Down the Rabbit Hole

On Maundy Thursday, I found myself, for the first time, without my parents and siblings. So, I went to visit different churches with Daddy’s elder sister, Tita Ising, and her husband, Tito Sibing. This was a big challenge for me because it’s my first time driving to the Pasay area on my own. But the good thing is that it’s a holiday, so the roads were less congested than normal. I found it a bit easy to drive to several churches in the Manila area today. Malate Church.  Found along MH del Pilar St in Malate. With high ceilings, the church was bright and cheerful, almost welcoming to parishioners and pilgrims. It was interesting to watch the kids rehearse for the Passion play on stage. There were lots of stained glass pictures too. Because the parking lot on church grounds was full, I had to keep the car across from the church. We had to make the trip quick because I was parking on a resident’s parking spot! But I was able to take photos. St. Vincent de Paul Parish.   This one ...

This CSI: Crime Scene Investigation episode is my favourite so far in the sixth season (my all time fave being Grave Danger). This episode picked up where the LVPD left off, at a huge crime scene involving a shoot out with drug dealers where a police officer was shot by friendly fire. There were also several other shoot outs near the crime scene, making it really big. I love this episode because it showed so much raw emotion from the characters. Sofia, the police officer suspected of firing the shot that killed a fellow officer, was at the brink of breaking down but she didn’t have anyone to turn to for help. Sara finally showed seething anger directed at Sofia. Jim Brass was so sympathetic to Sofia because he had been through it before. And as always, Grissom was the image of grace under pressure and logic because he never abandoned the science. I just couldn’t believe that he was so detached even as a hall full of angry people were demanding an explanation about the shooting of a h...

After the wedding, it was time to go to the reception. By the time the wedding ended, I made a couple of acquaintances. We went together to the Queen Margarette Hotel for lunch. That’s the hotel I passed along the diversion road before reaching the church. After a delicious and filling lunch, we decided to leave. I decided to go to Sta Cruz first to visit Lola Estay, and since the route via Tayabas and Luisiana is shorter than going all the way back to San Pablo through the busy Maharlika Road . My new friends told me that that road was more mountainous, but that wasn’t a problem because I’m used to going through the PCARRD-Jamboree road and the road to Cuenca and Alitagtag in Batangas. I just didn’t expect it to be so deserted! The view was spectacular… there were many coconut trees along the side of the road. Some portions of the highway seemed to cut through the forest because there were so many trees whose branches hung over the highway (I had to remove my shades while drivin...

During the last week, I asked around how long a trip to Lucena City, Quezon would take. Everyone answered around four hours by bus from Los Banos. Since I should be in Lucena by 9am, I planned to leave the house at 5am early today… but as it turned out, I was too poofed by the harvest yesterday that I slept in until 5:30! Yikes! My companions for this trip backed out Thursday afternoon, so I went to Lucena alone. I finally left the house at 6:30am, and was worried about possible traffic congestion in the Pansol area since it was Saturday. Thankfully, I left early enough, and the drive was smooth all the way to San Pablo (I got there an hour later! This is nothing short of a miracle). That’s where the traffic began to slow down. The San Pablo section of the Maharlika Highway was a bit crowded by trucks coming in from the Alaminos area, so I was forced to go a bit slower. But once I got past that part, I picked up speed until I was running at around 80kph (driving to the beat o...

Today marks the end of my first attempt at planting rice. And through this exercise, I’ve realised that my mom and my dad’s lectures were true: we shouldn’t waste rice because farmers spent blood and sweat to get every grain onto the table. Well, it’s literal for me: I got cut while harvesting, and I had to work in summer conditions (I had to drink lots of water to avoid heat stroke). The saga began late in December last year, just before the Christmas holidays. I had no idea how to start this project, so I enlisted the help of Kuya Jun and Kuya Ferdie (two of the technicians in the lab). I was really worried because I did not even know anything about rice production, or even about the population I was prepping. All I knew was the samples were sensitive to hot temperature (perfect! and I’m planting them right smack into the dry season! impeccable timing!). After breaking seed dormancy, we transplanted them into seed trays. During the holidays, I was in the glass house, watering th...

I thought that my role in supervising undergraduate students was over when Raina and Charisse were done with their thesis. WRONG! With the arrival of the summer heat came the on-the-job trainees. They are third-year college students who have internships as part of their requirements for graduation. Last year, I was largely uninvolved in the OJT program. But this year, I found myself volunteering to handle one OJT over the summer to help me in analysing around 600 samples. So far, I’m very impressed with the performance… well, I’m easily impressed, so that’s not a big challenge for anyone.