living dumaguete

thank God for the rain.

 

the other day, and then last night, we finally got SOME downpour, although it was intermittent and didn’t last very long each time.

 

it’s the end of my second week, and i’ve had a little more experience about what they day-to-day is like as a graduate student of Silliman. last Monday, for example, i paid my first visit to the university library.

 

researching at the library

 

i have to say that going into the silliman library makes me miss the ateneo and UP diliman libraries =( i typed in “corals journal” into the online public access catalog (a.k.a. OPAC) and got FIVE results. i typed “fish journal” and got about twenty. and this is in a university by the sea that has pioneered coastal resource management in the philippines? people told me i had to go to the Marine Lab if i wanted to see publications on marine topics, but there the materials aren’t properly cataloged. still, wasn’t this supposed to be the MAIN library?

 

i went to look for the few journal articles i had found on the OPAC and was pointed to the periodicals section (!), which wasn’t even airconditioned, so all the  latest (1980’s) journals were already musty and crumbly. when i told my research teacher that the journals were in the periodicals section, first she didn’t believe me, then she said, “that’s pathetic!”; i could only reply, “i know.”

 

and they close for lunch! for an hour and a half! (i’m like, “what the..?!”). the consolation is that they’re open till 9pm and half-day on Sundays. although when i first went there, it was twenty minutes to noon and they were already closed :-/ so i don’t know if they actually stay till 9.

 

shopping

 

i needed a lamp and had been looking for one since i first came here on nov. 3. i went store-hopping with my father, but didn’t find any that fit my needs. so this week i finally found the time to really shop for one, and i got a cute one that you can hang or clip on a desk or shelf from Lee Plaza, which is like the SM of dumaguete. actually, it was fortunate that i got a good lamp, because it was the only study lamp they had, in all four or five floors of merchandise, plus annexes =P

 

they had some new large models, but they weren’t priced yet, so i said forget it. took me soooooo long deciding on the color (finally settled on pastel aquamarine), and then an even loooonger time deciding on the bulb (softone or daylight?). i kept weighing the aesthetic value and price vs. the impacts on energy use and eyesight, and at the very last second (and i mean the last second, just like with the trash can) chose beauty again over energy efficiency and the health of my eyes. yes, i’m ashamed to say this, but i actually chose the ambience of my room over the effects of the bulb on climate change.

 

so i decided to pay by credit card because i didn’t have enough cash on me. they kept scratching their nails on my signature to see if it was real and THEN they said my signature on the slip was shorter than the signature on my card (!!). i was excused of forging my own signature! they reprinted the slips and made me sign again. before they reprinted, i asked if i could add the other bulb, but they said no, because one can only use one’s credit card at one cashier once.

 

feeling the eye strain after one night, i went back to buy the other bulb, which was at P90. i got some toiletries to make my total purchase at least P100, because otherwise they wouldn’t allow me to use my card. this time, they said, no, you can’t pay for your toiletries at the hardware section, because our computer won’t recognize those items. so again, i had to agonize round and round the hardware section looking for something i could actually use to cover the P10.

 

sigh.

 

and why did i shop at lee plaza again? because all the other shops close for lunch, for TWO hours (what the...?!).

 

dining

 

my first week, i was spending about P60-P100 per meal, which for me is already expensive, especially since this is dumaguete AND i don’t have a job to provide a steady supply of funds. this week, i got smarter and have actually gotten it down to P23-P50. found more of the cheaper places, and well, i AM eating less now =P back to my normal appetite i mean, because my appetite drastically increased when i was in davao and new york. also eating healthier – half serving of vegetables, one pc. fish or chicken (nothing fried), half rice, plus fruit. yes, the poor usually manage to avoid a lot of diseases.

 

teaching

 

after the first day (and a lot of prayers), speaking in front of class actually felt natural. the greater effort is in the experiments i have to perform or specimens i have to identify under the microscope BEFORE class so i can demonstrate the set-up and explain the results or any errors they might get. the other day, i spent practically the whole day trying to get two experiments right, and until the last minute i still couldn’t get them to work! but by the grace of God (and desperate, desperate prayer), i tried a completely new method WHILE demonstrating in class and that one finally worked. whew.

 

started checking their answer sheets last night. QUESTION: why do the particles move faster when heated, and slower when cooled? ANSWER: it’s just like when we are under the heat of the sun, we walk faster because we don’t want to get burned, and when we are walking in snow, we walk more slowly so we will not feel cold.

 

i gave the girl an extra point for creative thinking. most of them don’t think AT ALL, and these are repeaters of the subject.

 

oh and another hirit, this time from a Fil-Am guy at our second meeting: “Um, I just want to say...” (me holding my breath thinking it’s a comment on how i handle the class) “...I like how those jeans fit on you.” i wasn’t able to even react because he left right away after saying that, but at least i haven’t gotten any more hirits since. the things kids say and do to pass a course.

 

studying

 

since i have a research class now, i have to come up with a thesis proposal already. the first batch of ideas i had, i was advised to shift to Environmental Science, and every meeting since then, i’ve been changing my thesis topic, from MPAs and commercial fishing and tourism to jackfish and lunar phases and spawning behavior.

 

but FINALLY i got a good idea the other night, about currents and bleached corals, and when i asked some people about it, they didn’t say it was impossible or too trivial =) this morning i went to the Marine Lab and asked the great Dr. Alcala for his opinion (the father of community-based coastal resource management, according to Haribon), and he liked my idea! and seeing a real hard-core researcher in his office, to see how ideas are turned into facts--wow, that was inspiring. i hope i can do some work under him, if only to feel how it is to make the search for scientific truth your life’s work. to not read the facts from books but to see and touch them yourself and say i was THERE.

 

i’ve never seen myself as a researcher (probably because i broke so many things in lab AND field =P), but this is actually getting me pretty excited. hopefully, some people will want to fund my study.

 

the smell of the sea at the Marine Lab reminds me once again that this is where i belong right now. tomorrow, like a real scientist, i’ll be attending a presentation on firsthand information gathered by the researchers at the marine lab from the oil spill in guimaras. =D