Asthma, Introspection and Body Balance (repost)

Conrado de Quiros’ article last Tuesday entitled “Not a Small Triumph” was surprisingly different. It wasn’t about politics or justice or the war in the Middle East or some huge problem confronting the country. It was about a topic very close to my heart, or should I say, close to my lungs. The article was about surviving asthma. Mr. de Quiros had asthma when he was young and he had this to say about the “benefit” of this illness:

“Asthma drove me to introspection, compelling me to deal with the wonder and awe of that human phenomenon called breath”. 

 Asthma drove me to introspection as well. During the first week of 2006, I had a  serious asthma attack.  My year started with three visits to the hospital, one visit to a clinic, a nebulizer on my nose, and the inhaler as my best friend. Mr. de Quiros aptly described asthma attacks, “Asthma gives you the sensation of drowning…in dry land”. 

I was so afraid then, but in retrospect I think that asthma attack was a blessing. It made me rethink the way I live my life. You see, for the most part of 2005 I was so passive and sedentary. My good friend Aloy have always teased me “Eloy, wala kang kwentang tao.” Only during that asthma attack did I realize she may have a point. In 2005, I was just in the “waiting place”. 

“A Waiting Place for people just waiting…

waiting for the mail to come, or the rain to go,or the phone to ring, or the snow to snowor waiting around for a Yes or No”.

               –From Dr. Seuss’ Oh the Places you’ll Go

I was just waiting for things to happen to me. I was just waiting for projects to come, for people to send me to other places. While waiting for things to happen, I took naps and watched TV, these became my favorite activities. But the asthma attack made realize that anytime I could breathe my last breath. Thus, on the third night of struggling for breath, I prayed hard. I said to the Almighty, “Please make me well and I promise that this year I will change the way I live my life. I will explore the world you created, I will travel. I will meet the wonderful people on earth. I will take care of my body. I will live my life to the fullest.” The next day, I was breathing normally. So now, I’m keeping my side of the bargain.   

A few weeks after the asthma attack, I went to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. A few months later, I agreed to do a volunteer work in Masbate even though it entailed taking a nine-hour bus trip, a two-hour ferry ride and another two-hour small boat ride. I then went to El Nido in Palawan and Singapore, two places that I’ve been longing to go to for years but never really took the effort to pack and leave. 

I am also taking care of my body now and will never allow it to be sedentary again. I enrolled in a gym and go there regularly, even though my friends call me a “gym rat” now. I enjoy attending a group exercise called Body Balance, a one-hour class that combines yoga, tai-chi and pilates. I especially love the last ten minutes of the class where we just focus on our breathing. I love the part where our class instructor James says soothing words as he guides us through our breathing exercise:

“Breathing is the most taken for granted task because it is always there. Now welcome your breath…embrace it. Let it fulfill you…let it flow freely. Breathe deeply… alternately feel empty and full. Feel your breath as it fills your whole body… and your whole being.” 

I love this breathing exercise because I have experienced “drowning in dry land”. I know how it feels to be deprived of air so now I treasure this phenomenon of air freely flowing in and out of my body everyday. 

I never had asthma attack since January and I wish it would never come back.

6D/5N in Ho Chi Minh City (part 2)

Six days, five nights in Ho Chi Mihn City (HCMC); I saw and experienced different lives.

Life in war. Vietnam became known all over the world for the Vietnam War. So a trip to Ho Chi Minh City would not be complete without a visit to the “ War Remnants Museum”. The museum vividly presented the horrible life during the Vietnam war; it showed pictures of dead and injured American and Vietnamese soldiers, deformed bodies of babies as a result of the herbicide spraying of the Americans, and pictures of families fleeing away from their bombed villages including children crying in pain and fear. The warning in Lonely Planet Vietnam should not be taken lightly – it takes a strong stomach to look at these scenes of war and torture. However gruesome the exhibits maybe, the museum made me very grateful for the life in peace we are enjoying now.

Life underground. I signed up for a packaged tour that included trips to the usual tourist spots in and around Ho Chi Minh City: a Lacquerware factory, Ben Than Market, Notre Dame Cathedral, and Minh Long Ceramic Showroom. Since the tour was also an industry study trip we also visited factories and industrials parks, and attended forums on how to do business in Vietnam.

One very popular tourist spot in Vietnam is the Cu Chi Tunnel, where one can also learn a lot about war strategies (and if one thinks harder can also apply these strategies to business). The tunnel is located north of Ho Chi Minh City and was built by Viet Cong (VCs) over a period of 25 years as an “improvised response by poorly equipped peasant army to its enemy’s high tech weapons”. The VCs ate, slept and planned their attacks against their American enemies inside these tunnels. When I first saw this tunnel featured in a Philippine TV show, I said to myself that if ever I got the chance to go to Vietnam I would not enter the tunnels for fear of triggering my asthma. But when I was already there, I couldn’t pass up the chance of experiencing how it feels like to live underground. Batman made living in underground seem so glamorous, but certainly it is not!

Life on Water. On the bus trip to the Mekong Delta, our tour guide was telling many stories about the delta but I couldn’t quite follow him. I was so sleepy because I spent the night before talking to Filipino friends and finding out how they are living in HCMC. So I really don’t know the background of Mekong Delta or how historic it is, or how it shaped the life of the Vietnamese people. All I know is that trip was very relaxing, exactly what I needed in order to reflect on my life. Hien, my Vietnamese friend who accompanied me to that one-day Mekong Delta tour, described it as a “silent trip”. The people in that tour were talking so softly as if they were afraid to disturb the calmness of the delta; there were no boisterous laughter, just awe for the calmness and beauty of the delta. Even the two-hour bus ride from and to the city was calming. For me it wasn’t just a “silent tour”, it was a “soul tour”.

Life with friends and families. I was fortunate to have witnessed how Vietnamese people celebrate life as I was able to witness the few days before the Tet Festival, Vietnam’s most important holiday. The atmosphere in the city was characterized by holiday shopping, friends’ getting together, city people going back to their families in the provinces. It was like experiencing Christmas all over again after only one month of celebrating it in the Philippines (minus the Christmas carols, of course).

I was also happy to have seen the temporary park made especially for the Tet Festival. The park creators temporarily closed two center lanes of the six-lane Nguyen Hue Boulevard (parang Ayala Avenue sa atin) and elaborately decorated the road with extraordinary jars, arch-shaped ‘monkey bridges’ over man-made lakes, and other displays such as carts, paintings, old-style houses that illustrate the life of Vietnamese people.

There were also different kinds of flowers from Mekong Delta; it was like attending the Flower Festival in Baguio with a warmer and friendlier weather.I especially love seeing families and friends enjoy each other’s company as they take leisurely walk around the park. Children were dressed in their Vietnam national costume (ao dai) and they happily posed in front of every display. Vietnamese teenagers were creating big scenes with their lively laughter, and families were simply enjoying their time together.

Ah, the holiday spirit!

6D/5N in Ho Chi Minh City (part 1)

Six days, five nights in Ho Chi Mihn City (HCMC); I saw and experienced different lives.


Life away from friends and families. I spent one night talking to young Filipinos working in HCMC. The whole night kwentuhan was fun but there were instances when the tone of the conversation became serious. One of them sadly commented “Bakit ba tayo nandito at wala sa sarili nating bansa? Dahil ang gobyerno natin corrupt kaya walang trabaho sa atin! Di ba dapat nasa Pilipinas tayo kasi Pilipino tayo? Bakit tayo nandito?*” Maybe it’s really hate for our government or the effect of alcohol that made him say that.

Life in the street. They say, “ Ho Chi Minh City is a city of millions of motorbikes”, and they were not exaggerating! My Filipino friend Brian who’s working in HCMC said that when he first got there akala niya may mga nagra-rally na nakamotorbike. He didn’t know then that motorbikes were the major mode of transportation in HCMC. Good thing my Vietnamese friend Hien had a motorbike so I got the chance to go around the city on a motorbike. The sights and experience were different from riding in a bus or a car. You wouldn’t believe how many people or how big a thing they could put on those motorbikes. A Filipino friend said he saw a refrigerator being carried at the back of a small motorbike. I saw a family of four members riding one motorbike including an infant and no one was wearing a helmet. While the motorbikes were on stop, people smiled and cheerfully greeted their fellow stranger-commuters. I even saw two people carrying a casual conversation and I could sense they were courting while going around the city on two separate bikes! It was such a lively scene.

Life in Silence and Slow Motion. “We had all become victims of speed”, Professor Randy David once wrote. My first four days in HCMC was hectic, that was the result of signing up for a packaged tour. Good thing, my friend Hien invited me to stay longer so I was able to experience less frantic days in HCMC. The Mekong Delta tour and just going around the city on my friend’s motorbike gave me a chance to reflect and collect my thoughts, to be silent and to slow down. Corny as it may sound, I was able to reflect on the way I’m living my life in the Philippines while being away from it. Ah, I love traveling!