The Learning Traveler

If only my academics is not competing with my leisure, I would rather go wherever I want. I want to be a traveler. That’s it, to enjoy the sceneries encountered in travelling and to witness whatever the Earth offers to everyone.

For 18 years, I haven’t been to numerous beautiful places on Earth. This interest just showed up lately when I told myself to widen the horizon above me. I know there are people out there, self-actualized, who sorted to the path they wanted to be. I envy them. I even can’t tell if it is only in travelling that I can find my comfort zone. I mean, life is composed of everything, and that ‘everything’ keeps on bothering me when I feel concentrated to one thing. Until the end, these annoy me and I became less productive than I think I should be. Perhaps being young is an excuse. At this age, everyone constructs that I should keep on focusing my studies. What is democracy? Judiciary? International law? Politics? etc.; these are my interests as well but enclosing yourself in the four corners of the classroom cannot be a vehicle to tour yourself around the world. Teachers insist me to keep on reading so by that, there’s no difference because reading puts you to the context of your material. So with that, I learned that the “untouchable’s” of the Indian social stratification cannot join public baths, that Brazil is surrounded by 8 independent states, that Africans’ primarily face the threat of widespread HIV, that militant “red shirt’s” in Thailand supports former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, that Colon Street in Cebu is the oldest street in the country, and so much more. But I want more. Not that I want more books, magazines, newspapers, or any reading stuffs, because these facts might end forgotten in my overloaded memory. All  I wanted is to travel more and feel what emotions I can claim from all of these facts.

This does not implicitly tell me that I am rich. Wealthy people can not only have the privilege of being a traveler.  Traveling for some of them might be just for travel sake with spending their surplus money. For me, I want to bind my interests and create a wholesome package of it that will bring me to the path of being self-actualized.

Today I carry responsibilities on my back. I joined organizations which I know that can be an outlet to serve my interest on traveling. This binds up my interest on “serving the people”, as what my 18-year-old political party in UP taught me. I won two consecutive terms in the Student Council since my pre-mature campaign way back when I was in first year. Being in a council that carries the banner of a nationalist, scientific, and mass-oriented education is not easy. You have to face your demon. Some instructors, co-students, and other people tagged us as rebels, addicts, academically slumped, or whatever, but I’m certain that they are just misled. So who else can enter this serious and bloody career in exchange for happiness in traveling?

I remember my first convention in Kasama sa UP and the General Assembly of UP Student Councils, both   held in Davao. I still remember how I was left by the 2pm Bachelor Bus trip from Tacloban to Davao. I waited for the next bus to leave for the same destination, until I got PhilTanco Bus around 5pm, all the way from Pasay. It was an ordinary bus. Overloaded, I think. It also feels like the bus carries the whole houses of my co-passengers, from folding bed, chairs, tables, sacks of rice, etc. It was peak season in early summer and no wonder how struggling Filipinos in the north return to their loved ones in Mindanao. With the encounters of heavy dusts from the road bumping my face, I felt like uneasy but I was left of no choice. I still enjoy the trip not focusing the situation of being late to the event and being dirty from dusts all over my body. At some point, roads may be unfavorable nevertheless, it perhaps helped me to keep awake and witness the places which I never visited or even just passed by before. I appreciated the silent port somewhere in Southern Leyte, where we got ready for crossing Agusan del Norte. From that time on, I started loving the wide streets of Tagum City.

So I got late there in the venue. We convened in UP-Mindanao which left me think twice how student life revolves there. UP- Mindanao is too far from the city and definitely, the taxi must brave the one-lane, uncemented road towards the campus. We stayed at the PCA Dorm which is even farther. I was glad to meet my co-officers from UP campuses in Luzon, to Visaays down to the officers of UP-Mindanao. I was assigned in a room together with an outgoing Chairperson of UPV College of Arts and Sciences. I remember when his council mates most often gather in our room. They were all speaking so strange. I loved hearing their toned Hiligaynon language. That’s one notable experience I had.

When the event ended up, I had my straight flight from Davao to Manila for another meeting with the advocates of the controversial Reproductive Health Bill. Now I tell you that I’m really widening up my horizon but not to the extent of being like a damsel of distress. I was left for my 6:10am flight to Manila, having an identical feeling when I was left for my bus trip to Davao. I took the next trip for 10am to NAIA with a very few amount of money in the pocket. I remember how my UP professor waited near in the front desk of the hotel as I arrived from the taxi to that hotel in Makisig Street of Quezon City. Honestly, that was my first time in Manila and I’m proud to brave all the worries of being alone. That was my first time to travel in Luzon. I even saw tarpaulins of Hon. Sonny Belmonte hang on the sidewalks for his candidacy. That was an epic travel.

So student council agenda is over. Currently I am the Secretary General of the UP-Tacloban Debate Society. It’s a fun fact that I am an outgoing Sec. Gen. too of Student Council 2010. I don’t know why that position keeps on haunting me. Much more than that, I tell you, that the ideal organization for a traveler is the Debate Society. Engaging in debate tournament is really fun, if you win. My first tournament was the Visayas Universities Debate Championship, held in Tacloban. Nothing spectacular. Nothing new. Nothing to rejoice except that it’s a team from UP-Tacloban who got the champion. They were seniors from the organization of course.

The next time I joined the battle of debating was in Silliman University, Dumaguete City, Negros Oriental. I entered the arena of adjudicating. It was the Visayas-Mindanao Debate Championships. Every round were exciting most specially to the moment when I was promoted from being a panelist of Round 1 to chief adjudicator in the following rounds. I broke for the top 16 adjudicators during the Break Night. I adjudicated until quarterfinals and finally hailed as the top 10 Best Adjudicator of Visayas-Mindanao adjudicators. Post championship night left me under the weather. I feel like going to the nearest pharmacy and buy anything just to heal my sore throat and my headache. That was few minutes past midnight and I decided to courageously look for medicines. After asking pieces of advice from the hotel guard, since Dumaguete City is so strange to me, I decided to travel alone in the tricycle heading to the nearest open pharmacy, which actually was far from the hotel we stayed in. We exchange pleasantries with the driver, with me pretending like I’m fine. It was like a long trip to end up for that one 24-hour pharmacy in the city. The driver came to be my tour guide. Knowing that I’m new to the place, he pointed out the buildings that we passed by. I got to see Robinson in Dumaguete and the Negros Oriental State University. He even assisted me to get a priority number and waited me in the pharmacy where I stand in the queue of buyers during that 1 in the morning.  After all, I deeply appreciated how that driver lives up the knowledge taught by my History teacher in high school that Dumaguete is the City of Gentle People.

So traveling in return gives us a lot of memories aside from the appreciation we normally see in the environment of our destinations. I remember the 4^th Visayas Universtities Debate Championships in Iloilo City, which was my first time in Western Visayas. The debating format was Asian Parliamentary and I was too happy in the end that our team broke 3^rd in the Top 16 teams among 36, coming from different State Universities and Colleges all over Visayas. More than that, being the 19^th Best Debater among 107 debaters is already a cloud nine.

Whether or not I got my epic achievement in the arena of debating in VUDC, my trip to Iloilo, being nearest to Aklan as the oldest province in the country is an achievement. I felt like breathing the same air breathed by the descendants of the Ten Datu from Borneo, way back in our history.

So at this juncture, I’m happy to be a traveler. If not only for money and time constraints, and if not only I feel the envy of my stuck-in-the-room academics, I could have been an all-out learning traveler. Nonetheless, travelling is my hobby, not because for the sake of travelling but because it is more than that.