PATHLESS TRAVELS

Author’s note: I was inspired to write this article after reading a piece in Christopher Alexander’s seminal book A Pattern Language. My article was published in the Nordis Weekly issue of July 30, 2006.

Tramp in Amsterdam park — Many of us well-settled city folk bear a “siege” mentality. We view our homes as a fortress where we can safely rest and refresh ourselves, before we sally forth anew into the chaotic urban war zone. So we do most of our sleeping at home. We would be appalled to even consider the idea of sleeping in public places. Or should we?

Many of us well-settled city folk bear a “siege” mentality. We view our homes as a fortress where we can safely rest and refresh ourselves, before we sally forth anew into the chaotic urban war zone. So we do most of our sleeping (when we are most vulnerable) at home – in our bedroom or living room. Continue reading “Sleeping in public”

Boxer Codex image — Why settle for fun when our country, in presenting itself to tourists and other countries in general, can scale up to "great and awesome."

Whether for the right or wrong reasons, whether in all sincerity or tinged with irony, many Filipinos have cheerfully taken to the official tourist slogan, “It’s more fun in the Philippines.”

I don’t doubt that some kinds of pleasures or pleasantries are partaken in the Philippines with a lot more fun than elsewhere. We seem to offer a lot of them with a helping hand, a song and dance routine, a fiesta smile, and endless tables of sumptuous banquets. Centuries of foreign colonial rule made sure to erase the fierce looks of Lapu-Lapu and Bonifacio from our faces, relegating them to stone-cold statues weeping alone in the rain. Continue reading “Why settle for fun? We could gun for awesome instead.”