As usual, I started out like gangbusters, walking with a fast pace this morning, like I do at home. But like it happens so often, my body tells me "hey cr, slow down! You're in a tropical country now..."
There are a lot of dead ends in Cebu. I like meandering when I go on my morning walks, but a lot of my exercise ends up retracing steps when I end up at the end of a street when I thought it was going to merge with another street.
Also, there are a Lot of dogs in the regular neighborhoods. My memory of being attacked by a dog when I was in the 5th grade has stayed with me over the years, so I have these mini panic attacks when I see dogs. I just keep moving, and I think to myself, maybe I should stay on the bigger roads.
My walk yesterday took me up along the Oprra Jeepney route, a little over 4 miles roundtrip. More green, more dogs, more effort with the ups and downs, but it was a good walk. The most difficult part is getting out earlier in the morning. Cooler, less traffic and less people. I left around 7:35am yesterday , and I was targeting 6:30 for today. Not going to make it. It's 6:26am now. Oh well.
I decided to walk in the Soho building area yesterday because I wanted to check out their little mall. Like so many things here, there are all kinds of places you can not go, places that are off limits. I made a move to walk down the hall by the Sto. Nino doll, and the security guard said "wait, you can't go there". There are still many stores and offices that remain closed due to Covid. I gestured with my camera towards St. Nino, and he said "Yes, ok". I asked "is the Supermarket downstairs open?" He said "Yes" again, and gestured with his hand towards the stairs. As I turned to go down, he asked me "can you take my picture?" I said "yes, of course." And then two young men to his right asked "can you take our picture?" It's getting easier, taking these people photos, especially when they ask me...
I head out in a different direction every morning, for my walk. I want to get out a little earlier, but my routine of having my morning coffee and watching the sunrise has been difficult to change. After my first cup of coffee, and checking for texts from my family, I start looking through my photos...and sharing them on FB. FB has become a more pleasant experience since I changed my primary FB focus to Photography. These are from my walk yesterday.
I enjoy my editing sessions, almost as much as the actual photo walks. I get to go on the walk a second time, and then I get to play with the images. Sometimes, usually with plants and foliage shots, I fall into a "rabbit hole" of sorts. It's fun, and it's sort of like looking through a mental, visual microscope? My current cover photo was the last image from one of those sessions. This series was from yesterday.
