the Earth-bound adventures of the Lost and Found

December 25 (home at Malvar and lolo's house in Obrero) and 26 (church at Centerpoint), 2004. All taken using my brother's instamatic camera. In the background you can see the Christmas tree we bought on December 24, just as the store closed....

Description: Here's another unwanted spam but helpful to everyone especially this season. It started through the obsessive texting of Gerry Chua, Mr. Ube Hopia himself of Eng Bee Tin fame, who is also the communications head of the Association of Philippine Volunteer Fire Brigades, the dependable Filipino Chinese volunteer fire brigade group who almost always get to the fire first. And this is no joke, what with all the disasters we have experienced lately. It's called the TXT FIRE. Now if you want to be really serious about it, why not join the group and become a volunteer? We all know, most of us can never be fire brigade volunteers, but we can be atleast TEXT FIRE VOLUNTEERS. This will save you from getting into those horrendous traffic jams caused by fires, and may even save lives and properties including your own. At present there are 2700+ volunteers all over the Philippines helping the fire brigade volunteers respond even faster to fires. The system works, you can try...

Start:      Dec 18, '04 End:      Jan 4, '05 time for a long vacation.... if you want to get together and i love you, you know how to reach me ;-)

Start:      Dec 26, '04 2:00p Location:      Pisay Gym grand alumni homecoming of all Pisay Davao batches since its founding in 1988. P100 entrance fee for fundraising purposes

unpublished (coming out THIS thursday -dec. 23- in Sun.Star Cebu), photos here The sky was heavy with ominous clouds, and it had been drizzling for most of the afternoon. It was getting late. I had been standing on the bridge in Antequera for about two hours now, staring at the clear blue river a hundred feet below. Finally, it was my turn to rappel. I hurriedly put on my harness, gloves and helmet before I could change my mind. By my calculations, it would be pitch dark by the time I’d reach the river, and the thought of hanging in midair in the darkness scared me. It was my first time to rappel, after all, and in an unfamiliar environment. Even our guides had never tried it there before. But about 10 people had already gone down before me. Still, that was earlier, when the sun was out. I stood at the railing, ready to climb over. Suddenly, the rain fell. “The river is rising,” our guide signaled from below, “No more rappelling.” There were about 40 of us on that trip to...

unpublished Photo of falcattas taken in a reforestation project in Cebu Although the Clean Air Act has made most forms of incineration illegal, the smell of burning leaves will always remind me of childhood, and the mango tree in the middle of our garden. It was too tall for me to climb, but there was a hammock tied to its branches. My friend and I would sit there and tell stories in between games of piko . I was fortunate enough to have grown up in a house surrounded by trees, a star apple tree right outside my room to shade me from the heat. After college, I swore I would never work or live in a place without trees. Outside my office window now, an avocado tree keeps me from burning in the morning sun, and even yields enough fruit for a salad on occasion. But not till later did science teach me just how important trees are. Aside from their commercial value as a source of lumber, food, clothing and medicine for humans, they also provide shelter to the thousands of organisms that keep...

Start:      Dec 16, '04 Location:      ? because we couldn't (some of us, anyway) imagine having a christmas party with all those people suffering in luzon, but because some of us couldn't imagine NOT having a xmas party either, we decided on a counterparting system: we raise funds for the flood victims and the the office will counterpart the amount as the budget for the party. so the more fundse donate, the bigger the budget for the party. bring on the spirit of giving!

Start:      Dec 22, '04 7:00p End:      Dec 22, '04 8:30p Location:      Chursh of the Gesu, Ateneo de Manila

Photos from our "island-hopping" in Davao, November 2, 2004.

Photos from my weekend visit on November 13 and 14, 2004.

Category:    Clothes & Accessories for those who don't know, a tubao is a scarf traditionally used by muslims in mindanao. i lost mine in Bohol at Mag-aso Falls . it was given to me by my X-man who bought it in marawi, lanao del sur, when we were there in 2001. incidentally, i lost the other one he gave me in siquijor . must have been blown off by the wind when i was riding the motorcycle around the island. oh well. is this a sign of some sort? i'm buying a new one (and a new boy? hahaha) when i'm back in davao this christmas.

Start:      Dec 3, '04 9:30a End:      Dec 3, '04 12:00p Location:      Sacred Heart Parish, Jakosalem St., Cebu City a chance for the 65-ers and older to parteh! after a mass, there's socializing, forbidden food for lunch, mahjong, etc. every first friday of the month. but what the parish needs are volunteers BELOW 65 years old to help entertain the lolos and lolas. call fr. vic labao at 2543950. also needing talents for gratis work in the parish newsletter, feeding programs and other social action ministry work. do a good deed now!

Nov. 27 to 29, 2004, Puntod Island and Antequera, Bohol. These are the pictures taken with my camera (not one of the many digital cameras and camera phones in the group i was with--still have to get copies of those pictures). It was Roland , an online buddy i met here at Multiply, who told me about it. Kayaked a couple of kilometers to Puntod Island from Panglao while the sun set, watched the full moon rise from the really great beach of Puntod Island, kayaked again past midnight under the moonlight, dropped by Dumaloan beach (another great beach) in PAnglao, walked in the rain from Antequera bridge to Mag-aso Falls, rapelled off Antequera bridge to a river 100ft below, didn't get to go spelunking =( cebuweek.com's 3-in-1 adventure. sa uulitin! PS will be writing a journal entry and an article on the experience. in the meantime, you can read this .

Description: "Cristina Liamzon" Let's help INFANTA and REAL, QUEZON Wed, 1 Dec 2004 12:14:59 +0800 Dear Friends, In behalf of Fr. Francis Lucas and the Infanta Community Development Association, Inc. or ICDAI, we would like to appeal to everyone to support the people of Infanta and Real, Quezon. As you may have heard and seen from news reports, the damage is great in these provinces and until now the solitary road into Real and Infanta is still difficult to go through, if not impassable. Thank you in advance and please feel free to pass on this email. God bless you for your generosity. Merry Christmas! Sincerely, Maricel Almojuela-Tolentino ANGOC Project Officer P.S. Here's Fr. Francis's personal note on the situation... Dear Cel, Thank you so much for your concern and help.I am going berserk just thinking of the people still on the roof, people who have become close to me, the villagers who have nowhere to go some simply holding on for dear life on top of co...

arggh. this is one of those weeks that would be the equivalent of hell week in college. but the worst thing about it is, every tight spot i'm rushing through i created for myself. i mean deadlines at work are understandable, even though it's a little hard to finish editing a 34-page terminal project report if your boss gives it to you at 4pm and expects it back at noon the next day. what's a little harder to swallow is that the more stressful thing in my life right now is my volunteer work for a parish that i don't even go to for mass. not only was i assigned to do a slideshow for the december concert at short notice (again, the theme of my life), but i'm also expected to interview a couple of people and write articles about them within the week, PLUS i'm also expected to sit through a meeting (every wednesday night) that can drag on for two hours and listen to a group of rich chinese people (business people, average fortyish to fiftyish) talk about charity proj...

Status:    CLOSED Category:    Electronics this is another one of those things that was stolen from my room. an expensive pair of sony earphones that i bought for the compact, convenient case =( but last weekend i saw a cool pair of head phones that you just hook onto your ears like earphones--without the pain and inconvenience of having to put them IN your ears. wonder how much those cost.... need it to use with my laptop--my all-in-one home entertainment center =)

Status:    CLOSED Category:    Clothes & Accessories i've lost a lot of money from my current black bag, not because my things keep falling out of it but because it seems attractive to that thief at our boarding house. this is also the same bag that almost got stolen from me at knifepoint last year. so it's very historical, but it's cracking all over from stress, so i'm donating it to the BAzaar for the Poor at SAcred Heart PArish (along with all the boxes of recyclable mineral water bottles). which means i desperately need a new one to match all my black blouses =P

Status:    CLOSED Category:    Music & Movies i have almost all of joey a's albums--except this one =) also looking forward to his next album--underwater and sea songs. to be co-produced by BFAR.

Status:    CLOSED Category:    Clothes & Accessories pearls have always been my default earrings ever since i had a say on what jewelry i wanted to wear. but i keep losing them! i've bought a whole range, from P20 to P200, aside from the more expensive ones i've lost that i didn't buy myself. the last pair i lost during my dive in barili . so i wore my old gold hoops. but i lost those in manila too. WAAH! finally i've decided i'm not buying any earrings anymore. i'll just wait for an angel to give me a pair (or more ;-).

Photos from our reef assessment , October 28 to 30, 2004.

Start:      Nov 27, '04 End:      Nov 29, '04 Location:      Puntod Island and Antequera, Bohol kayaking under the full moon, rapelling down to a river, exploring a cave -- all for only P1,500 http://www.cebuweek.com/bohol/index.htm

Start:      Nov 30, '04 7:00p Location:      Ayala Entertainment Center, Cebu part of our advocacy campaign for clean, renewable energy in Cebu. This concert is also a prelude to an International Launch of WWF's PowerSwitch Campaign at the Holiday Plaza Hotel the following day, Dec 1.

these are pictures i took in February 2003, when i went on journey alone to this remote island. my stay turned out to be terrible and potentially very dangerous, but the sunset made it all worth it. these shots inspired me to write my sunset poem . And you can read the travel article too, if you want. But I'm not posting the essay I wrote on what REALLY happened.

Gene Boyd was buried on my birthday, but I didn't know about his burial until yesterday, when my father told me about it. Anyway, the night before my birthday, I couldn't sleep, so I started writing this poem. I actually started writing a poem with this title, also about sunsets, early last year, but I couldn't finish it. It was gene boyd's death that showed me how it should end. Last night, I couldn't sleep again, I had this weird, weird heavy feeling I couldn't describe. So I decided I wouldn't sleep till I finished this. I slept at 3 am. I'm sure so many have written about him the past week. I only really got to talk to him when we were on the streets during kadayawan , and I was even planning to meet up with him when I go home for Christmas. But that’s the tragedy of life, you never know when the last time you see a person is the last time forever. I’m still disturbed by what happened so I can only imagine what people who spent more time with hi...

strangely enough, even with so much happening lately, i haven't felt like writing anything here. maybe my mind's still reeling. my weekend in manila after los banos to see people i haven't seen in awhile was hectic but fulfilling. after a long-awaited trip to the high school for the arts in makiling (wasn't as nice as i imagined it to be, but the view was nice enough), i proceeded to CCP to watch chin-chin guttierrez's UYAYI with cris , who fortunately invited me to the one-day-only show. we were so enthralled that we each bought cds. expensive (especially since i'm used to getting music for free =), but after listening to the 2-cd album, i absolutely have no regrets. the culture carmmed into those discs is absolutely overwhelming. afterwards, with our cameras in hand, we tried to catch the manila bay sunset which, strangely enough, i've never seen. but we missed it by a few seconds because we were running to the malate church area to try to view it there =...

Start:      Dec 4, '04 7:00p Location:      Handuraw Learning & Leisure Cafe, MJ Cuenco Ave, Mabolo Handurawan means "imagination" in Cebuano. Join us for a night of poetry, and let your imagination soar. Beside Kahayag Cafe.

Start:      Dec 7, '04 6:00p Location:      Balay Chanselor, CP Garcia Ave., UP Diliman the annual gathering of writers who've gone through the ritual of the UP Writers Workshop. and then some.

first published as lost and found column#12 on November 13, 2004 in Sun.Star Weekend Cebu I�m turning twenty-five in a few days. Reading through my old journals and poems last week, I realized I�ve outgrown writing about philosophical insights and spiritual illuminations. Now all I write about is love, the rollercoaster kind. Really, I wonder where all the profundity went. Throughout high school and for most of college, my journals were full of expositions on the meaning of my existence, questions on the truth about God, an occasional incident with a crush maybe, but mostly reflections on my life. Now my journal entries read like �Dear Diary� more than ever before. The older I get, the mushier I become. While I used to write down lessons from my readings or conversations, now I write about my feelings�how I keep longing for a particular person, how someone really hurt me, how a confrontation has left me angry and confused. I thought I was supposed to grow wiser with age, my ...

Yesterday my brother and i went to talikud island to get baptized. So my plans to spend a week in siargao (particularly bucas grande) became a one-day island-hopping thing with people from the church who didn�t know how to swim and who had never seen live corals before in their life. It�s to their credit that they got on the boat without any reservation or sign that it was their first time to do something like that. Anyway, I decided to get baptized because I just recently understood what baptism really signifies, I mean as revealed in the Bible. Jesus said we must be born again not only in Spirit but also in WATER. And to be born again means to die to our old self and resurrect as new creatures filled with the Holy Spirit. The immersion in water after true repentance and surrender to God signifies that death or �burial�, and the rising up signifies the new life that is born, just as Jesus was resurrected from the dead. Isn�t it interesting how he specifically said there should be wate...

been hectic the past week because of travel. from thursday to saturday went southwest to barili to do reef monitoring in the marine sanctuary there. was in charge of the budget and logistics for our group of 16 people (with me as the only girl) from 2 NGOs. left for davao sunday morning. squeezed in buying a laptop wednesday night. so really, i've been running on a tight schedule. the skies were sunny as we left the city, but after lunch, when we were about to do our first dive, it suddenly rained. but of course, we couldn't change the schedule even though visibility was likely to be bad. so we still did our monitoring, which was partly a training on how to do a fish visual census (yes, we count fish) and a point-intercept transect for the substrate. because it was low tide, we had to do a shore entry, which means walking down to the sea and then swimming to the dive site in full gear. unfortunately, the rocks there were sharp and the waves were strong, so i not only got scratc...

Start:      Nov 11, '04 End:      Nov 12, '04 Location:      UP Los Banos, Laguna

first published as lost and found column #11 in Sun.Star Weekend Cebu on October 23, 2004 These days, virtually anything is possible. Virtual banks, virtual stores, virtual friends, virtual boyfriends?the term ?virtual reality?, originally meaning an environment simulated by computer programs, has taken on a surreal twist indeed. I know people who attend virtual meetings with disembodied bosses they?ve never seen, and probably never will. And how many stories have we heard of girls going on dates with faceless fiancé³ who, thankfully, DO show up with faces at the wedding. Technology is shortening not only distances, but time frames as well. The invention of airplanes cut the waiting time for letters to a day, but in less than a lifetime e-mail reduced it to seconds. With instant messaging and faster download times pushing our PC?s speed limit further and further, the more competitive companies keep up by offering customer support in real time. Real time as opposed to fake time? T...

not feeling so well emotionally these days. on top of all the stress, i have to deal with a theft problem at the boarding house, and as expected, they're trying to turn the tables on me. as if i have to prove that the things i lost are really mine. even threatening to file a case against ME. God knows how much i've lost to the thief starting this year. but then in situations like these, you can really expect to be harassed because that's all the power that the other side has. the truth will not change. right now i only have my faith that God holds everything in his hands, and will work everything out according to his purpose. even if i don't achieve what i hoped to achieve through our discussions, sooner or later, the truth will come out and i will get justice. sigh. i just ask you all to pray for me in these very trying times. i feel so alone in this struggle. i can only imagine what those other people who still experience injustice feel, especially when it involves mu...

Start:      Oct 17, '04 Location:      Gilutungan Marine Sanctuary, Cordova, Cebu my last dive was in Sumilon in July, and finally i'll be diving again! actually it's a sort of celebration dive because two of my officemates will be taking their diving lessons this weekend, so us certified divers at the office will be joining them on their last day. gilutungan is the one place i've had the most number of dives, but it'll be great to try for the very first time the full-foot fins i bought (in palawan, of all places) =D

unpublished , photos here It’s a little-known fact that just 8 km from Roxas City, in the town of Panay, hangs the world’s second largest church bell. It’s likewise a little-known fact that much of the fish and shells exported from Roxas City, the country’s Seafood Capital, also come from Panay. “We have about 7,000 hectares of fishponds and only 3,000 hectares of rice fields,” says Lerio Agdalipe, Panay’s Municipal Environment & Natural Resources Officer (MENRO). With 17.8 km of beaches, the town has the longest coastline in the province of Capiz. Eleven of its 42 barangays depend directly on the sea for their livelihood. But with an abundance of resources also comes the illusion of infinite bounty. Overrun by commercial fishers intruding into their municipal waters, Panay’s fishing grounds yielded a mere 2.25 kg/catch by 1995. Eighty percent of the town’s coastal residents were in poverty. To remedy the situation, the municipal government launched the Panay Integrated Community-B...

posting this as requested by cousin sunny , my philo teacher in third year college... as you can see, this is very raw. i consider this my "first poem" because i wrote it after my first writers' workshop and after writing this (and after people had reacted to it), it suddenly dawned on me that i could write poetry. (sometimes it's really better to start things late in your life). part of that realization was that poetry is so much more than the poet because the poem can contain insights and experiences that the poet him/herself cannot grasp. that's the best thing about art--it's about serving a greater knowledge and wisdom, encompassing all space and time. what comes out of you will just surprise you. ========= Silence lives in the rainforests of the Amazon Where every drop of cool rain Falls as a thread of gossamer curtain Parting to reveal a mime: Spiders spinning life-tales between giant trees; Big brown ants readying a rich feast for their queen. Silence w...

among the poems i've written (not very many), here are two of my favorites. the first one i wrote a year ago, the other one four (almost 5) years ago. why am i posting them here? i don't know. maybe to get my spirit moving again? ==================== THE GIFT OF NAMING Plunging into the deep sea, my body dissolves in still blue— I find no longer “fish” but silvery schools of fusilier, that lonely grouper in a cave, a pair of butterflyfish darting between branches of Acropora . Seagrass is now a meadow of spoon-shaped Halophila and beds of Thalassia feeding pufferfish and nudibranch. Linnaeus only carried on what Adam knew needed doing. Not a matter of discovering; rather, a rite of knowing. As fishermen weave nets of names to live --crab, kasag, lambay, alimango, alimasag -- one sees only what one seeks to know. When I love, this is where I must begin: beloved, tell me my name. =========== photo taken in Moalboal in Cebu, a bucket of freshly caught lapu-lapu , as...

September 23 to 28, 2004. Snake Island, Honda Bay and the sea eagles. See related journal entry here . PS as you can see, wasn't able to take too many pictures =( next time...

September 13 to 20, 2004 1) Mangrove Eco-Park, Kalibo, Aklan 2) the World's Second Largest Church Bell in Panay, Capiz 3) falls in Tangalan, Aklan the falls i especially want to share, although they don't look as good in the pictures as they really are becuase i went back to take photos at noon, just before i left the town. anyway, i've seen a lot of waterfalls in my life, but these ones are really different. each one has a bathtub-like pool made of solid rock, not limestone, and there are at least three main pools. this place is also very near the beach, and it's not difficult at all to get there. tangalan is about an hour away from caticlan. they also have a more than 300-hectare sanctuary, with artificial reefs covering 10 hectares of that. See related journal entry here . Also wrote an article on Panay.

September 17 to 18, 2004. Just some of the boracay pictures i had printed. I think that i shall never see...a boracay sunset. the first time i was there there was atyphoon and we were stranded on the island. this second time, the weather was perfect, but suddenly there was typhoon the day we were supposed to go there. with fervent prayers, the rain stopped the night we got there, and over the next two days the skies cleared until finally we had a FEW hours of sunshine on our second (and last) day. took advantage of the light to get these shots. but that's why in some pictures all you see are gray clouds. See related journal entry here .

unfortunately, i didn't get to go to any tourist spots because from early morning till night we were at the office, trying to grasp the fundamentals of environmental economics and resource valuation, from thursday till sunday. the only time i was outdoors was when we did fieldwork at snake island in honda bay, and when we did a Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) survey last monday in puerto princesa's coastal barangays. i was EXHAUSTED. to top it off, when i got home yesterday, i couldn't find my house keys so instead of resting, i decided to do some errands until my landlord could drop by and open the door for me. well, at least i got to eat at ima's gulay bar (great vegetarian restaurant. i asked the owner if she wanted me to feature the place because i was so happy with the food), kamarikutan, and the viet ville. snake island was BEAUTIUL. we used the place as a case study because some investors are planning to put up a "world-class resort" on the island. but really,...

first published in Destination Cebu September 2004, click here for photos We might as well have been in an adventure movie. We had booked one of Planet Action Adventure’s Action Tours in Moalboal, a town about three hours southwest of Cebu City. But the skies warned of rain, and the waves at the beach were banging against the rocks. Still, we were all set for canyoning at Montañeza Falls in Malabuyoc—rapelling down a 30-m waterfall and then taking a dip at the hot spring afterwards. The five of us—a Filipino, a Filipino-Canadian, a Canadian, a Japanese, and our German guide—all climbed into the specially-designed action truck and braced ourselves for the trip. The rural scenery was relaxing: verdant rice fields, shady trees, huts with children waving from the windows. Matutinao River, where the famous Kawasan Falls drop, was an inviting blue. But our destination was still about an hour away, and in an Action Tour, anything can happen. And it did. When we got to Malabuyoc, the river w...

UPDATE just got back from a week-long trip to iloilo-roxas- panay-kalibo - boracay - tangalan for work. that's three provinces in eight days. went to the old buswang magrove eco park in kalibo. walked from station 2 to station 1 and back at least four times in boracay, by myself. visited the tangalan marine sanctuary and falls. sang unlimited videoke on my last night, danced in a bar, and drank the most alcohol i've probably had in my whole life (a jar of margarita and 3 shots of tequila in boracay and i don't know how many glasses of gold eagle beer in tangalan--but i STILL didn't get drunk or get a hangover. wonder when that will happen). woke up early every day to sit by the beach and look for good photos, on the last day even catching the sun just as it rose. but just in case you get any glamorous ideas about my life, the rest of the time i was working--even on a sunday =P will be posting photos and articles from the trip when i get the time. picked up at least th...

first published on September 11, 2004 in Sun.Star Weekend Cebu under lost and found column#10 I have never been a people person. At parties, I would find a deserted corner and read. Everyone took me for a nerd. At family gatherings, I used to hide in my journal, writing about loneliness, as everybody caught up on each other’s lives. After some years most people knew enough to leave me to myself. In truth, I just didn’t know HOW to talk to people. I could passionately discuss religion, philosophy, science—even love—but share about my own life, my own feelings? All the words would fly out of my brain. The only person I knew how to talk to was myself. I did it so well that at any given time, I knew exactly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and how I wanted to live it. Principles, priorities, values, goals—my inner map was always clear. Work was the top priority, of course, because it would get me to where I wanted to be; responsibility was the prime virtue. Meeting deadlines ...

We just went to Eden for Papa's birthday, but the party (and the late cake and gift) was the sunday after, just before i left. so in the end, papa still got some sort of birthday surprise. the lunch was at the new tenant's, a pizza place, with the pastor and the choir. I'm also including here some more bikini pix for mama (haha. the other pair because the blue one was stolen) from when i went to badian island resort. i still have to scan my other pix at that beautiful, beautiful resort.

Just some of the "nature" things I love about Davao, all photos taken during my last trip, from August 18 to 29. No pictures of beaches here because the only resort I went to was Eden , at the foot of Mt. Apo, on Papa's birthday. Didn't print a lot of pictures from there, though. Too expensive =P But they have a pool there with a view of the Davao Gulf and the city and the mountain. We swam around 4p.m., just as the fog was settling down. Pictures of the orchids i took at the last minute, just as the agro fair was closing. That's why the lighting is perfect--the sun was really low in the sky by then. Thanks to The Valley, an orchid store in Tacurong(?), that let me take photos of their plants. By that time, they were the only stall that had orchids on display. Yes, I missed the floriculture exhibit and landscaping contest =(

Indak-indak sa Kadalanan, Aug. 21, 2004. Unfortunately, i wasn't able to go to the other events =P in fact, i was only on the streets for about 5 hours in the afternoon during the streetdancing. So instead of me telling you about the festival, check out the official Kadayawan website . Or you can read some things i wrote about it in my journal at 4 a.m. hehe.

i'm finally done! this is what i've been doing today. finished drawing and coloring the last cartoons and put the text into the lay-out. lay-out's a bit cramped and weird, but i hope you get the flow. can't say i didn't do my best getting everything to fit. i'm posting the tagalog version here. we have a cebuano version, too =) this will be distributed in small poster size to our partner communities in cebu, bohol, western visayas (negros occ and panay) and eastern visayas (the leyte and samar provinces). and maybe northern mindanao and palawan. that is, if we get a budget for printing, or even just ink for the printer =P pathetic huh? we used to have monthly posters. now we've decided to make it quarterly. visit the ELAC website if you want to help our cause (we welcome donations!). hmmmm... now how do i make the picture bigger?

and it's 3 a.m.... i'm not really supposed to be wasting time on this anymore. but the computer was on tonight, and the files were just beckoning to be revised.... anyway, i've decided that glass is the best material for this because we can etch and color the art on one surface and etch the text on the front surface. i saw a plaque today that did that at... eden nature park. that's where we went this afternoon for papa's birthday. of course, everything there closes by 4 or 5 pm if you're not staying overnight, plus it started raining on our way there up to the time we finally left at eight. we were waiting for the rain to stop but it just poured harder and harder... anyway, at least we got to swim in the pool. underwater pix to come.

this ALBUM ubder construction--text and pix of Banacon Island, Pamilacan Island and others to follow-- in the meantime, check out Bohol's alternative tourist destinations in their Coastal Resource Management (CRM) Learning Showcase Tour on www.bohol.gov.ph (but hey, i'm guessing. try google to be sure). also wrote an article about that CRM tour by the way, and the spots they feature. might post that on my journal.

Start:      Aug 27, '04 unfortunately, no plans. even if it's the first time i'm home again for this occasion since 2001. at least we're together.

well, it's almost 4 a.m. and i'm still here online. of course, when i'm home i'm usually online only after 1 a.m., when prepaid internet's cheaper. so sorry, my brain's a little slow at this hour of the night (or day, depending on whether you're a night owl or a moring person) and you won't be getting much out of me about kadayawan. i'll let the pictures tell the story. unfortunately, i haven't had them developed yet. i used up 5 rolls of film in my 5 hours of walking on the streets under the afternoon sun just to get good shots of the Indak-Indak sa Kadalanan or tribal streetdancing. you have to understand, it's the first time i have a camera in my possession during kadayawan. all those other years after high school i was away at college or at work. *TRIVIA* believe it or not, i was actually part of our high school contingent once for the streetdancing, dancing all around downtown in the heat in full costume. i don't think our school pa...

Start:      Sep 25, '04 6:00p Location:      Ralph's Wine & Liquor, the jazz bar on the street parallel to gorordo ave. intersecting escario st. The Women in Literary Arts (WILA) Inc. is turning 13! We're having a jazz night with lots of wine and dancing, and for a change, our guests will be reading our poems.

Start:      Sep 17, '04 Location:      TBA Launching of Mending Nets: A Handbook on the Prosecution of Fishery and Coastal Law Violations , a book authored by the Environmental Legal Assistance Center (ELAC) and published by the Coastal Resource Management Project (CRMP) [edited and some parts written by yours truly =)] for fiscals, chiefs of police, law enforcers, etc. The first book ever that's specific to this field. To be distributed nationwide for free! Check out www.oneocean.org after the launch for details.

first published under lost and found (my monthly column) in Sun.Star Weekend Cebu on Aug. 21, 2004 Ever since, I’ve had one constant goal: to be perfect. Sure, people say nobody’s perfect. But even as a child I didn’t believe that. I knew I couldn’t be perfectly good, or perfectly beautiful—I had enough people telling me I wasn’t. But I was certain I could be perfectly whole, complete in myself. Self-sufficiency: perhaps the nearest word I can think of to approximate the vision of perfection in my head. More than independence, self-sufficiency is the state of not needing anyone outside of one’s self. Somehow I’ve always had the idea that I can learn and do anything I put my mind to. Only time keeps me from reading every book on every subject. In other words, perfection is being “jack of all trades, master of all”. The only way I can’t accomplish something exactly as it SHOULD be done—excellent results using the least amount of time and resources—is if I don’t put in enough effort and ...