I have to admit, I miss the old traditions of Holy Week.
But that was a million years ago and even when I was last in the Philippines, much of how we celebrated it had already changed so much.
My homage to those days was practically doing nothing on Good Friday which I spent at Doyet’s. I started re-reading ‘Salem’s Lot’ by Stephen King; I took a long nap; I didn’t check my phone, muted all notifications; I didn’t even open my MacBook to watch anything. We had a nice Filipino dinner of sisig that I had made, boneless bangus and vegetables cooked in coconut milk. I went back to bed to continue reading.
By the time I decided to call it a night (just before midnight) I was more than half-way through the book, and fell into a pleasant, dreamless sleep.
Breakfast was longganisa and scrambled eggs and Black Saturday was a perfect, crisply-cold but sunny autumn day.
I’m over trying to plan exhausting holidays that are anything but relaxing. Tradition tells you to relax and to genuflect, but then there’s also the Christian motto, ‘God helps those who help themselves’.
So I’m sure that God wouldn’t mind if I chose action over reflection; items on my list are..
De-scaling the Nespresso machine
Sorting out my clothes now that I would be spending more time at the office
Sorting the garden patch and transplanting some of the cacti
Finding a gym
Updating my cameras and my drones
Sorting out work-stuff for the next two-months
Sorting out the kitchen and my drawers
Finding stuff to put into the inorganic bin