Making or Breaking New Year’s Resolutions

By: Veronica Leighton

 

Lose weight, manage finances better, stop smoking/drinking/gambling (all kinds of vices under the sun), exercise religiously and stick to it, are just some of the most popular new year’s resolutions that people make and break around this time of the year. Now that the first month of the new year 2016 is now almost over, we should not be surprised to hear that there are many broken resolutions with the same promises, “we’ll start doing it next year.” See, new year’s resolutions are just like a perennial flower or plant that comes back to life and die in its scheduled blooming/withering during the year.

The biggest newsmaker of the year was the recent largest Powerball lottery jackpot of $1.6B that created so much stir and excitement around the country (even internationally). Associated with this was the news of even the Pentagon shelling out $10M to buy tickets for the purpose of buying F-35 jetfighter, many politicians to fund their political campaigns, even past lottery winners who had tried their luck once again shelling out thousands, if not millions, of dollars in purchasing Powerball tickets. Good thing, there are three winners that will share this huge amount of money, one from California, one in Florida, and another one in Tennessee, and not just one person winner.

Back with us from vacationing for two long months in Australia and Philippines is our Senior Editor Elsie Sy-Niebar (Notebook) whose popular column was missed by her many readers for a couple of months. Please enjoy her exciting stories from her vacation trips, despite her exhausting flight and fight with jetlag nuisance.

Leaving us too for a month-long vacation in the Philippines are Columnists Girlie Pascual (GMail), Melody Dizon (Health Matters) and James dela Cruz (LOL). It has actually been an annual trek for Girlie to spend her Feb 7th birthday with her family and friends in the Philippines and, of course, her annual escape from the harsh Chicago winter .What an envious life and advance happy birthday!

Another enviable VT persona is our renowned house poet, Vicki Smith (Warrior’s Heart), who has all the means and ways to spend winter months in their gorgeous second home in Monterey, California (first home is in Des Moines, Iowa), and she has been persistent in inviting us to join her to get a glimpse of a famous neighbor, Clint Eastwood, of course.

Ditto, we welcome from her religious trip mission in the Philippines Rev. Nancy Abiera (On A Bright Side). Our religious columnist of God’s Economics, Pastor Dick Mirpuri, has also been spending six months in the Philippines and won’t be back to Chicago until around summer.

For those of us who are left behind to bear the harsh winter months, we have no choice but to keep on plugging with our usual chores… congratulations to Columnist Aeron Lancero FilAm Eats) for his newly-opened restaurant in theWicker Park area, called B.Bim Asian Eatery. Aeron is also the co-owner of the popular E+O Restaurant in Mt. Prospect. Pictures on page 5.

Enjoy our January cover featuring the fantastic Mayuga family who are composed of mostly doctor children and parents who are both physicians. The Mayugas are the recipients of the Model Family award at the 2015 Chicago Filipino Asian American Hall of Fame.###

Fun New Year’s celebration with staff and friends (singing traditional new year song “Auld Lang Syne”) at the CPRTV studio.