Leaving the car at home and rolling to work on pedal-power is something we can all try. In my experience its only 10-15 minutes additional travel time and there are so many other benefits, not the least of which is savings on gas and the fitness you gain. It’s win-win all the way. So for those of us that can occasionally choose to travel on two wheels, here’s a few tips and reminders.
-Always wear your helmet!
-Make sure your bicycle is in good condition. Pay close attention particularly to the state of your tires and brakes.
-invest in a few commute-friendly accesories like a good set of LED blinkers/headlights for when you’re caught out on the road after the sun goes down. And every bike commuter needs a high-quality bicycle lock.
-If a shower is not an available option at your destination, carry some baby-wipes along with your change of clothes to freshen up for the day ahead.
Lastly always plan a safe route to and from your destination. Go through it in your head, visualize the trouble spots and keep alert while you ride. While bike riders are entitled to use the same roads as motor-vehicles, it pays to ride defensively.
Practice makes perfect, folks. So the more you get out there, the easier and more pleasurable it becomes. Enjoy the ride!
A couple of weeks ago I joined a PEDALA courier Choy Calunsod on one of his deliveries. I ride my bike a lot for recreation and fitness but it’s a different experience riding point A to point B knowing that you have a specific purpose, which was to deliver a package. It was simple, dispatch send the pick-up and drop-off details to the courier, he shows up at point A and pedals the package to point B. Simple, no muss, no fuss, job done. It was such a slap-your-forehead moment to see that a old-school pedal-courier system that has worked for ages in developed cities like New York and London has gone largely unexploited here in a country where simple solutions to big problems are really needed. Here was a same-day courier service that didn’t add to the pollution and traffic problem we already have, costs less than the petrol you’d need if you were to do it yourself and required little more than the cost of a decent bike for someone who might wanna get into the business and make some sort of a living. Sometimes to move forward, we gotta look backwards. Point A is where we are now, lotsa pollution, lots of road congestion, and suffering from the high cost of petrol. Point B is the less polluted and less congested future that we wanna be in…keep on pedaling folks, we’ll get there eventually.
Another look at how we do things behind the camera. Every week, aside from the main segments, we shoot Paolo’s intros to the shows — which we call spiels. In the past we would print the spiels and give it to our go-anywhere-do-anthing host. Today, probably because of the nature of our show, we no longer use paper. We find a way to read the spiels on location without paper. In our first episode shot in Mercato Centrale at the Fort, Paolo used his iPad.
This is the one and only photograph from the first shoot ever for Green Living. The subject: Architect Gelo Manosa’s home. In the photo, the crew is taking footage of the second floor while waiting for Gelo to prepare the master’s bedroom, and Jake (on the right) is not thinking about the shoot. He’s looking out the window thinking about his dream green home. Yes, he was dreaming in broad daylight. And in all honesty, so was I.
The subject of the feature evolved and we realized that this one shoot explained everything that we wanted this show to be. Gelo’s interview opened so many doors the minute he open the door to his humble and green abode. I was no longer producing a feature on a home. I was having a lesson on a lifestyle. The conscious effort to make eco-friendly and sustainable choices, knowing the difference between short-term pleasures and long-term happiness… these are just some of the things that we would like to learn and discover, and in the greater scheme of things, share with the audience through this show.
As Gelo told me during the shoot, it’s one thing to know a concept, and another thing to live it.
Here’s the recipe to making your own healthy cereal or granola:
- 2 cups rolled or steel-cut oats
- 1 cup raw honey
- Dried fruits of your choice (raisins, blueberries, prunes)
- Nuts of your choice (almonds, pecans, cashews)
The ingredients are really up to you. You can add desiccated coconut, muscovado sugar, some vanilla extract, cinnamon, nutmeg
Mix everything together. Layout on a cookie sheet and bake in the oven for 12 minutes at 160° C. Turn the cereal over and bake the other side for another 10-12 minutes. Cool and store.
Best served in the mornings or as snacks with some milk and fresh fruits.
Here’s a quick behind the scenes look at how we do the show and some of the thoughts that go into our creative decisions. This one is about lighting.
As a show that talks about being green, natural, and sustainable we thought that shooting outdoors as much as we could would be one of the ways we could bring that message across.
Here’s Paolo with our crew shooting the closing spiels to our first episode.
We realized that we save on electricity and can keep our bulbs longer because, as one producer says, we use “God’s lighting.”
Green Living’s pilot episode (Season 01 Episode 01) starts airing tonight: 9:30 pm on ANC.
For our first episode, we’ll show a house built to be green from the ground up. Architect Gelo Manosa gives a tour and shows us not only the house’s features but also talks about how it was built and how the household is run.
Our second segment is about Ritual – a small general store in Makati, that carries locally-sourced sustainably-produced goods. Every item, from the goods sold to the store it’s sold in, has a story.
Our third segment is about eating well. Paolo walks us through making healthy breakfast cereal with ingredients easily found in the supermarket.
