The great thing about staycationing during Holy Week is catching up on TV shows through the series marathons channels show. While everyone else is out of town and maybe outdoors splashing about in pools and oceans, I’m at home indoors watching So You Think You Can Dance reruns.

Being a BodyJam instructor, I have to educate myself about dance styles. The great thing about SYTYCD and what differentiates it from other dance shows, like America’s Best Dance Crew (Filipinos represent!) or Dancing With the Stars (*shudder*), is the variety of dance styles showcased and the technical excellence with which they’re performed. Over the past few hours sitting here watching SYTYCD I’ve seen ballroom, latin, hip hop, jazz, contemporary, Broadway, even Bollywood.

One of my delusions is that I can approximate the dance styles we use in BodyJam. I’m not a trained dancer, but I think can fake my way through the latin, jazz, and hiphop routines we use in class and I do pick up Jam choreography relatively quickly.

Compared to these dance giants, I am a mite.

I’m really happy that I still do get to dance for a living even though my dancing isn’t on that level. I also love that I can share my love for dance with my class participants. I try to take them with me to that rapturous place where only the passion for dance can take a person.

We’re launching BodyJam 60: Mambos and Moombahton at 360 Fitness Makati next Friday and I’m super excited to dance like this:

I thought that when I transitioned from working in an office to being more on the go as a fitness professional, I was leaving behind the health risks associated with a sedentary lifestyle.

Apparently, the amount of time I spend sitting, whether it’s in front of a computer screen, at a table doing arts and crafts, or commuting in heavy traffic, also exposes me to a risk of a shorter life. According to an Australian study, people who reported sitting for at least 11 hours a day were 40 percent more likely to die during the study than those who sat less than four hours daily.

For the new study, van der Ploeg and her colleagues surveyed about 220,000 people from New South Wales, Australia between 2006 and 2008. The surveys included questions about participants’ general health and any medical conditions they had, whether they smoked and how much time they spent both exercising and sitting each day.

Then the research team tracked responders using Australian mortality records for an average of almost three years, during which 5,400 — between two and three percent –died.

They found that the extra risk tied to sitting held up regardless of whether people were normal weight or overweight, how much time they spent working out and whether they were healthy or had pre-existing medical conditions, van der Ploeg’s team reported this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine.

She said too much sitting may affect blood vessels and metabolism by increasing fats in the blood and lowering “good” cholesterol levels.

“When you are standing or walking your leg muscles are constantly working, which helps to clear blood glucose and blood fats from the blood stream,” she said. “If you are sitting this is not happening because the muscles are not active.”

So, time to peel yourself away from your laptop, or your iPhone playing Draw Something. It’s summer; get up and do something!

It’s tough to take a hard line on rule of law here in the Philippines. We live in a culture that flouts laws and regulations regularly: have you seen the jeepneys that load passengers right in front of “No Loading/Unloading” signs, or the people that smoke beside “No Smoking” signs?

I get so disappointed every time I see something wrong and nothing done about it either due to apathy, or due to corruption. This really hit home today when I came down to the parking area through my condo elevator and saw stacks of grocery goods waiting to be carted up to the commercial-scale minimart operating inside my residential condo.

I already sent a letter of complaint to the developer, DMCI Homes, but didn’t receive any response on it. So I’m publishing my complaint letter here on my blog (with some redactions to preserve privacy) in hopes that this wakes up the head honchos to do something about this mess.

Why I even have to resort to public shaming to get wheels moving is a uniquely Filipino trait. There needs to be a threat of bad publicity before anything is done, both in the public and private sector. Hay nako.

UPDATE: A few days after I wrote this blog post, a circular was sent to all residents advising them not to patronize the store because it had already been served with a final and demand notice. Last week, the store closed and all its stock was removed.

I’m hoping that’s the end of it, so I’ve removed my complaint letter from this post.

For quiet moments with a cup of tea or coffee, I seek refuge inside a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Back when they still had electric outlets I could plug my laptop into, I would do most of my writing and blogging work there. Now that leeching off their electricity is no longer an option, I still go to CBTL just to hang out with my friends. I guess it’s because their interior design dampens any conversation noise, so it doesn’t sound like a McDonald’s.

Anyway I got a heads-up about a promo they’re running at their newest branch at Two E-Com Center in Mall of Asia (this is on the IMAX side). From February 18 to 24, 2012 from 12:30 to 1:30pm, customers can get their favorite drink for only P100.

I’m supposed to head to Mall of Asia sometime soon because I heard Mizuno put up a giant wall poster of me in their store. I think I’ll drop by the Coffee Bean then to get my favorite drink, a Tropical Passion Tea Latte.