the Earth-bound adventures of the Lost and Found

October 25, 2006 - Off Samal Island. Only three days since I arrived from New York, with a slight headache from jetlag, and I was itching to use my new diving gear. I called the dive shop (082-305-DIVE) when I got home at 3 p.m. from some errands and learned that there was a night dive that night, meeting time at 4 p.m. To dive or not to dive? Not too hard to answer, headaches notwithstanding. This dive, my last one in Davao before I move to Dumaguete next week, was also one with many firsts: 1) first night dive in Davao 2) first time to dive with my very own wetsuit and dive computer =D 3) first time to do underwater night photography =D It was hard, I tell you, especially since my last night dive was more than a year ago. Plus, only had a puny Eveready flashlight to illuminate the darkness. Hard to shoot holding both a flashlight and a camera. Fortunately, one of my buddies, Dave, had a $750-super-bright rechargeable LED light strong enough for me to shoot without a flash, and at de...

Imagine entering a glass rectangle on a busy street, with a red, lighted apple hanging suspended in it. Then imagine entering a glass tube within that rectangle, which takes you down to a large room full of iPods, iMacs, and other Apple gizmos. Imagine it's open 24 hours to anybody on the street. That's the Apple Store on 59th St. and 5th Ave. You actually see people there doing their homework and surfing the net! And of course, the whole point is to make your mouth water and make you want to slave away for a whole year on a MacBook (which, i think, is their latest 13-inch notebook). After Apple, how can life ever be the same again? Photos taken using the Photo Booth software and the built-in itsy-bitsy camera. *Sorry, don't have pictures of the Apple Store because i'm at an internet cafe now and ony have the photos in my flashdisk to work with.

   yep, folks, as i type i am on flight KE623 from seoul to manila. my personal touch screen says we are at exactly 38998 ft over taiwan, crusing at 552 mph, with 1 hour, 21 mniutes and 687 more miles to go. and i have free wi-fi. woohoo! korean air rocks! on the 15-hour flight from new york to seoul, i watched four movies and ate two meals. could've seen more, of course (To Kill A Mockingbird, especially), but i thought i was being crazy tiring myself out like that. i didn't discover till the end of the flight that they've made the internet free since october because i don't think they're earning from it. they're phasing it out, supposedly, and making it free is their way of doing it =D the trade-off is, i haven't been able to write anything =( ah, the wonders and temptations of technology. so i'm almost home. i can't wait. (oops. please turn your heads counterclockwise to view the photo)

(surprisingly, another blog entry, so soon. on a friday night) things that make new york still my favorite city so far in this country: 1. the subway get an unlimited pass and you can take the train or bus to ANYWHERE in this city. get on at times square and get off at a totally different world, like chinatown, or the bronx, or the east village. or flushing (may sariling mundo). i also love how everything's in blocks and avenues so it's always easy to find your way around. makes me not mind all the walking. all you need is to know how to read. 2. the libraries borrow books at one branch and return them at another. and not just books--graphic novels, audio books, cds, DVDs, magazines.... you can borrow FIFTY items at a time, for as long as THREE WEEKS. whew! and they have free internet, printing, job-search facilities, lectures every day on topics ranging from nutrition, photography, and resume-writing, and a nice collection of art, too. i could stay there all day, i could. (of ...

11 PM on a Monday night, Columbus Day, on the 7 train from Flushing to Bryant Park. Thirty minutes of the train all to ourselves. Isn't it great to have that video function on your digital camera? =D

These are the salmon trying to go up the river to spawn. But they can't because the river has been deliberately blocked by this green metal fence. Imagine these fish two to three feet long exerting all their energies doing what they were made to do, not knowing that the path of their lives has been changed.

Description: NOTE: The writer is a popular Dabawenyo singer concerned with social issues such as fair trade , and is also an economics professor at the University of the Philippnes in Diliman. My name is Gary Granada, I am a KaalagaD volunteer, and I need 5 seconds of your time to help reduce the use of styrofoam in fast food chains. What was meant to be a nice and simple Saint Francis Day motorcade-march to McDonald’s last 6 October 2006 turned out to be a nightmare. We were rudely treated by McDonald’s, to put it mildly. Weeks before, we already sought a dialogue with them to reiterate our concern for their reluctance to reduce their use of styrofoam, despite their pledge to seriously attend to it during our dialogue in 2002! (Jollibee said the same thing, and while we are not satisfied with their response, at least they made some effort to shift to other packaging and serving materials.) We wrote to them, went to their office, made follow ups, waited for a response. The most we got ...

And this is where the salmon are forced to go because they can't go further upriver-- into crowded holding ponds where they're caught, killed, and milked for their eggs and sperm, which will then be put in basins for fertilization. I mean, sure they're going to die, anyway, right after they spawn. But in the river, they die on their own terms, among the stones. And not until the males have fought valiantly for their mates, and the females have laid their eggs and made sure they've hatched. Not in the hands of a knife-wielding salmon hatchery worker.

i'm at south street seaport right now, and it's about 4:30 pm, dawn on the other side of the world. i'm sitting in a lounge chair with a view of the brooklyn bridge, and the river, tug boats and water taxis sailing along as the sun sinks lower behind the buildings. it's an indian summer now, they call it, a sudden warm week in the middle of fall. the sun is following me even though i keep moving away. just got back from the salmon river in upstate new york. every year, the salmon fight the current in the river, going upstream to lay their eggs in the place they themselves were hatched. it was incredible seeing these big fish, and also quite sad. will be posting a video later to explain. stayed in a cabin at the shore of lake ontario (yup, across canada!). on the way home, dropped by albany, the state capital (something like boston and DC), an orchard in clinton for wine-tasting, a lake in the woods serendipitously discovered, and the vanderbilt mansion overlooking the h...