Down the Rabbit Hole

October 10, 2009 UPLB celebrated it's centennial with a bang. The year-round party culminated with the annual Loyalty Day parade and The Harvest. Fancy seeing a few friends who are also into photography at various points of the parade!

The tech-savvy baby fiddled with two Nokias and a Blackberry. All of them NOT baby-proof. Ate Maddie, Tita Tessie, and Anna were watching him like hawks! My mobile phone: safely stowed in my pocket :)

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."  —  Nelson Mandela The Philippines faced two consecutive typhoons that literally transformed low-lying areas of Luzon into water world. The challenges though, brought out the heroes in many Filipinos, who helped out in their own ways. Courage took many forms: many braved the strong currents to save the stranded, others cleared away the debris. Volunteers repacked relief goods while nurses and doctors treated people languishing in evacuation centres. Courage takes the most important form in the survivors, because for them it means picking up where they had been carried to and moving on with their lives despite the tragedy that had struck them.

Finally, a lugaw party I'm present in! Take note: each one received an egg and a chicken wing. Hating kapatid! :)

(NOTE: Photos in Eastwood were lost during the move from Multiply to Blogger. I'm currently trying to recover them.) Kuya Mitchie, Che, and Miggy evacuated to Eastwood City when Che's family's house got swamped, literally, by the rains dumped by Tropical Storm Ketsana (aka Ondoy). Their house is quite close to the Pasig River and when the river overflowed, the floodwater reached the second floor of the house. Luzon was drenched with lots of water, reaching 455 mm (heavy flooding levels) in just a few hours. If that were not enough, three more weather disturbances were queued in the Pacific Ocean! See the YouTube video by Chris Todd below to see the "parade of tropical cyclones" in September to October 2009. Four tropical depressions formed one after the other in the Western Pacific in the span of several days: Ketsana, TD 18W, Parma, and Melor. Then a new one was found this week while Parma is still hovering over northern Luzon: TD 21W. This remi

Some more shots at the UPLB Student Union Building duckpin bowling alleys. These are taken at the sidelines during the official tournament.

September 21, 2009 Monte Maria was largely barren when I first went there on Holy Week. This time, however, the place is dotted with flowers. It's no longer a sacrifice to pass along the Stations of the Cross despite the rough terrain... but they didn't do that. They're just not fit. Caysasay Church was being prepared for the arrival of Mama Ma-Cho, a revered Chinese statue that is believed to be identical to the statue of the Virgin Mary found in Brgy Caysasay in Taal, Batangas.