№ 760. Disney Vacation Plan

 

№ 724. “Omnia ex scrineis praeter stilum”

 

№ 226. Percussive Halloween

I've been banging the piano for close to thirty-three years now. The piano is an old analog instrument and is considered as both percussion and string. Because of its age and unique mechanism, it offers an unparalleled range of repertoire and performance options. Perhaps this is the reason why it's called the king of instruments despite its many demands and, yes, limitations.

Last Thursday, I watched a piano recital at the Abelardo Hall. It was an academic requirement for the performer's Masters Degree in Music Performance. The recital exposed me to a side of classical music which I did not realize included pieces showcasing the piano in very unconventional, almost theatrical staging.

Halloween treat after office: free Abelardo recital

№ 104. Sky Fall of Bataan

Dear M,

Mission accomplished! Briefing and pictures below.

7:30 am Saturday. Cubao is really a backpacker's beginning and end point. Most trips start here and mercifully wind down at the same civilization by the EDSA artery, after a long trip.

8:00 am. We boarded the Five Star bus to Bataan. Forty kids via Route 63 promised of green road trip.

5:30 pm. Notwithstanding the bus downgrade, uhmm, transfer in Pampanga, flat tire, uphill malfunction at Mt. Samat, muggy hike to the Cross monument, sardine-can dorms turned quarter-star upgrade, the pawikan (sea turtle) groupies finally settled in at the Pawikan Conservation Center in Morong, Bataan.

7:30 pm. Dinner was served, after the orientation by Mang Manolo and the happy birthday ditties. Hormones, adobo lunch and international goodwill form a noisy cocktail, said an old crank.

For the most part the group was subdued. All that multi-lingual camaraderie can be a drain, Frank. Besides, no one could source a bucket of subzero beer for the thirsty teens.

We were ready to accept our tepid fates. But thanks to Mang Manolo and his ATVs, we had a round of iced Red Horse to fortify our resolve for the late night patrol.

11:00 pm. Volunteers of the center walk night patrols to scout for nesting female sea turtles by the beach. November is the best time. An important part of the conservation effort is their intervention to prevent poachers from harvesting the hundred or so eggs laid in each nest. Volunteers observe the sea turtles as they dig the nest. After that, the turtles are identified, measured, tagged and then allowed to swim back to the sea.

The next process in the intervention is egg management. Volunteers collect the eggs after they are laid, then relocate and transplant them in a safer area --- usually within the enclosed hatchery of the center.

2:30 am Sunday. A long walk in the sand under the moon, is exactly like that, a long walk. Two kilometers.

Moonlight and good weather brought in a lone, but injured, sea turtle to the black shores of sleepy Nagbalayong, Morong.  A swim across nautical miles to the beach, no less than four attempts at nest building, big crack on the shell and an injury at the left hindflipper could not stop the call of nature. Before our hushed, sleepy senses, we saw how life struggles against nature and man-made barriers, in real time. A pin drop, or in this case, the calm sea could be heard as we saw the quiet birth of a hundred eggs!

3:00 am. We were barely awake when we reached the center. But before we retired, we saw a volunteer very carefully transplant the eggs in the hatchery. It's the last step before the long wait of incubation. Fifty days or so.

5:00 am. The alarm went off. Nobody heard. Ergo, it did not exist.

6:00 am. No eggs hatched. Snore. Nobody knew.

8:00 am. If the clock couldn't do it, the smell of food could. Everyone rose and shone to the scent of boiled rice, fresh tomatoes, salted eggs, longganizas (sweet and spiced sausages) and fresh watermelons.

9:00 am - 12:00 nn. The cool, sunny, black beach invited. Everyone obliged---even that guy clad in pink malong. Resistance was futile.

1:30 pm. Bus was stuck in the sand. Oh well, more siesta.

Somewhere off the coast of Bataan.... in Scarborough Shoal, Orcs and Gremlins from the Middle Kingdom were downloading invaluable intelligence from the injured pawikan.....

Senior Orc 1: Sir, there's a UN gathering in Bataan, a province northwest of Manila.
Senior Gremlin 1: Hmmm, an international caucus on regional balance of power?
Senior Orc 1: Sir, UNCLOS and strategic architecture. 
Senior Gremlin 1: Do we have representation?
Senior Orc 1: Formosa, our renegade province.
Senior Gremlin 1: Send encrypted dispatch. Carrot and stick diplomacy must be revisited.

4:30 pm. The tow truck, they call it wrecker, arrived. Finally.

We all lined up for the bus, ready for the tired ride to the city.

Behind us glowed a cyanide sunset.... a mute witness to a rigged pawikan clone detonating a neutron bomb.... somewhere in Scarborough Shoal.

Signing off.

James

Bento Box:

1. No sea turtles were harmed during the trip.

2. No sea turtles and humans were harmed during the conception of the story. Purely literary license and nonsense. Seriously.

3. Some resources:

Pawikan Conservation Center, Morong, Bataan
Route +63
News Info Inquirer

№ 89. The Beach Muffins

An overpriced muffin. An over-developed beach. Boracay needs a rehab. 

№ 29. My Life in REM Sleep

Today is May 4, 2010, Tuesday. We're in the middle of Manila's concrete bake off. It’s only 11:10 AM and I’m already melting from the heat. 

I’m writing this confession on a black Mac, which has the color of my id.

---

Like the rings of a redwood, sweat is etched in my indexes. They yield tales of the fat years as well as the lean ones. 

I have recently been self-employed---unplugged from the matrix of production.  Technically though, I am just a capitalist in hibernation.

I also just switched from Windows to Mac last year. 


Yes, I’m aware that Mac is a Q Continuum compared to that unenlightened majority of the technological divide. Those protozoans and their clones. Still, my Mac hums on XP. Defilement, you say. Well, my system can’t be purged of all eighteen years of assimilation. Redmond is still fused with my flesh.

---

№ 10. Calaguas & Bagasbas

The sea looked glassy and calm in the dusk that Saturday. It certainly belied the journey to Calaguas Islands and Bagasbas Beach, Camarines Norte.

№ 9. At the Post Office

On the last day of our trip last year, I bought these postcards from the stamps museum in Singapore. They arrived quite late---3 weeks after I mailed them in the museum. Airmail, although considered snail-paced now, still works! Real postcards look and feel better, too.

Maybe the post office is still relevant in the age of gmail.

№ 6. All Soul’s Day at S.21 (II)

“Better that one heart be broken a thousand times in the retelling… if it means that a thousand other hearts need not be broken at all.”

--- Robert McAfee Brown, Preface for the 25^th Anniversary Edition of Elie Wiesel’s NIGHT

№ 3. Backpacking in IndoChina: All Soul’s Day at S.21

A room on the third floor

The sign at the entry mandated propriety: no laughter. But noises no longer have to be contained. Or drowned with music. Only the enlarged pictures in each quarter have remained stoic sentinels of the violence inside.

№ 2. Palaui: Sunny & Quiet

Manila at 36˚C is a fusion chamber inside an angry sun. Everything concrete, it seemed, was glowing white. The rest was melting away.

After two hours of greasy and sticky wait at the bus station, the airconditioned bus was a pool of winter. We didn't wait to be called when the blue bus arrived.

The driver read our collective wish: an escape velocity away from the incinerator. And by 2 PM, we finally escaped Manila and headed fast for the highway---light years from the urban heat sink.

Quiet and uncrowded. Not like Boracay's sand and fury.

When we made a turn for the North road, the on board entertainment also began, auspiciously enough, with Ian Veneracion v. Raymart Santiago DVD marathon. Four hours.

№ 1. Commitment to be Waylaid

William H. Murray said it well: “The moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man could have dreamed would come his way.”