What's up!

It's been nearly a month since I last updated. To tell you the truth, I'm not that hardcore-busy to neglect the updating of this blog. I just felt lazy every time I go home. You see, I also keep a day job and things have been pretty rough lately regarding schedules. On the contrary, I tried my best to get my weekends off and to have some fun outside so it would be unfair to this blog of mine if i won't even publish it.

My semi epic adventure in the Bataan Peninsula commenced last week from a nearly short notice invite from my Mountainist friend Ivan. At first I thought he was joking because just a week ago, he was hit by a motorcycle in front of Rizal's monument -- incurring facial injuries, and postponing our supposed-to-be-twin-hike. But look, here he is now, with us in the ridge of Tarak, Mt. Mariveles, overlooking Manila bay-Corregidor smiling as a sunny-day as ever.

I honestly felt proud for myself  in scaling this mountain since it is my first major climb 4/9 difficulty, and towering to 1,006 MASL. There are things that didn't go according to plan though (forgetting to bring a hiking shoe, being left by the last bus trip home among other things) However, It doesn't matter anymore because we made it on top and bottom alive! I will make sure to have a separate post for this.

---

I just noticed, most of my trips outside Manila always fall to the North. I seldom go south-er than Batangas. I've been to Ilocos, La Union, Pangasinan, Benguet, Tarlac, Zambales, Pampanga, and Bataan, but not Bicol, nor even Palawan. Probably if I'd be given a chance, I'll book a flight to Puerto Princesa or Bacolod, or I might just catch a PNR Train from Manila and experience the sleeper couches of the Bicol Express. How positively inviting! :D

My first company outing happened here, in one of the famous surfing spots in PH; La Union. Facing the west Philippine sea, the sunset is nearly breathtaking. I personally like the colors that dissipate in the horizon. Too bad i didn't even experience surfing here =( because I woke up late and didn't catch my friends in their lessons. Although I was able to swim until dawn and caught the sunrise while battling the big waves. 

Also, we had a very spontaneous trip to Baguio the day after! From La Union we took the alternative route from the western side of the Mountain range and arrived in the city proper at noon. We had lunch on a cozy and remote restaurant which served one of the best vegetable stews I tasted.

Getting around this mountain city is getting harder and harder by each trip I had here. Vehicles flocked every street. There are still locals (i don't even know if these are true locals) rented for the photo op. But still I find it amusing that they were able to pull off a funny pose.

I've been really really stoked to update this blog since the start of the day but I'm still in the process of collating all photos and articles I made. So, that's all folks! :D

Favorite Travel Photos – My 7 Super Shots

Le Flâneur is a French term coined to define a person who strolls or loiters, usually without a destination in mind. A lovelier word, peripatetic, refers to someone who travels from place to place, especially working or based in various places for relatively short periods. Its origin is Aristotelian, with reference to the Great Philosopher’s manner of walking to and fro while teaching.

These are most suitable if I were to describe the person I have been for the past year. I was consumed by wanderlust—triggered by my post-grad trip in Ilocos, which was spent contemplating on my life and whatnots. (For reference, please see Wanderlust).

Some claim that people in constant journeys are on it for an escape—they say people like me are commitment-phobic, relentlessly needing a change of environment to fulfill one’s thirst for freedom and new space. However, these critics fail to realize that such journeys make a person more aware of one’s positioning in the world. Travels open one’s mind in the wider spectrum of things. It challenges everything that is familiar, but also leads to a more in-depth understanding of oneself. It is a journey of moving out and coming back, a commitment of being better after each endeavor.

I have made several journeys last year that had different implications on my life. They have varying levels of influence, which altogether changed the person I am and reaffirmed my most precious principles. So here I am, humbly presenting 7 SUPER SHOTS -- My favourite travel photos.

Staycation 1.0: Azalea Residences, Baguio

Seated on the lesser-dense pockets of Baguio city is a new addition to the number of prestigious hotels and accommodation for people who wanted a luxurious stay in the city of pines. A group of bloggers, including me of course, was invited by the hotel for a weekend stay. (we call it staycation; a portmanteau of stay and vacation............ umm.. well... i know... i talk too much.)

Arriving at 3:12 am in the hotel's porte cochere, a person opened the door of our van, in which they called a bellboy (I'm not that cultured of a person to get a privilege of staying in a high end hotel like this, much more be guided into their 8-step arrival staircase, and know what a bellboy means.)

The chilly wind blew hard in the Saturday morning. Observing the place is the last thing I was able to think of but still the well-designed entry statement caught my attention. Designed by an architect, i thought. Properly landscaped rotunda, an iconic water feature and a non-imposing, well-lit building architecture blends in with the surrounding landscape. Meanwhile, we barely had sleep from that 6-hour ride from Manila and good heavens a hotel came to our rescue.

The band has no name

Hello, hello. Sorry for that spur of the moment rant. I guess I just had to do it to let out the feeling of sadness at that time. Actually, I was supposed to just write about the photoblog i promised, but I ended up writing about myself. It was so spontaneous- I didn’t even mind the errors in the grammar ,..Like this kid I saw in La Union.

MORE SPONTANEITY. That’s what I shall achieve. That's what people like and hate about me. I wouldn’t care about making mistakes, taking missteps, or committing errors- every thing, EVERYTHING is just about the experience, and learning from it.

All my years, I have planned my life detail by detail. But it’s becoming frustrating. I never get to enjoy the NOW, because all I think about is the future. I don’t notice what’s here because my vision is always towards somewhere very far. I deprive myself of love, being loved, and giving love, just because I feel no one can keep up with the pace I am setting for my never ending chase.

I have calculated all my life in such a way that it caged me, and limited me in discovering my boundless potential.

JUMP. SHOUT. TRAVEL. WORK. LEARN. BE HAPPY. LOVE. DANCE. SING. BE CRAZY. MAKE MISTAKES. LET LOOSE. GET CONFUSED. EAT. LAUGH. CRY. PRAY. DOUBT. RISK. BE HATED.

--- Because it’s only by going through all these things and being ALL these things would someone LIVE. Yes, even being hated is part of it. We need to break free from all the norms and expectations, and what other people say is right for us.

This time, logic will play the littlest part. And I wouldn’t care if I make mistakes.

An occult feature

We popped into the first movie theater that caught our eye.

What we ended up seeing was a crime-occult double feature. There was hardly a soul in the place. It’d been ages since I’d been in a theater that empty. I counted the people in the audience to pass the time. Eight, including ourselves. There were more characters in the films.

The films were exemplars of the dreadful. The sort of films where you feel like turning around and walking out the instant the title comes on after the roaring MGM lion. Amazing that films like that exist.

The first was the occult feature. The devil, who lives in the dripping, dank cellar of the town church and manipulates things through the weak preacher, takes over the town. The real question, though, was why the devil wanted to take over the town to begin with. All it was was a miserable nothing of a few blocks surrounded by cornfields. Nonetheless, the devil had this terrible obsession with the town and grew furious that one last little girl refused to fall under his spell. When the devil got mad, his body shook like quivering green jelly. Admittedly, there was something endearing about that rage.

In front of us a middle-aged man was snoring away like a foghorn. To the extreme right there was some heavy petting in progress. Behind, someone let out a huge fart. Huge enough to stop the middle-aged man’s snoring for a moment. A pair of high school girls giggled. By reflex, I thought of Twerp. And it was only when I did that it came to me that we’d really left Manila and were now in Davao. Funny about that.

Amid these thoughts I fell asleep. In my dreams, I encountered that green devil, but he wasn’t endearing in the least. He remained silent and I just observed his machinations.

Meanwhile, the film ended, the lights came on, and I woke up. Each member of the audience yawned as if in predetermined order. I went to the snack bar and bought ice cream for us. It was hard as a rock, probably left over from last year.

“You slept through the whole thing?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “How was it?”
“Pretty interesting. In the end, the whole town explodes.”
“Wow.”

The movie theater was deathly quiet. Or rather everything around us was deathly quiet. Not a common occurrence.

“Say,” she said, “doesn’t it seem like your body’s in a state of transit or something?”
Now that she mentioned it, it actually did.
She held my hand. “Let’s just stay like this. I’m worried.”
“Okay.”
“Unless we stay like this, we might get transported somewhere else. Someplace crazy.”

As the theater interior grew dark again and the coming attractions began, I brushed her hair aside and kissed her ear.
“It’s all right. Don’t worry.”
“You’re probably right,” she said softly. “I guess we should have ridden in transportation with names after
all.”

For the next hour and a half, from the beginning to the end of the film, we stayed in a state of quiet transport in the darkness. Her head resting on my shoulder the whole time. My shoulder became warm and damp from her breath. We came out of the movie theater and strolled the twilit streets, my arm around her shoulder. We felt closer than ever before. The commotion of passersby was comforting; faint stars were shining through in the sky.

Airport dialogues

We received our boarding passes at the airport check-in counter and said goodbye to Ray Ban. He would have waited to see us off, but as there was an hour and a half before departure time, he capitulated and left. We went into the airport restaurant and had an early lunch. Cream dory on garlic butter for me, Jollibee spaghetti for her. I watched the Airbuses take flight and swoop down to earth with a gravity that seemed fated. Meanwhile, she dubiously inspected each strand of the sweet spaghetti she ate.






“I thought that they always served meals on planes,” Z said, disgruntled.
“Nope,” I said, waiting for the hot lump of fillet in my mouth to cool down, then gulping down some water. No taste but hot.
“Meals only on international flights. They give you something to eat on longer domestic routes. Not exactly what you’d call a special treat, though.”
“And movies?”
“No way. C’mon, it’s only an hour and a half to Davao.”
“Then they give you nothing.”
“Nothing at all. You sit in your seat, read your book, and arrive at your destination. Same as by bus.”
“But no traffic lights.”
“No traffic lights.”
“Just great,” she said with a sigh. She put down her fork, leaving half the spaghetti untouched.
“The thing is you get there faster. It takes... I dunno, 12 hours probably, by boat and bus.”
“And where does the extra time go?”

I also gave up halfway through my meal and ordered two coffees.
“Extra time?”
“You said planes save you over ten hours. So where does all that time go?”
“Time doesn’t go anywhere. It only adds up. We can use those ten hours as we like, in Manila or in Davao. With ten hours we could see four movies, eat two meals, whatever. Right?”
“But what if I don’t want to go to the movies or eat?”
“That’s your problem. It’s no fault of time.”

She bit her lip as we looked out at the squat bodies of the Airbus A330s in the runway. Airbus always reminds me of a fat, ugly old lady in the neighborhood where I used to live. Huge sagging breasts, swollen legs, dried-up neckline. The airport, a likely gathering place for the old ladies. Dozens of them, coming and going, one after the other. The pilots and stewardesses, strutting back and forth in the lobby with heads held high, seemed quaintly planar.

“Well,” she went on, “does time expand?”
“No, time does not expand,” I answered. I had spoken, but why didn’t it sound like my voice? I coughed and drank my coffee. “Time does not expand.”
“But time is actually increasing, isn’t it? You yourself said that time adds up.”
“That’s only because the time needed for transit has decreased. The sum total of time doesn’t change. It’s only that you can see more movies.”
“If you wanted to see movies,” she added.
As soon as we arrived in Davao, we actually did see a double feature.

The entire flight, she sat by the window and looked down at the scenery. I sat next to her reading my Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Not a single cloud in the sky the whole time, the airplane riding on its shadow over the earth. Or more accurately, since we were in the plane, our shadows figured as well inside the shadow of the airplane skimming over mountain and field. Which would mean we too were imprinted into the earth.

“Why didn’t you give our rock a name all this time?”
“Why indeed,” I puzzled. Then I closed the book and placed it in my side. “I think I just don’t like
names. Basically, I can’t see what’s wrong with calling me ‘me’ or you ‘you’ or us ‘us’ or them ‘them.’”
“Hmm,” she said. “I do like the word ‘we,’ though. It has an Ice Age ring to it.”

“Ice Age?”
“Like ‘We go south’ or ‘We hunt mammoth’ or …”

When we stepped outside at Francisco Bangoy International Airport, the air was chillier than we’d expected, and to think it was summer. I pulled a denim shirt over my T-shirt, she a knit vest over her shirt.

“We weren’t supposed to run into an Ice Age, were we?” she asked on the bus to the metro. “You hunting
mammoths, me raising children.”

“Sounds positively inviting,” I said.

---

Thaks renz of thetravellingnomad.com for the accurate information on things about Davao.

My trip did not push through with this one.

Golden blues: Mountain traverse To Anawangin

01-20-2012. The morning was hazy and cool. I sympathized with street children. Sleeping with their backs open to the cold polluted air of Metro Manila. A day like this could be brutal. Maybe they don’t feel cold? Maybe they don’t feel anything.

Philippines' short christmas season was drawing to a close. The thick gray clouds that block the moon on this icy January night marked the end of the short cool months this year. I awoke at 12midnight and washed my face, with barely enough sleep. I sat alone in an ordinary bus, looking out the window and pondered upon things on how spontaneous this trip was. We are going to Zambales for a weekend getaway, and leave the station in Caloocan at 4am. I was an hour early. To say the least, this trip was an open birthday invitation by one of my few good friends Ivan who is also a travel blogger. Crazy guy, wanted to spend his 20th in the wilderness. Ha ha. Our itinerary includes a mountain hike, beach camping and island hopping. All of it squeezed in more or less 48 hours. Who'd believe we can do that? Well, I do.

Capones island

According to grade school textbooks, there are seven thousand one hundred and seven islands that comprise the Philippine archipelago. It even varies, depending on the condition of the sea level, as a beauty queen tossed back when she was asked the exact number of islands: "High tide, or low tide?" Our country, being one of the countries blessed with a hefty amount of land, will give the ordinary student a hard time drawing the islands and islets in a map. Considering some of them are being fought upon by our government and the Chinese, some of them being held up by the New People's Army, some of them dug out and shipped to China for reclamation, some of them fake, and some, are, i don't know, just incomprehensible, yet equally beautiful, but only one of them captured my wandering eye.

I fell in love for the first time, to an island.



Breathtaking views on top will surely urge someone to stay and build a house and start a family there. But of course, like any other woman, they tend to play hard to get. As they said, good things should be worked hard for. Take for an example, like courting a lady, or keeping a relationship going, one has to make great effort to claim an equally great reward. Makes sense, don't you think? I know some people who think otherwise. Anyway, going back, the place where I took the above photos didn't just involve an easy walk in the park. The mere expectation of setting foot on its shores with our dry bodies intact simply vanished away when our guide and "bangkero," the one who takes control of our motorboat, told us that we have to swim to the shore.

I. Pet rock

At 7 in the morning, that ridiculous submarine of an automobile was waiting outside my apartment building. From my second-story window, the sedan looked more like an upside-down metal cookie cutter than a submarine. You could make a gigantic cookie that would take three hundred kids two weeks to eat. She and I sat on the windowsill looking down at the car.

Yes, Z and I will be off to the Davao -- a city down south of the third land mass in the Philippine archipelago, Mindanao.

The sky was appallingly clear. A sky from a prewar expressionist movie. Utterly cloudless, like a monumental eye with its eyelid cut off. A helicopter flying high off in the distance looked minuscule.

I locked all the windows, switched off the refrigerator, and checked the gas cock. The laundry brought in, bed covered with spread, and an absurd number of medicinal items put in proper order by the washbasin. The rent paid two months in advance, I looked back from the

doorway into the lifeless 40 sqm. fifties-living room converted to an apartment. For a moment, I thought about the two months of reviewing spent there, thought about the things I learned and the things I never had.

The green gate made a creaking sound , and she called to me. I shut the screen door.

Ray Ban, a good friend, offered to drive us to the airport. The guy's really hooked with cars. He was intently polishing the windshield with a dry cloth as he waited for us. The car, not one single mark anywhere, gleamed in the sun to a burning, unearthly brilliance. The slightest touch of the hand and you’d get burned.

“Good morning,” said Ray Ban.

“Good morning,” said I.

“Good morning,” said Z.

She held our pet rock. I carried the rock food and bag of sand.

“Fabulous weather, isn’t it?” said Ray Ban, looking up at the sky. “It’s—how can I put it?—crystal clear.”

I nodded.

“When it gets this clear, God’s messages must have no trouble getting through at all,” I offered.

“Nothing of the kind,” said ray Ban with a grin. “There are messages already in all things. In the flowers, in the rocks, in the clouds …”

“And cars?”

“In cars too.”

“But cars are made by factories.” Typical me.

“Whosoever makes it, God’s will is worked into it.”

“As in ear lice?” Her contribution.

“As in the very air,” corrected Ray ban.

“Well then, I suppose that cars made in Saudi Arabia have Allah in them.”

“They don’t produce cars in Saudi Arabia.”

“Really?” Again me.

“Really.”

“Then what about cars produced in America for export to Saudi Arabia? What god’s in them?” queried Z.

A difficult question.

“Say now, we have to tell him about the rock,” I launched a lifeboat.

“Cute rock, eh?” said Ray Ban, our chauffeur, also relieved.

"Isn't it?" darted Z.

To give you an idea of what it looks like.

.

By "he" or "it", i mean, the rock.

The rock was anything but cute. Rather, he weighed in at the opposite end of the scale, its surface was rough like an old, overused sandpaper, it smelled of the sea, its color a bit yellowed, a chunk of seaweeds run through its upper extrimities like the hair of Bob Marley or a Jamaican reggae star. We drew eyes on it using a marker before so that by now it could see, eventhough not so much. I was doubtful that it could distinguish between a tennis shoe and a potato. Technically it's been with us for a year, and farted approximately a hundred and eight times.

He’d been a fine young stone the day I found him being washed away in the beaches of Zambales, brought him home, but in the last few months he’d rapidly gone downhill. Like a rock rolling toward the gutter, literally. Also, he didn’t have a name. I had no idea whether not having a name reduced or contributed to the rock's tragedy.

Z always insist that it's so cute she's gonna die.

To be continued.

Pour toi.

At the bottom of her heart, however, she was waiting for something to happen. Like shipwrecked sailors, she turned despairing eyes upon the solitude of her life, seeking afar off some white sail in the mists of the horizon. She did not know what this chance would be, what wind would bring it her, towards what shore it would drive her, if it would be a shallop or a three-decker, laden with anguish or full of bliss to the portholes. 

Capones island, Zambales 01-21-2012

But each morning, as she awoke, she hoped it would come that day; she listened to every sound, sprang up with a start, wondered that it did not come; then at sunset, always more saddened, she longed for tomorrow. 

Film burns

Nagsasa cove, Zambales. 01-22-2012

The great moments of your life won't necessarily be the things you do, they'll also be the things that happen to you. Now, I'm not saying you can't take action to affect the outcome of your life, you have to take action, and you will. But never forget that on any day, you can step out the front door and your whole life can change forever. You see, the universe has a plan kids, and that plan is always in motion. A butterfly flaps its wings, and it starts to rain. It's a scary thought but it's also kind of wonderful. All these little parts of the machine constantly working, making sure that you end up exactly where you're supposed to be, exactly when you're supposed to be there. The right place at the right time.

The girl who'd sleep with anyone

Of course, strictly speaking, she didn't sleep with just anyone.
She had standards.
Still, the fact of the matter is, as any cursory examination of the evidence would suffice to show, that she was quite willing to sleep with almost any guy.
Once, and only once, I asked her about these standards of hers.

"Well, if you must know...," she began. A pensive thirty seconds went by. "It's not like anybody will do. Sometimes the whole idea turns me off. But you know, maybe I want to find out a lot about different people. Or maybe that's how my world comes together for me."
"By sleeping with someone?"
"Uh-huh."
It was my turn to think things over.
"So tell me, has it helped you make sense of things?"

"A little," she said.

The sea is just the wetter version of the sky

I have a dream destination, but I haven't found it yet. They say it only shows itself to people who have the sincerest wishes to reach it. There are scenes that repeatedly loop inside my head convincing me that someday, it will show itself in front of me like a painting that comes to life little by little.

Here's a quote from my fellow nomad blogger Drew: "My imaginary list changes all the time."

For years that I have been exposed to fiction and things that are detached from the norm, this humble nutshell of mine concocted a dream destination, that is honestly, beyond reality. But who says reality should only be of this world?

Plotting the lines

Have you ever asked yourself the point of working 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, and almost a third of your lifetime just to earn money and spending it over countless things? Is that all life is, waking up , working, paying bills, sleeping and doing it all over again?  That is like saying we live to work.  Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t we be working to live?

I have been thinking a lot about this lately, especially that I am not getting any younger. And as far as I know, life is short, and we have to do what we love in order to live. So as a starter post for 2012, I am declaring the destination I want in life. I'm warning you, this could get a little bit mellow and self-absorbed. :3

2011 in Retrospect

"I know now why I am always lost. It's not because I don't have a map, it's because I don't have a destination." --Takemoto, Honey and Clover

2011 has been a great year. I also consider it as the most memorable time of my life so far. There are ups and downs, side by side(?), milestones, first times, life-changing experiences, getting lost and finally getting back on track. It was also a time when I realized that I haven't enjoyed much of my previous year because of  being tied to academics. I should have enjoyed my college life more and it happened in the latter part of my senior year. Still, I am being positive in looking back to the year it was.

Bouncing sounds, Flying crypts

In which we descended into the depths of echo valley.

Yours truly

Sagada: A mountain hamlet

Remember those days in the 90s when RPG games in Playstation1 or 2 were hip? The protagonist will wake up somewhere in a remote town, either in the mountains, fields, or forest? Somehow this trip reminds me of an adventure taken by those coming-of-age heroes that follow a storyline of exploration, battles and self-realization. (Seriously.... If it's possible to project yourself inside an RPG game, i've done it long before iPod was invented.)

The quaint town of Sagada: View from the Echo Valley Peak  

I have no idea where Sagada is until the time we actually set foot on the place. All I know is that it is located somewhere in the rugged mountains up north, much farther away from Baguio.

Toploading en route to Sagada

Long after we finished lunch, the team rented a van since there are no more Baguio-Sagada buses that can accommodate us. And because we wanted to still experience Toploading, the group decided to take turns in  challenging the laws of physics while taking in the good views on top of the vehicle.

One thing I learned doing here is to hold my camera tight while opposing inertia.

Sneak Peek: Sagada Mini-Adventure series

My first time to reach the rugged landscape of Mt. Province proved to be a worthwhile getaway last All Soul's Day weekend. Most of the plans were jeopardized due to the recent rage of the typhoon so we crossed out the Batad trip and decided to maximize our stay in Sagada.

Unfortunately, my supposed-to-be 5-day itinerary was cut short to 3 days because no trips to Baguio will push through on the 1st of November.

Nevertheless, anything spontaneous is fun, and I can say I really enjoyed my stay there. I was too lazy to start this entry that's why it got a little bit delayed. Probably after a few days the series will be complete. :D

15 images project: Chapter 1

Every end of the month, I review the photos I have taken since the acquisition of my interest in photography, so let me share with you my 15 images project, an effort to further sharpen my skills in capturing unique moments and things while setting foot on a place I've never been before or even to a place I frequent in. :) There will be 15 photographs that I will pick every end of the month, and all of them have my interesting story with it. Stay tuned! :)