Down the Rabbit Hole

I absolutely dread driving my car to Makati. The only reason I would bring my car there would be if I needed to get there in a hurry. For example, I volunteered to bring my sister to her office because she had barely an hour before her shift started (I got lost finding my way back to EDSA… that was past 10pm, and with the traffic at the Sales Interchange, I got home 1am the next day!). Or that time when I had to go to my orthodontist for my appointment, but I left the office late (and I had to drive through the notoriously slow Sta Rosa traffic). So, the THIRD time I drove to Makati was on March 31; again there was some time constraint because I was attempting to beat a deadline. I would have loved to park right in the building I was going to. The problem was I was unfamiliar with the one-way streets in the area. It was easy to walk along Ayala Avenue and the side streets because I didn’t have to worry about the traffic flow, but it was a different story altogether when I brought the ...

Intrigued by articles about the Ayala Museum, I decided to go there myself to check it out on March 31… and to try to absorb as much culture as possible. :0) Anyway, as luck would have it, I got in with a discounted admissions fee because some of the exhibit areas were closed. The only open exhibits were the dioramas about Philippine history and the paintings by Fernando Zobel and his nephew, Jaime. On the 2nd floor…  I thought I’ve seen the dioramas before (was it in fourth grade?). The gallery started with the prehistoric tableaus like the Tabon men in Palawan. Then, the arrival of Chinese and Arab merchants were protrayed in separate viewing areas. After them came the early explorations of Spaniards. The rest of the exhibits were quite predictable because they spanned the Spanish period until the Japanese occupation in the 1940s. What made that part of the museum unique was the multimedia segment. This was about the EDSA revolution in the 1980s. It featured the newspaper clips...

Photography has been one of my hobbies since I discovered my 1978 Minolta SLR when I was eight years old. Since then, it’s a rarity to find me in pictures because I was always the one shooting them. …Until one day in late 2005 when the journalists covering the agriculture beat went to the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) to tour the facilities. As luck would have it, I was busily working in the lab when a photographer approached and asked me to slow down so he could take action shots. :0) It turned out that he was from the Agence France Presse (AFP). Aw! I kissed my chance of getting copies of the pictures good bye; unless I chance upon them in the newspaper or in a book, or somewhere. Today, I DID stumble upon one of the pictures! I was browsing the net when I came across my picture in an AFP premium article. Hehehe. :0) Here's the link… http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/international-rice-research-institute-scientist-rosa-paula-news-photo/5594...

March 18, 2006 — The date my cousin, Kuya Bimbo, was getting married… And I was assigned to drive the bridal car. I had dropped in late the night before, and parked my car in my uncle’s (his dad, my mom’s brother) garage (because the guys there would clean it) before going to my aunt’s (my mom’s sister) house to sleep there. The next day, I was up at 6am, I went to my uncle’s house with my niece. She was scheduled for flower girls’ makeover, while I was to get the car and have it dressed up by the florist back at my aunt’s house. Everything was set and ready to go before 7am. I then had breakfast and proceeded to getting myself ready. At 8:45am, while my aunts and cousins were getting dolled up, I went ahead to fetch the bride, Ginny, and her parents at a hotel in a different part of the town. To my surprise, I found SUVsthere, with a pair of motorbikes. It looked like a VIP entourage! The motorbike drivers, who turned out to be our escorts, were equally surprised to find out that I ...

As said in my previous post, I was in PUP Sta Mesa earlier today. I was with Vito, Tita Dory, Melissa, and Kuya Jun to watch the thesis defense of Raina and Charisse, the undergraduate Chemistry students who worked on their project in IRRI. I was excited to watch how the two would present the paper, and a bit worried because we haven’t seen the slides. However, I knew that they would do well because the IRRI team assisting them made sure that all bases were covered: that they understood the procedures, the principles behind the procedures, how the machines worked, the significance of their results, and how these related to the conclusion. Raina and Charisse, as early as January, were prepping for their defense by asking intelligent questions, and projecting what the panelists would ask. Plus, their adviser at PUP was also grilling them like a panelist when they were in campus. Basically, the two girls were well-prepared. When we got to the venue, Raina and Charisse were nervou...

This morning, I joined my supervisor and two officemates in going to the Polytechnic University of the Philippines in Sta Mesa, Manila, to watch the thesis defense of two chemistry students who did their thesis in the Grain Quality and Nutrition Research Centre for the past semester. The trip began at 7:40am at IRRI. With our supervisor behind the wheel, we sped through UPLB and the Jamboree road . We breezed through the normally congested national road (because the rush hour has just ended) up to the Halang, Calamba, where we turned left towards the bypass to Real and the South Luzon Expressway. The trip through the SLEX was also fast, with only a stopover at the Total Station for gas and coffee. On we went along the SLEX and the Skyway without a hitch. The slow traffic began at the approach to the Quirino Avenue, where we had to turn right towards Nagtahan Bridge. At Nagtahan, we took the bridge going into Sta Mesa (the Padre Jacinto bridge, or whatever it’s called). That’s ...

Speaking of concerts, there was a selection of performances this week in Los Banos. I chose to watch two: the UPLB Filipiniana Dance Troupe’s on Thursday at the Baker Hall, and Prasia’s tonight at the DL Umali Auditorium. UPLB Filipiniana DanceTroupe.   Presenting traditional dances in a different way, the Dance Troupe mixed the age-old moves with theatrics. Therefore, it turned out to look like a musical (but instead of singing, the performers danced). The production attempted to summarise Philippine history in dance. It started with  babaylans  doing rituals, and the (violent) introduction of Christianity into the culture. Of course, the costumes vividly showed how different life became when the colonizers came to the Philippines. The show also emphasised that despite the spread of Catholicism in the lowlands, the tribes in Northern Luzon kept their culture intact. Same went for the sultanates in Mindanao. The two-hour show was not what I expected to be. I was weirded ...

There’s nothing like a good old road trip to clear one’s mind. My chance for a long and relaxing journey happened twice this week. I said  chance  because instead of a leisurely drive, I found myself lost more than once. Despite being lost, I enjoyed it. Nothing like a good trip to raise one’s spirits. I went to Padre Garcia this week. Before I left the house, I decided to try going through the national highway just so that I could pass Sto Tomas, Tanauan, Malvar, and Lipa City… I had driven across the STAR Tollway several times, but I have never tried driving on the national road alone until this week. At first, the trip went smoothly. But only until I reached an intersection in Sto Tomas. I figured that to go left would lead me to the town proper, just like going to the Los Banos town proper from Calamba. Therefore, I decided to traverse the road to the right. It turned out that this road was the one leading to the public market and the town centre! I was quite anxi...