Today has been crazy amazing.
We started the day with a full-day snorkeling expedition. We visited about 4 or 5 snorkeling spots and we saw a manta ray, 6 eagle rays swimming in formation, gray reef sharks, and tuna! But best of all, we saw pods of dolphins, with lots of babies, just following our boat and interacting with us! We even snorkeled a sunken ship, with only the bow sticking out of the water. Breathtaking. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much on one boat trip. It’s bad-ass hardcore snorkeling, if there ever was one.
And the whole time we were treated like royalty – snacks, food, a sumptuous lunch, coffee, etc., overflowing the whole time. We wowed everyone when we brought out a bag of dried mangoes. They kept closing their eyes and exclaiming how orgasmically delicious it was! The whole crew just spoiled us rotten. The whole experience was just magical.
We also had nice company, we had German, French, South African, and Peruvian people as groupmates. When we were introducing ourselves, as they proudly stated their home countries: “Germany!”, “France!”, “South Africa!”, “Peru!”, I was tempted to say, “The proud land of the Pinoy Republic of Jejemon!”
The water was incredibly clear and warm. Even in between snorkeling spots, we would jump in the middle of the ocean just to soak in the soothing turquoise brine of the Indian Ocean. It’s like we get separation anxiety from the ocean.
We were actually sad to see it end, our little seafaring jaunt, one that I’ll remember for the rest of my life.
And to our surprise, our day was far from over. Apparently, it’s Earth Hour, and to celebrate, all four “resorts” within the resort (our resort is divided further into four sub-resorts) are dining by candlelight, under the stars, serenaded by Maldivian performers, singing and dancing as we feast. Okay fine, it was crazy romantic, so I was imagining it’s our wedding and it was our reception (hahaha, I can’t believe I admitted that!). But it was perfect: overflowing scrumptious food, romantic setting, the sound of the surf crashing into the shore, Maldivian chanting and music wafting into the air, under the clearest skies imaginable, with the one person I’d want to be experiencing this with, how could I not swoon? What a perfect way to end an already perfect day.
Did I mention that this is now my most favorite place in the whole wide world? No? This in now my most favorite place in the whole wide world.
Earth Hour
I’ve heard many naysayers scoff at this whole, in their words, “exercise in futility”, that it’s actually useless and a waste of time and money, and that our energies could be channeled into something more useful and concrete. Maybe. I don’t discount the opinion that it may be so. But in my opinion, it’s better than doing NOTHING. One can sit there, in the comfort of his own spectator seat, and mock the efforts that others do, but my question is: “What are YOU doing?” If you’ve got a better idea, then let’s hear it; let’s do THAT instead of THIS. I don’t have a better idea, so I’ll support this instead. Will it save the world as we know it? Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. But I won’t stand in the way of people trying their best to effect a change for the better. In fact, they have my full support. Turning off the lights for an hour won’t necessarily stop climate change or whatever it is that ails our planet, but it gives us all a chance to reflect on a pressing fact: our planet needs help. Whether it’s man-inflicted or a natural course of our planet’s evolution is a difficult question to answer. But it wouldn’t hurt for us as a global community to set aside an hour in a year to think about it as one. We may not come up with the right solutions to our problems, but I applaud any attempt to give it a try. Even if our efforts prove futile, if we could change the habits of ANY number of people and effect a change in their consumption habits, it would’ve been worth it already. It doesn’t hurt to remind ourselves not to consume too much, that we’re not alone on this planet, that in order to co-exist we need to share EVERYTHING, and therefore we need to be frugal in devouring whatever it is we already consume. Whether we humans are the cause of the problem or the solution, we have to give it a try. The peanut gallery has never been the source of either the solutions or the inspirations for. Like they say, if we can’t be part of the solution, at least don’t stand in the way of those trying.
So tomorrow, Saturday, March 26, 2011, from 8:30-9:30pm, switch off all your lights and send a strong message of hope.
