the Earth-bound adventures of the Lost and Found

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 .