Posts from — August 2009

For many people conserving water hasn’t been done quite well. It’s just not something we are used to be doing. It’s so easy to forget to turn off the faucet or use much more water than needed.

In the long run, as advertisements tend to tell us, we will be running out of water soon. What does this mean for all of us? It means no water for showering, no water for our viands and probably no drinking water ( I hope not!). All these will affect us negatively.

Again and again, we humans choose the value of short term over the long term. We do it by constantly wasting our resources, not just water, on a lot of things. Gas – most jeep and bus engines are very inefficient. An evidence is the black smoke coming from most of them. Food – a lot of people live on garbage, literally. A few years back, a GMA news reported did this for a period of time. They cooked leftovers that were thrown out of fast foods.

Back at home, our water company regularly stop the flow of the water to the houses for cleaning up the tanks. In response to this the residents always complained but I didn’t. I don’t see anything wrong with stopping the water. I regularly store enough water for two days. I also thought what might happen if we really lose fresh water globally? Would we ask ourselves, “What did we do wrong?”. That’s the wrong question to ask. The very question we should be asking ourselves then would be, “What should we have done?”.

Five Things to Do To Save Water

Plastic water bottle in the Tank
Get a plastic bottle, fill it with water and put it in the tank. This effectively reduces the amount of water we use to flush the toilet.

Limiting Shower and Brushing Time
The amount of water being used when showering and/or brushing are often related to how much water was used. A good way to conserve water while showering is to limit shower time. It often takes me 5-8 minutes to take a shower. Brushing my teeth takes about 5 minutes.

Wash a week’s (or longer) load
Washing a small amounts of clothes regularly often use up more water than when you wait for a week’s load or longer before washing them.

Reuse Water
It has been habit of mine to re-use water when I can. An example is the soap water from washing clothes I store in a pail and use it within the hour to wash the front of the house or wash the washroom.

Use a basin
I haven’t done this quite often. Seemingly because we don’t have a small basin at home small enough to fit the sink. A running tap water uses up more water than when you fill a small basin and use the water stored there when shaving and/or washing your face.

Conserving water shouldn’t be done later but now. The amount of fresh water worldwide is decreasing everyday. We should all take part in conserving and re-using water.

Besides, decreasing water use also decreases the water bill. What are you waiting for?

During the past two to three months a lot of news has been about the feared AH1N1 virus.

Having had fever in the last few weeks, I always feared that I caught it. The good thing was I never did. What I got were normal flu.

What to do?

The most basic thing we should do to protect ourselves from this virus or any other viral diseases and bacteria is to wash our hands regularly.

Although, I had to thank my mom for reminding me everyday to wash my hand. She even sneaks in a bottle of isopropyl alcohol in bag!

If you still don’t get why this is a good advice, it’s because of the bills that come when you get sick.