Long Walk Part 2

I had a lot of "long walk" experiences in Manila. I may have been stuck in the office for hours a day but I always ended up walking either to or from work.

During my first month in Manila, our company housed us in Metrodorm, a dormitory in Ortigas. Our morning routine consisted of walking, I think, a kilometer to the nearest MRT station (Ortigas). The evening routine consisted of the same, yet opposite, thing: walking from the MRT station to Metrodorm. As I recall, these walks were unavoidable inconveniences (no jeeps ever pass Ortigas road), alleviated only by the fact that when I ended up in my room, there was the aircon for comfort.

When we moved to our office in Makati, it was the same thing. After getting off the bus, my colleagues and I would walk from Buendia station to our office near Pacific Star, joining the horde of urban professionals skimping on jeep fare. After office hours, I would occasionally walk the length from Buendia, through Greenbelt, Glorietta, SM, and down to Ayala station, just for the hang of it. Looking back, I may have been an overzealous cheapskate, but at least I kept the love handles from growing out of control.

But there was that one single long walk that surpassed all these. It was a Saturday afternoon and I was off to UP to meet a group of arnis practitioners (more of that in a previous blog post). I forgot the directions April gave me so I ended up at North Avenue, instead of Quezon Avenue.

Then the long walk began. From North Avenue, I figured out I'd be in UP after fifteen minutes of walking. Well, I was wrong; UP was much, much farther than I estimated. So I walked the remaining length of North Avenue, crossed the elliptical road, then walked some more to reach the Oblation.

Looking back, it was a fun exercise, albeit a lonely one. One observation I got from these ramblings though is that places do become memorable when seen on foot (if you know what I mean).

More of us should start loving walking for a change. Peace out.