we can.

And, to further make this world a better place, I also promise to finally learn how to ride a bike. And while I still don’t know how to ride one, I and all of us should support all the bikers out there in their crusade to make Baguio a bike-friendly city.

Biking is healthy, except on highly polluted areas. And for Christ’s sake it is the most environment-friendly means of transportation ever invented!!

Just imagine all of us in Baguio walking and biking along Session, Magsaysay and Harrison Road. We will be the coolest city in the world. Kung hindi tayo gawing CNN Heroes di ba?!

Sira ulo na lang at mga gago ang hindi mag-support sa crusade to make Baguio more bike-friendly. Kung kelangan gawing bike lanes ang mga pina parkingan ng mga kotse diyan sa Session Road gawin natin!!! P*nyeta alangan namang mas priority pa ang mga kotseng nagbubuga ng mga poisonous smoke!

The whole world is going environmental, tanga na lang tayo kung hindi tayo sumunod. We are rapidly destroying planet earth with all our pollutions. It’s time we do the littlest part we can to undo the destruction. Ano naman po yung maglakad tayo at mag-bike. Let’s save Baguio from more pollution. And maybe we all should also plant more trees. Happy New Year po!!!!!