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ENTRIES FROM THIS CATEGORY
- Excess Baggage
- Learning Tagalog - Delusions Of Grandma - A Lump Of Coal For Christmas - Spider-Man In The Batcave - Nice As Rice - From City Slicker To Backpacker - Baguio Bakla - A Brief History Of The Philippines - Peter Parker's Rockin' New Year's Eve - Casual Saturday - Quoth The Cousin - Erik Falls On Mount Pinatubo - Civilization - The Guy Behind The Guy Behind The Blog - Filipino-American, American-Filipino - A Mis-Match Made In Paradise - Advanced Novice - Party By Day, Party By Night - Let's Go Fly A Kite - Where The Winds Take You - Super-Size Me - The New Blue-Signed Tourist Trail - Black Baby Jesus - Another Carnaval - Delusions Of Grandeur - Waiting In Vain - Island Hopping - Foreign Local - Not So Chocolate - Return To Normalcy |
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December 23, 2004
Excess BaggageDAY 430: To the uninformed, the Philippines may seem like "just another southeast Asian country," with people that look like the people of other nearby countries. This is a complete falsity, of course. As my Let's Go guidebook perfectly puts...Read this entry December 26, 2004
Learning TagalogDAY 431: Tagalog (pronounced ta-GA-log) is the official language of the Philippines, along with English. It is unlike any language in the world; at its roots it is a tribal tongue which some have described as "like Malay," except certain...Read this entry December 29, 2004
Delusions Of GrandmaDAY 432: You Star Wars geeks out there are probably reading the title of this entry thinking I am playing off the famous Han Solo quote from Return of the Jedi after he is released from being imprisoned in carbonite....Read this entry A Lump Of Coal For ChristmasDAY 433: In the New Jersey suburbs just outside of New York City, my mother and half of her siblings had relocated and recreated the family communal feel of the Bulacan farm over three houses in the same neighborhood. It...Read this entry Spider-Man In The BatcaveDAY 434: The roosters crowed and the pigs squealed as the sun illuminated my Tita Agie's old room (who relocated to Texas) where I was sleeping. And then, there was a slight rumbling that mildly vibrated the bed. Spider-sense tingling....Read this entry January 01, 2005
Nice As RiceDAY 435: Rice is the staple crop in the Philippines, as it is in many Asian nations. Rice production goes year round and is quite an on-going process of soil preparation, planting, maintenance, harvesting and drying, all before starting all...Read this entry January 02, 2005
From City Slicker To BackpackerDAY 436: I have been backpacking for quite a while now and each day on the road I've gotten a little more wiser in the game, more so than the average person in the daily routine of sitting in a...Read this entry January 05, 2005
Baguio BaklaDAY 437: The city of Baguio is the "summer capital" of the Philippines, a place to retreat to even if it is technically winter in December. As the self-proclaimed "greenest" and "cleanest" city in the Philippines, it is a city...Read this entry A Brief History Of The PhilippinesDAY 438: December 30 is Rizal Day in the Philippines, a national holiday celebrating the death of Filipino revolutionary Jose Rizal, who, like Cuban rebel Che Guevarra, got his start in medicine. An optometrist-turned-national hero, Rizal led the rebellion against...Read this entry Peter Parker's Rockin' New Year's EveDAY 439: Back in June when I was on a tour in Morocco with Vancouverite Sebastian, we had a good laugh in the minivan talking about how funny it would be to travel around the world with a Spider-Man costume,...Read this entry Casual SaturdayDAY 440: On New Year's Day 2004, I had a pretty hectic one trying to get from the bottom of Colca Canyon in southern Peru to the city of Arequipa with a Puerto Rican couple that simply had to get...Read this entry Quoth The CousinDAY 441: I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm really into the genre of Hollywood stupid-but-funny movies, most of which star alumni of Saturday Night Live after their runs with producer Lorne Michaels. To my surprise, it runs in the...Read this entry January 06, 2005
Erik Falls On Mount PinatuboDAY 442: As we've seen in recent history, natural disasters can strike at any time, especially earthquakes. Fourteen and a half years before the 8.9 quake that rocked the floor of the Indian Ocean, causing the Asian Tsunami of 2004...Read this entry January 10, 2005
CivilizationDAY 443: After practically a non-stop barrage of trekking, rafting, visiting relatives, meeting celebrities, and hanging out with my cousin Spider-Man, the course of action called for a day of rest. I spent this "day off" back in the comforts...Read this entry The Guy Behind The Guy Behind The BlogDAY 444: I will dedicate this entry to my brother, Blogreader/Blog Hog markyt who, behind the scenes, has become an indispensable member of the crew behind The Blog. He is the liaison between the writer, the producer, and the guys...Read this entry January 11, 2005
Filipino-American, American-FilipinoDAY 445: Another day of inertia; I did more work on The Blog, more work on the DAY 503 trailer, all while I was "stuck" in the Greenhills house. My apologies for the lack of travel-related activity, but as I...Read this entry A Mis-Match Made In ParadiseDAY 446: Up until this trip around the world, I never really saw the Philippines as a vacation destination in the "getaway" sense; it had always been the place of my heritage, the place where you go and see a...Read this entry January 15, 2005
Advanced NoviceDAY 447: "Hi, I'm Margo," the slender young woman in a bikini top greeted me the afternoon before at the Aquarius dive shop on Boracay Island. Half-Spanish, half-Italian with a look and an accent that bordered on both, she immediately...Read this entry Party By Day, Party By NightDAY 448: During the third week of January, the streets of Kalibo on Panay Island come alive for the Ati-Atihan Festival, which celebrates the black natives of the Philippines, the Negritos, for their resilience in protecting and hiding the statue...Read this entry Let's Go Fly A KiteDAY 449: Scuba diving has been around for decades, for so long that people have forgotten that technically it should be capitalized as "SCUBA" since it was originally an acronym for Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus." (The same goes for "LASER,"...Read this entry Where The Winds Take YouDAY 450: My presumption of kiteboarding was that it would be similar to snowboarding, only with no snow. From what I had seen of the pro kiteboarders of Boracay's Bulabog Beach, riders strapped into a board like one would on...Read this entry January 21, 2005
Super-Size MeDAY 451: I've ranted about this before, but I'll say it again anyway as it becomes pertinent for this Blog entry: Filipinos will find just about any excuse to get together for a meal. That's not to say that this...Read this entry The New Blue-Signed Tourist TrailDAY 452: I caught a TV program in the suite back in Boracay about the state of tourism in the Philippines. To sum up, the program interviewed many officers of the Ministry of Tourism with their gripes about the lack...Read this entry Black Baby JesusDAY 453: Of the numerous aliases of late Wu-Tang Clan rap artist Old Dirty Bastard, there is one significant to this entry, "Black Baby Jesus." I figured he gave himself that name for laughs, but I wonder if he knew,...Read this entry Another CarnavalDAY 454: In Carnaval 2004 in Rio de Janiero, fourteen teams representing the different barrios of the area danced and partied in a competition to a panel of judges and a huge international crowd of inebriated revelers. Each team had...Read this entry January 22, 2005
Delusions Of GrandeurDAY 455: Perhaps the "Relatives Factor" I had ranted about before was all just in my head, at least with my Tita Josie. As a savvy single woman, she knew the pros of independence and left it up to me...Read this entry Waiting In VainDAY 456: I woke up in the Hangin House on Bulabog Beach with a slight hangover headache to a welcoming sound coming from behind my room's window: the rustling of palm trees blowing in the ocean breeze. Wind. Soon, kiteboarders...Read this entry January 24, 2005
Island HoppingDAY 457: "Island hopping" is a term often used in the tourism circuit in the Philippines, and for good reason; there are 7,107 islands in the archipelago, why just stick to one? (Some of the smaller ones are even up...Read this entry Foreign LocalDAY 458: I remember Vietnamese-American Tony (Moshi, Tanzania) telling me he once went on vacation to Vietnam with some non-Vietnamese-American friends and all the local Vietnamese thought he was not a foreigner traveling with the others, but their guide. I...Read this entry January 25, 2005
Not So ChocolateDAY 459: I had first heard about the island of Bohol not from my Philippine-born parents or any of my relatives living in the Philippines, but from the Globe Trekker travel show (formerly Lonely Planet). Host Shilpa Mehta turned me...Read this entry Return To NormalcyDAY 460: While island hopping with my Tito Mike and Tita Josie from beach resort to beach resort was nice, it wasn't exactly my scene. Don't get me wrong, beach resorts are nice and all, but they are inherently resorts,...Read this entry |