Posted by
Benito Vergara in Monday, February 1st 2010
2009 was a great year for me, and I wanted to share a few things that made it happen. Perhaps you might want to give these a spin:
1. Yoga - Back pain be gone! Yoga not only helped with my lower back pains, but it also helped me minimize — almost to zero — my need for pain killers (although more on that later).
2. 29ers - Clarissa wanted me to get myself a trail bike, and I wanted a cross bike. The answer is a 29er with 700×35 tires that works on trails as well as on the road. The fact that I can just run over most rocks that could trouble a 26-inch bike is a big plus.
3. Las Vegas - Nowhere else is excess so in excess. An experience that may not be repeated but will definitely be remembered.
4. Neti Pot - As an allergy sufferer, I’m sick of taking Claritin everyday. I’m pretty sure it has some kind of side effect. The Neti Pot, which was enthusiastically endorsed by Doctor Oz on Oprah is as effective against allergies at it is as simple. Rinse your sinuses with saline solution and voila! no more allergies. No more Claritin too.
5. Arcoxia - If you’re a migrainor, it’s the prescription drug of choice, leaving you with a truly bearable lightness of being.
6. Trader Joe’s Soy Butter - a bit of a cheat. I’ve been avoiding real peanut butter since I developed arthritis a year and a half ago, but 2009 was an entire year without peanut butter, and TJ’s Soy Butter, which is less likely to trigger a gout attack, proved just as yummie
7. An Ugly Wallet - I used to have a somewhat expensive black leather wallet, which, because it was black and inconspicuous, I’d lose in the dark chasm of my backpack (or leave behind). Enter the Anime store in Greenhills which produced an excellent retina-burning yellow nylon and velcro gem which proves to be not only easy to find, but really hard-to-miss.
8. Twitter - Twitter helped mobilize so much during our time volunteering for Ondoy relief operations. I don’t think I’ll ever shut it out.
9. Last.fm Subscription - At $3 a month, which is about the cost of a grande cafe mocha low-fat no-whip extra shot at Starbucks, you get highly-customizable, previously-listened-to aware, streaming music.
10. Finally, watching “Glee” - Funny, snarky and thoroughly entertaining. And, Sue Sylvester reminds me of my mom.