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Tugon sa isang lumiham mula US

LETme share this shaman's knowledge, my dear.

Divide 360 (days) by 9 (personal cycles in a year). You get 40 days/cycle in which much can be done. The surplus 5 days in the 365-day/year period is added to the ninth cycle, which ought to be a rest/meditation/internal repair period-- not too much physical, emotional and mental exertions at this stage or you wear yourself out.

Smack on one's birthday, the first of the nine cycles begin, there's a surge of inner reserves that ought to be sustained. I'm saving that upsurge to write a novel, my gift to myself-- for being alive.

The 45 days before a person's birth anniversary comprise that 9th cycle. I'm now in that cycle of rest and meditation-- but I must still do editing work for the online edition of Journal newspapers. So at the close of each day during this period, tiredness really gets me. The missus who's four years younger than I am, she was born July 30-- inuubo, medyo run-down ang pakiramdam. Sabi ko nga, natural lang 'yon.

This weekend, gusto niya na mag-out of town trip kami-- sa Quezon province daw. Ang mahirap doon, wala namang matinong tourist accommodations do'n, lalo na sa mga bayan-- NPA-infested-- na nakaharap sa Pacific Ocean (na madalas pang masapol ng bagyo, lalo na ngayong monsoon season). I'll likely convince her for a trip to the Shell agricultural training facility at the rim of La Trinidad valley in Benguet or a similar training facility in a 4th class municipality in Camarines Sur. May mga nakasama ako sa trabaho doon and we're always welcome company.

Ganoon ang karaniwang birthday celebrations naming mag-asawa-- lakbay kaming dalawa sa labas ng Metro Manila. Walang party o extended pigging and boozing out. Mas masaya. Konti lang din ang gastos.

I haven't seen either Joey Lina or Manny Villar in a long time-- busy sila, busy rin ako. Manny is a self-made man. He made his first few millions in the build-and-sell business. Buy an empty homelot in a plush subdivision, build a house there, sell it-- that turned out to be very, very lucrative. From the profits he made, he bought huge chunks of land, a lot of them at giveaway prices during the last years of the Marcos regime when most landed rich and landowners with idle lands were giving up on the country, heading off for abroad for fears that a bloody revolution was about to happen. No such upheaval came about-- and Manny had a huge landbank that he later turned into subdivisions and earned some more millions.

So there. We often define patriotism as love of one's homeland. Such love can take on manifold guises. For Manny, it was land development and he was duly rewarded for it. I'm content with healing badly degraded soils and restoring life to dying or barren patches of earth to make 'em bloom with crops and flowers, throb with crickets, critters, bugs, frogs and butterflies. It's a practical show of love for a tenable patch of homeland. We call it in technical parlance as biodynamic gardening. It's sound agriculture.

Teka, marami na ring variants within brands in locally produced beer-- pero I'm a fan of the old-fashioned Cerveza Negra and Pale Pilsen produced by the San Miguel Corp.

So there.

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