Keeping it simple

Sitting beside my Top Story partner, who also happens to be the host of ANC’s Future Perfect, I am reminded of how little I know about technology. In fact, getting techie is in my list of things to do. I don’t even know how to merge all my data in one source. Thanks to Tony, I learned to use Instagram. Now, I’m addicted to Twitter and Facebook.

I don’t know how much time I spend on tweeting in a day, and because of that I’ve made it a rule not to use my phone while eating with my husband. No gadget while having dinner, but I usually find myself violating my own rule. I just have to be reminded. 

No doubt getting techie is a necessity nowadays. We can’t be left behind in the stone age, can we? But lately, after Supertyphoon Yolanda, we are reminded to go back to the basics. And I’ll tell you why it’s not so bad.

In Tacloban after Yolanda, most of the vehicles in the city were submerged, rendering them useless. There was no way of getting anywhere except on foot. Raffy, our segment producer, told me that they had to walk some 20 kilometers each day.  That explains why everyone in our team lost weight in Tacloban — which they all gained back instantly as soon as certain conveniences were back.

Of course, it’s impractical not to have cars — come on! I want better public transport, like better trains and bus systems, but I find tricycles unnecessary.  When I was a kid, we used to walk maybe 500 meters to Don Mariano Marcos Ave. (now Commonwealth Ave.) in Fairview, and I never minded before. Now, the tricycles are conquering our streets! The buses and jeepneys don’t have proper bus or jeepney stops because their passengers don’t want to walk?! OMG. 

For those who keep on asking me how I lost weight, maybe you would like to try walking — 10,000 steps per day. Fast pace. Climb the stairs!

Another benefit of no electricity — no radio nor lights — is not staring into space, but having quality conversation. Usually, I lock myself in my bedroom, enjoy quiet time, read a book or whatever. Since our pension house in Tacloban only had electricity at six in the evening, our team would usually spend time talking and goofing around our dining area — they, the stomach boys, with the stomach girl (me!).

I can imagine how many households are like that, with a television set in every room, or with residents immersed playing with their gadgets, with no real time for bonding and laughing with the family.  We are missing out on more important things.

Good food. I’m not the stomach girl for no good reason. The drivers in our group took charge of cooking. One day, we had Visayan food, mostly broth with pandan leaves — their version of tinola. We had adobo and lamang loob as well as veggies and Bicolano food from our Bicol Team. The vegetables — paco, talbos and kamote — were good. Our cameraman Allan is the official spotter of the vegetables we sourced from the side streets outside the city. The talipapa was already selling some meat, but I wasn’t so sure about it because of the source (spell: double dead), but the guys assured me that they only bought from someone they knew.

Luckily for our group, they “rescued” two pigs during the flood. The team butchered one of the pigs already before I got to Tacloban, so I only met Porky, the last pig standing in our hotel. We fed Porky every day and thankfully, I was not there when Porky was butchered. I didn’t realize you could get attached to a pig. But yeah, for those who grew up in the province like Jorge Cariño, he tells me “nakaka-konsensya” to eat your alaga.

Anyway, back to cooking, I didn’t realize it was a life skill until then because we can easily buy food anywhere. That’s how we survive in the city — buying cooked food in the carinderia or the nearby restaurant. I, therefore, conclude that I will die of starvation if left in wilderness. I do not know how to cook. Perhaps, I’m better off becoming a botanist so I can identify which leaves in the forest are edible! Besides, I love salad. Or maybe, I should learn how to climb a coconut tree! Now, I see the value of courtship back in the old days — fetching a pail of water, chopping wood and cooking for the lady. (I added the last one in! LOL.)  It all sounds too hilarious now, but Yolanda was truly an eye-opener.  

Don’t get me wrong, I like the techie. Techie saves the day especially with the advent of satellite phones and GPS technology. In the Tacloban airport, a mobile control unit took the place of our damaged control tower, and that’s how we were able to restore flight operations. The foreign countries brought high-tech medical equipment to operate on the sick and wounded. Thanks, too, to high-tech osprey planes that delivered relief goods to isolated areas that had no food to eat and had no livelihood.

However, the reality is, before anyone comes to our rescue, we are on our own.

When I got back to the newsroom after a week in Tacloban, I was telling my colleague Cynthia who grew up in Baguio about the ideal tents when in the wilderness — using a hammock attached to a tree and a tent above it, etc., etc. — and she let out a hearty laugh.

“That’s how people live in the mountains,” she told me. Go to the mountains, that’s how we live. Cynthia also has Igorot blood like me.  In the wilderness, men (and women) are still chopping food to cook and to keep them warm. They constantly need to repair their nipa home and reinforce it before a storm. Fetching a pail of water is all part of their daily living.

Perhaps, my Igorot ancestors are smiling with their nganga-stained teeth (nganga apparently has a numbing effect to the body) and my great-grandfather Lolo Atanacio, a forest ranger in the Mountain Province is thinking, “Apo, that’s so simple. Don’t complicate it.”

But yes, when stripped of all the comforts, you are left with only your skin, the people around you, nature and the God that you believe in.

Plain and simple.

(Do e-mail me at [email protected] or follow me on Twitter @Bernadette_ABS.)