A day in the life... of Nicanor Perlas

MANILA, Philippines - The intensified campaign has started to take a toll on the previously strict daily routine of 60-year-old presidential candidate Jesus Nicanor “Nick” Perlas III.

Working on a very lean P4-million campaign budget, Perlas said his team has to work around the schedules of commercial airlines and ferry companies as they go around the country and do their best to reach the most far-flung barangays in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

“My daily routine has started to get affected especially since we have to adjust to the schedules of flights and ferry trips as we go around the country,” Perlas, who prefers to cook vegetables he grows organically in his farm in Iloilo, told STAR editors and reporters yesterday.

Before the campaign, Perlas said his daily routine started at 7 in the morning and ended by 10 in the evening.

However, he said the campaign has not changed his breakfast, which consists of a banana or two and a plate of yogurt.

A non-smoker, Perlas does not drink alcohol and has no nightlife.

“I tried smoking when I was 19 but I didn’t like it,” he said.

Perlas said he keeps a healthy lifestyle that includes at least 30 minutes of daily exercise on a “rebounder” machine before dinner, but he now makes do with some stretching exercises “if I don’t have too many appointments in the morning,” he said.

A vegetarian, Perlas said his lunch is also a routine of salad and pesto, which he makes himself.

Quiet mornings that he allots for writing and editing their online magazine promoting integrated sustainable development, TruthForce!, and checking and replying to e-mails from his worldwide network of fellow advocates for integrated sustainable development, have been another casualty in his bid for the presidency.

Also affected has been his work as a technical consultant to dozens of foreign non-governmental donor organizations such as the United Nations Development Program, the Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Conference on Sustainable Development and UN Children’s Fund; and even agencies of the Philippine government and Philippine delegations to the UN and APEC.

Perlas said his only “addiction” is his passion for reading, which touches on a vast array of interests ranging from philosophy, science and technology, psychology, history, civil society, societal change, self-transformation, health, farming, scientific approach to spirituality.  

Another routine that has been temporarily shelved is dinner at home with his only son, Christopher Michael, 20, a freshman Business Management student at the De La Salle University in Manila.

Perlas said he and his son would sometimes watch a movie either on DVD or at a nearby movie house.

With him going out of town for days to campaign, the devoted father said he has to make do with phone calls to his son at the end of the day to check up on things.

A true-blue environmentalist who had successfully led the fight against the operation of the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant and facing off with the late deposed strongman Ferdinand Marcos, Perlas said he also enjoys a regular trip to his native Iloilo, the hometown of his parents and the place where he spent his summer breaks during his elementary and high school years at the Ateneo de Manila University, to attend to his organic vegetable garden.