Pounding The Keyboard

" We don't need no education  We don't need no thought control  No dark sarcasm in the classroom  Teachers leave them kids alone  Hey, teachers, leave them kids alone..."                   "Another Brick In The Wall Part II," Pink Floyd            Today is the start of online classes for public schools here in the Philippines  (online classes for private schools started last August), I am for academic freeze as resuming classes, IMO, through Internet would be troublesome, especially for poor students/families, aside from the fact that Internet here has never been stable and reliable. But this government hasn’t been known to really study things through, and education also offers business opportunities for some unscrupulous officials.      I’ve watched a few bike videos from YouTube, mostly long rides (Manila to Bicol, Manila to Baguio, etc) and mountain...

       Filipino komiks people have been mourning a lot these past few days as some dear colleagues pass on: inside a week, an editor, an illustrator ( who worked on some Tagalog classic komiks novels) and a komiks superfan and supersupporter (as his friends called him) all passed away.      Years ago, I thought of creating a blog (probably Facebook-based) solely dedicated to local komiks where I’d be endorsing and writing reviews of different komiks (most of them I planned of purchasing from Komikon).   I considered myself retired from being a komiks writer, so I thought of just supporting other komiks peeps who never get tired of revitalizing the local komiks industry. So for a starter, I rummaged through my drawers to find some local komiks to review (the next Komikon was still a few months away then), read it and decided I couldn’t probably do it. I could if I’d write like a PR man and praise every komiks that I’d get ahold of, but ...

        Some weird and interesting stuff I found on Facebook today:       A desperate young man, because this pandemic has rendered him jobless and has no money for fare, decided to just go gung-ho and bike from Para ñaque to Eastern Samar (which has a distance of around 900 kilometers) for ten days. This is an extremely sad incident and it sure mirrors the plight of many Filipinos these days      A writer/professor I have been following on Facebook shared his story of how he semplang (Pinoy slang for bike crash) while mountain biking. He narrated how he became careless and still went for speed while going down a hill. He was so fast the wheels of his bike lost traction which led to his bike crashing and him flying off it. He was still able to move and sit on the muddy ground where he landed and stayed there for a few minutes, dazed and confused and his whole body trembling and hurting, looking for somebody ...

      You may call it a free-for-all spot. Four streets converging. There is no traffic light and vehicles (cars, tricycles, trucks, bikes, motorcycles) are always coming in hot from four directions. You cross at your own risk. Okay, if you’re patient, you could be safe. We always pass through it whenever we want to go south, and that late morning, three days ago, I found myself (and my bike) in that area. And there was a long convoy of vehicles ( led by a white taxi) coming from my left, cruising along the street in front of me, and I didn't know what came over me but I thought that I still could ride past the taxi to cross into the other side of the street —so I didn't stop and instead pedaled hurriedly, and, boom! The taxi hit me on my left side. And right that moment, when I felt the cold, unflinching steel on my flesh, my whole life suddenly started flashing in front of me:      The day I was born and as I cried at my mother’s bosom...

     This morning, I finally relented to go biking with my nephew. He usually went out at around 5 AM and that’s a no-no for an insomniac like me, so I always refused. He wanted to go to Mall of Asia (MOA) this morning but I thought it was too far a destination for a folding bike (my bike). We bought it only for public market and sari-sari store errands. Lol. He had a sturdy and bigger mountain bike with him. We settled for the nearer but historic Intramuros. So I woke up at around 4:40 AM, (I went to bed at around 12 PM, tried hard to sleep immediately, and succeeded at around 3:30. Lol. ) had strong black coffee (a sleepy biker is a bad idea). We started pedaling at around 5:15, biked past Jones Bridge only to find out that Intramuros was closed.   With my bike fearing that my nephew would push for a MOA trip, I suggested Quirino Grandstand at Luneta Park.   So we rode through Taft Avenue but bummer, it rained hard while we were about to reach the famed g...