Down the Rabbit Hole

While browsing through Netflix for a movie to watch, I zeroed in on Lincoln , a movie helmed by Steven Spielberg and top-billed by Daniel Day-Lewis. Perhaps, I was still reeling from our visit to Abraham Lincoln's memorial  or I was just hooked by seeing Spielberg's name attached to the movie... so I went ahead and clicked play. Oh boy, it is one of the best movies I've seen; I found it even more riveting than 2008's  Frost/Nixon . The Michael Sheen starrer was, back in 2011, my top pick for a real-life movie about a president.  Meanwhile,  Heneral Luna and Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral , movies about 19th century Filipino war heroes, paled in comparison to Lincoln .  What got my undivided attention while watching Lincoln ? The performances. I have to admit that I couldn't take my eyes off Daniel Day-Lewis because I couldn't see the actor behind the performance... I only saw Abraham Lincoln: dignified, witty, frank... and most importantly, human: Th...

Biboy and Ate Maddie joined us after Manuel left for the airport. This time, it's Val's turn to visit San Francisco sites that are not in the first-timers' to-see list. The cold and the rain didn't stop us from going to the beach because Biboy brought his car with him. :) Our first stop was Baker Beach where we could see dunes formed by sand blown by the wind (called foredunes). These sand dunes have plants that are hardy enough to stay alive in such fragile environments (rooted in shifting sand) but are prone to damage because of people and/or animals walking on them. Without having a really close look at the vegetation, to make proper identification, I think we saw Chamisso's Lupine and European beach grass. There were more wildflowers, I'm sure, but I just wasn't able to look at them closely. We were determined to see the beach, despite the weather. Because it was raining and cold, I thought that when Gabriel sees our photos someday, he mi...

Manuel  spent a weekend with my family in March. It's his first time in the Bay Area and he wanted to see San Francisco. In building Man's SF half-day itinerary, I looked back on my first ever visit to the City, in 2005, with Donnell being the tour guide. Val also chose a few must-sees in his SF list. Anna, on the other hand, made sure we took photos because without them, Manuel's first trip to SF did not happen!  Because we commuted to SF via public transportation, we only visited three locations; Manuel has to return so we can continue our exploration. Golden Gate Bridge It took us a long time to get to the Golden Gate Bridge because we used a mix of BART and MUNI to reach the Golden Gate Park and Uber to reach the bridge. Lucky for Manuel, it was cloudy when we arrived... because when Vernon was with Anna and me, it was raining!  Coit Tower Val said that each time he's in San Francisco, he stops by the Coit Tower... except last year when we ...

The Spanish Empire is often described as  el imperio en el que nunca se pone el sol . Because I came from a former colony of the Spanish Empire , most of my knowledge about the empire where the sun never sets comes from that one tiny end of the empire. I didn't start getting exposure about the opposite end of the empire until I moved to the U.S. It's a good learning experience because I got to see the other cultures that were forever changed by the arrival of the Europeans. At the Library of Congress, I took the opportunity to learn more about the American side of the Spanish Empire expansion story. Christopher Columbus, the explorer The Age of Exploration began when Columbus set forth to the Americas for the first time (in the name of God and the  Crown of Castile , as indicated by his coat-of-arms). The coat-of-arms also shows islands, which indicates that he's the explorer of the New World. His arrival to the continent is celebrated in some states in the U.S. as a...

I thought that the Murillo map  (1734) was the oldest map I have ever seen... until I saw the Waldseemüller map (1507) in the Library of Congress . It's actually called  Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii alioru[m]que lustrationes  and it is the first map that refers to the landmass across the Atlantic Ocean as "America". Understandably, the continent's shaped very differently from what we now see in world maps. But consider that back then, the Americas haven't been thoroughly explored yet. I naturally tried to find out where the Philippines is on the map before I read the caption... but I couldn't find the archipelago. And then I realised that the map was made in 1507. The Philippines literally hasn't entered the European consciousness when this map was made! Still, it's interesting to see that Europeans already knew about Africa and India.  I wonder if there are older maps in the exhibit but I ju...

If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads. –Ralph Waldo Emerson  I detoured to the Library of Congress after seeing the long queue waiting to enter the Capitol . It was a great tip from a docent from the Capitol because I wanted to visit the Library after  the Capitol... and it's featured in the movie "National Treasure". What I didn't know is that it's also where Thomas Jefferson's library is preserved. According to the notes, the library, in its entirety, has over 6000 books. That's a lot of reading in one lifetime! However, a fire at the Library of Congress burned most of the books; so only one-third of the collection remains on exhibit. Jefferson is nothing short of a bookworm. The library contains a variety of subjects covering Shakespeare, philosophy, botany, chemistry, religion, and politics (of course)... and in different languages too! He owned several titles authored by Niccolo Machiavelli (the guy ...

Last year, I was at the California Academy of Sciences with Val where we saw an exhibit about human evolution entitled  Human Odyssey. It emphasised how similar everyone is, despite the diversity of our racial ethnicities. It also showed that the evolutionary path was far from straight. There were many turns along the way, and even a near-extinction event for Homo sapiens.  This year, I visited the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History while Val was in his econometrics class. I found that the David Koch Hall of Human Origins is a great complementary exhibit to Human Odyssey. The text in the Hall of Human Origins say that though humans are primates (great apes) and are related to the chimpanzees, the progenitors of humans are not directly related to the great apes that now co-exist with humans. Research findings indicate that chimps and humans are more like distant cousins. The common ancestor has not been found... yet. My knowledge of hominids is v...