YOU CAN count on my photos of sunrises and sunsets everyday for 2022.
You can count on my food journal, and I mean with a daily accounting.
You can count on my Monday, Wednesday, Friday columns.
Those are pretty much predictable about me.
Because I am a completist that way.
When I set my heart to do something, I do it with a purpose, and with determination.
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You can count on my coffee drinking.
I’ve been drinking coffee daily since arriving in the Philippines.
My preference is native, brewed, barako; but I am known to be easily adaptable and no-qualms OK with coffee stick, black. Haha.
I have increased my intake from one cup to two cups, to even four cups occasionally.
But I take my coffee from all over.
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At the Dumangas public market, there’s Vacion’s where I huddle with the older, more senior folks.
A little chatty for my mornings, but I’m not complaining.
Too many good ideas, too many juicy gossips.
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If I want a more alone time, or more coffee date time, there’s Kape’t Bahay, which is 100 meters away.
It’s not really quiet because the house music is rap even at 6 am.
But because there’s not really a big crowd in the morning, I can still read books, or write out my column ideas.
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Kape’t Bahay business really picks up around 4 pm with the youthful, after school crowd.
Occasionally, I can be caught with this crowd when I go for my afternoon coffee at 5 pm, or even 7 pm before closing time.
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At least once every week, I have coffee with mom on our PRIMA CT verandah.
She makes toasts, and we each prepare our own coffee.
I stick to black; she takes something like 3-in-1 or 7-in-1; and I think I even once saw a 10-in-1.
I really don’t want to have coffee with mom everyday.
She just says she’s hard of hearing, but I think she really doesn’t care what good things I have to say about better lives, and the joys of my austere living at 53.
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I still walk a lot.
Sometimes, 11 kms a day; but mostly 7 kms on the average.
I walk to my farm, and back.
I take a lot of photos of the fields, of the sky, of people, of farm animals.
I often stop by to talk to people on my way to my farm.
Sometimes, I have to explain why I bother to walk instead of just paying P30 one-way for an e-bike ride.
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People have stopped offering me free rides on their motorcycles because I always tell them I like walking.
Which makes it awkward to ask for a ride when I badly need it. Haha.
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I bought for myself a second-hand motorbike on my first month in Dumangas.
I have only driven it maybe three times.
Mostly, I find cute boys to drive it for me, and I just hitch on. Haha.
Do I really want to be seen driving a motorbike?
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This I know: I want to be remembered as the walker, The Man Who Walked.
I mean, running man is a good image, but it’s not really good for my knees. Haha.
I’m proud to be a walker.
I’m proud to be seen walking 7 kms everyday, at the least.
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It’s 1:42 p.m. right now as I write this.
I have done 6,059 steps since the start of my day.
That’s 2.5 miles, or 4 kms.
I still haven’t gone to the farm because something came up this morning.
Yesterday, I totalled 12,702 steps.
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After farm yesterday, I had coffee yesterday afternoon.
Young crowd, yes.
A girl bought me coffee in exchange for a selfie.
The perks of being a local celebrity!
Recently, they saw a friend’s article about my Palanca wins, plural.
People have been calling me “legendary” or “a living legend” because I kind of win the Palanca with a certain regularity.
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That is not very true.
Two years before the Palanca Awards hiatus due to the pandemic, I didn’t win any Palanca.
In fact, Prince Golez’s article in Politiko started with that lead information:
“After a drought of four years, foremost Ilonggo writer Peter Solis Nery bagged first and second prizes in short story in Hiligaynon and children’s poetry in English category, respectively, in this year’s Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature.”
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But I guess, people aren’t very keen on details like that.
They just want to see the regularity of my winning the Palanca.
Who can blame them?
This year, I won my 20th and 21st Palanca Awards including the Hall of Fame in 2012./PN
