the Earth-bound adventures of the Lost and Found

Here's hoping it was warm and fuzzy as this bunny for all of you out there ;)

Start:      Nov 30, '07 10:00a End:      Dec 23, '07 9:00p Location:      Gate 1, South Harbor, Manila Pier 13 (near The Manila Hotel) MV Doulos, the world's oldest ocean-going passenger ship (just two years younger than the Titanic), is coming back to Manila with its half a million books for sale, with 6,000 titles covering a wide range of subjects such as science, education, technology, cooking, sports, and children's literature. The Doulos has over 350 volunteer crew members on board from over 50 countries. In its 29 years of operation, the ship has visited more than 100 countires in all continents except Antarctica (and Australia?). It is owned and operated by Gute Bucher fur Alle, a non-profit charity organization in Germany. I still have fond memories of the ship and the Enid Blyton books I got from when the ship visited Davao when I was in grade school :D Entrance Fee: P10 for kids 16 and above :) everyone else younger is free of charg...

lost and found by Jeneen R. Garcia to be published on 24 November 2007   SOME THINGS COME without being called. Like cats. And love letters. Or, happily, a precious poem writing itself in the middle of a crazy, hectic week.   This past year opportunities have been dropping onto my lap, unexpected—people who turned out to be the very ones I needed to meet at just the right time, trips to the remotest places I’d always dreamed of going to, but never thought I’d reach for lack of funds and logistics. Opportunities, too, for sources of income, at the times my own funds were running low. Certainly nothing short of miraculous for somebody unemployed and studying full-time.   It’s been Murphy’s Law turned upside down. Everywhere I turn, things fall neatly into place. It’s perhaps what they say about all things working together for good for those who love God, or the universe conspiring, the fates converging.   To what do I owe this seeming reversal in fortune? ...

Start:      Nov 26, '07 6:00p End:      Nov 26, '07 11:00p Location:      Celebrity Sports Plaza, Capitol Hills Drive, Diliman, Quezon City Nine finalists for the best Marine Protected Area (MPA) in the Philippines will be competing for the grand prize, as guests feast on a sumptuous dinner and listen to great music by different performers (Indio I's definitely coming. i've invited Joey Ayala--he said he'll confirm on wednesday. and they're also expecting me to perform. ngeks :P hosts will be the Bb. Pilipinas daw and richard gutierrez. hmm..). You might want to root for your hometown! Please forward to whomever you think might be interested. Call Ms. Rhia Gonzales (or me :) at 981-8500 loc. 2911 for tickets at P500. Attire: Smart-casual. To explain further, I'm posting the PR I wrote for the event. ============ LGUs Reap Awards for Giving Up Seas Sacrifice does pay off. For giving up more than 20 hectares of their fishing grounds for a mini...

Rating: ★★★★★ Category: Other lost and found by Jeneen R. Garcia published in July 2004 In commemoration of the fourth year anniversary of lost & found , I am posting the eight essays that were published pre-Multiply. As it happens, these essays are also among my favorites so far :) This one is also very close to my heart because it perfectly captures my boundless joy for rain :) In Davao, the end of summer is marked by heavy rains, the darkly gray kind that leaves everything smelling of wet, green earth afterwards. This was the rain of my childhood. Sunburned days at the beach ended with dances in the rain then—gleeful splashing around the garden, standing under the shower of a roof gutter, peering through the gate to see the neighborhood children playing games in the flooded streets. I especially loved it when the house got flooded, too. Something about living in a watery house appealed to me. I imagined the whole living room was a lake, or an ocean, or—later on, as we took it up...

Rating: ★★★★★ Category: Other lost and found by Jeneen R. Garcia published in June 2004 In commemoration of the fourth year anniversary of lost & found , I am posting the eight essays that were published pre-Multiply. As it happens, these essays are also among my favorites so far :) Another post-break-up piece haha ;) My father, he loves taking the elevator to the highest floor of the building. Any building. Almost as if it were a pledge, to view the world from the highest places he can find. He even has the distinction of getting his jacket blown off from the top of the World Trade Center, at a time when it was the tallest building on Earth. As the eldest, and with the personality most similar to his, I think I’ve sort of picked up this peculiarity. I’ve scaled dozens of floors on my own, on various types of elevators, in hotels and corporate towers, out of habit, just to get a glimpse of the view from above. But my obsession with heights has developed its own twist. Ever since hi...

Rating: ★★★★★ Category: Other lost and found by Jeneen R. Garcia published in April 2004 In commemoration of the fourth year anniversary of lost & found , I am posting the eight essays that were published pre-Multiply. As it happens, these essays are also among my favorites so far :) As you can see in this piece--nothing like a painful break-up to give a fresh perspective on the world ;) Some people shop and binge. Others drink, smoke or do drugs. I travel. I don’t exactly know why I’m constantly yearning for departures. As soon as I set foot on home soil my feet are itching and ready to leave again. There’s nothing like the mention of “free travel” to get my spirits up and my adrenaline rushing. The farther away the better, of course. But it hardly matters if it’s the next continent, the next island or the next town, as long as it’s somewhere else. To keep each new place from fading, meaningless, into the next exploration, I started taking pictures, and turning my travels into fea...

Rating: ★★★★★ Category: Other lost and found by Jeneen R. Garcia published in March 2004 In commemoration of the fourth year anniversary of lost & found , I am posting the eight essays that were published pre-Multiply. As it happens, these essays are also among my favorites so far :) As I write now there is a rainbow, no, TWO clear rainbows, the larger one above the other, stretching across the whole expanse of the sky. It is rare that the weather is cool enough to work outdoors. The sight is so incredible, I want to shake everybody around me to make sure they don’t miss it. “Look,” I point out to a one-year old boy practicing how to walk, “do you see that in the sky?” He flashes a toothless grin that says I’m the last one to know. Funny how rainbows fascinate me more now that I’m older, as if I can hardly believe something so amazingly larger-than-life still exists. When we were children, rainbows were as real as Rainbow Brite and My Little Pony, which we could always count on to ...

Start:      Nov 6, '07 11:00p Location:      ABS-CBN, Channel 2 Please watch The Correspondents tomorrow night, November 6, after BANDILA. It features the 1,500-km walk of the Sumilao Farmers from Bukidnon to Manila to reclaim their 144-hectare land. Click here if you want to know what this is all about. Tell your friends about it!

Start:      Nov 7, '07 11:00a End:      Nov 7, '07 4:00p Location:      USC AVR, Cebu City The Japan Petroleum Exploration (JAPEX) has had its eyes on the nationally protected Tanon Strait, feeding & breeding ground and marine corridor for whales and dolphins, since more than two years ago, when it started initial explorations. This month JAPEX wants to do actual drilling. The Department of Energy (DOE) is inviting all concerned (that means YOU) to attend the meeting on Wednesday, November 7, at the University of San Carlos in Cebu. Sec. Angelo Reyes and USec Roy Kyamko will be there. Please don't be late. Surely this is important enough to be punctual for :P

Rating: ★★★★ Category: Other lost and found by Jeneen R. Garcia published in February 2004 In commemoration of the fourth year anniversary of lost & found , I am posting the eight essays that were published pre-Multiply. As it happens, these essays are also among my favorites so far :) My photos often elicit one of two reactions from my viewers: narrowed eyes, because they’re trying to figure out what my subject is, or a quick flip to the next photo, because they don’t see anything worth their attention. Though it bewildered me at first, I understand now why this happens, and have learned to forgive them—my photos have a distinct lack of human faces. What human images I have are of strangers, with their faces bowed, turned away, or obscured by shadows. A shrink would think I had a fear of people. Honestly, all I want to do is capture beauty on film. Although based on my viewers’ reactions, beauty is truly in the eye of the beholder. I started taking pictures out of fascination with...

Rating: ★★★★ Category: Other lost and found by Jeneen R. Garcia published in January 2004 In commemoration of the fourth year anniversary of lost & found , I am posting the eight essays that were published pre-Multiply. As it happens, these essays are also among my favorites so far :) When I wrote this one, I was already starting to get stuck on what to write about for my new column. I wrote this with a dry taste in my mouth, but surprisingly this third piece was the one that got very positive responses. Which just shows that even if you don't have the heart for what you're doing, you can still bluff your way through it hehe. I had prided myself on being a light traveler, always with the smallest bag. Then one night I found myself sitting on the floor of JFK Airport in New York in the midst of five “small” bags and an extra-large shopping bag, desperately repacking and re-repacking my handcarried luggage up until forty minutes before my flight. In that crazy moment I finall...

Rating: ★★★★ Category: Other lost and found by Jeneen R. Garcia published in December 2003 In commemoration of the fourth year anniversary of lost & found , I am posting the eight essays that were published pre-Multiply. As it happens, these essays are also among my favorites so far :) When I was four years old, I knew exactly what my future self looked like: twenty-something and striding confidently in a power suit, breezing through the world, totally unfaze-able. Even then I knew I wanted to be independent, career-minded, everything that epitomized the “working girl” motif of the 80’s. Twenty-four was the ultimate grown-up age. When you’re four years old, twenty-four sounds like a good time to settle down, get married and be a perfect mother to three adorable kids, all the while holding that top position in a Fortune 500 company. I don’t know why my standards demanded that Adulthood come so early. Maybe it was growing up as an eldest kid mostly around adults. Maybe it was having ...

Category:    Other/General If you're a friend of mine or just a random web wanderer/world wonderer, and you want to communicate but don't have a Multiply account, click here to send me a message. All words and images on these pages copyright of Jeneen R. Garcia, unless otherwise credited. For permission to use anything, leave a message and I'll try to get back to you ASAP. Current site theme courtesy of Lisa .

Rating: ★★★★★ Category: Other lost and found by Jeneen R. Garcia published in November 2003 In commemoration of the fourth year anniversary of lost & found , I am posting the eight essays that were published pre-Multiply. As it happens, these essays are also among my favorites so far :) This first one is especially close to my heart, and explains everything. Only the Lost & Found section would greet me every morning just outside the Guidance Office as I rushed through the empty halls, as always, late for class. Nobody could miss it. It was a wooden cabinet with glass doors, and it never lacked for uniforms, lunch boxes, wallets and handkerchiefs—a testament to the honesty (and carelessness) of the good Catholic boys and girls in my grade school. Most claimants were regulars: the scruffy little boys who did nothing but play and forget their homework. Losing something always seemed to come with the label “irresponsible”. As a generally good girl, I never dreamed I would get one o...

Category:    Real Estate looking for a place near UP Diliman that isn't dangerous. good for maybe four or five months, starting on the second week of november. preferably P2k or less. thanks!

http://www.panoramio.com/user/1059096 I've long been wondering how those photos of places got into Google Earth, and tonight, I discovered how :D Panoramio is basically a photo uploading site. But its edge over all the others is that you can map out your photos and maybe even get them posted on Google Earth if the photos pass their standards. AND even if your photos don't get worldwide recognition in Google Earth, you can post a Google map of your photos on your website ! Well. If that ain't cool, I don't know what is :P (although i'm still figuring out how to get the map to work on Multiply)

i've been floating, floating it seems these past few days, weeks of craziness having to make my presentations and papers. as if in rebellion (or is it total surrender?), my spirit has been dreaming, dreaming, dreaming. days no longer exist. dreaming and working weaving in and out of my hours, so that i no longer notice when it's dawn, or when it's time for a meal. and my body, frighteningly, seems to have adjusted to it so well that it doesn't even feel sleepy or hungry anymore unless my mind remembers to look at the clock.... at midnight two nights ago, having spent the whole night dreaming awake, i found myself reading poetry with tears running down my cheeks. and i didn't even know why. only after that was i able to work on my presentation. the next night, a poem sprang out of me, so suddenly, i was taken aback. good thing i knew well enough to just listen and write down everything it said. in spite of my better judgment and a final exam i hadn't studied for...

lost and found #37 by Jeneen R. Garcia to be published on 20 October 2007 (with new column pic at left ;)       It has been a year and five months since I left the routine of office work for a different way of living. And how different my life is now!   Two days of the week, I am in class, either teaching or being taught. Four days of the week, I am in the laboratory searching for tiny corals--one millimeter in diameter, sometimes smaller--that have settled on my experimental terracotta tiles. I fight my way through a jungle of filamentous algae, bryozoans, barnacles, sponges, and other encrusting marine critters, hoping to find the slightest sign of coralline growth.   Hour by hour, I run my thumb and forefinger along the surfaces of each tile as if it were the lip of a cherished lover, feeling intently for a certain fine sharpness that can only be the delicate skeletal structure of a baby coral. Now I can tell, from the look of the jungle-like growt...

Description: Cell Phone Waste Collection Pilot Project The Government of the Philippines, through the Board of Investments-Department of Trade and Industry (BOI-DTI), is currently undertaking the €¦’³Study on the Recycling Industry Development in the Philippines€¦’´ with technical assistance from the Government of Japan, through the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). Three pilot projects will be implemented under the Study, one of which is on Cell Phone Waste Collection and Recycling that aims to increase awareness on the proper disposal of cell phone wastes (e.g., cell phone batteries, chargers, cell phone units and accessories) and assess the feasibility of establishing cell phone waste collection in designated areas. Ingredients: The Cell Phone Wastes Collection and Recycling Pilot Project was launched on 14 September 2007 with the support of partners composed of government (DTI, DENR), cell phone manufacturers (Alcatel, LG Electronics, Motorola, Nokia, Samsung, Sony ...

Start:      Oct 17, '07 09:00a End:      Oct 18, '07 12:00p Location:      Audio-Visual Room, University of the Philippines in the Visayas Cebu College Greetings! We are organizing two forums on the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement (JPEPA) next week and we are pleased to invite you and your organization. We are proud to have as speakers those who were directly involved in the just concluded Senate hearings. The schedules are: 1. October 17, 2007 (Wednesday), 9:00am-12noon "JPEPA and its Effects to Agriculture and the Environment" Venue: Audio-Visual Room, University of the Philippines in the Visayas Cebu College Lahug, Cebu City Confirmed speakers: a. Atty. Golda S. Benjamin Coordinator - International Trade, IDEALS b. Atty. Richard Gutierrez Asia Coordinator - Basel Action Network c. Ms. Marnie Dolera Coordinator - Magkaisa Junk JPEPA Coalition *Organized by FDC-Cebu, Universi...

Well yes, if you didn't know yet, corals ARE animals. And what's more, they're CARNIVOROUS, meaning they eat other animals. And they have harpoon thingies that they shoot out at night to reel in their prey. However, this one here is the soft coral Xenia , which probably just filters the water for nutrients instead of actively catching tiny animals (called "zooplankton") with stinging cells (called "nematocysts"), the way the hard corals do. And I just found out now from Google that they're actually popular with aquarium enthusiasts because of their "pulsing". I just thought it was cool how they look like flowers opening and closing :D And I thought you'd find it cool, too, so I took a video of them in action. Taken off Pulaobato, Balabac, Palawan (near Malaysia) last April.

Description: “Lumad” farmers from Sumilao to march on foot for 60 days to reclaim land 8 October 2007 ( This article can also be found at the AFA Website: http://asianfarmers.org/?p=319# ) Quezon City, Philippines -- As a non-violent way of protesting the more than 10 years of injustice they have gone through in trying to reclaim their ancestral land, 50 “lumad” farmers belonging to the Mapalad Multi-purpose Cooperative (MPC) will march on foot from their hometown of Sumilao, Bukidnon in the south to the capital city of Manila in the north from October 10 to December 10. (“Lumad” is the term given to the indigenous peoples in the southern island of Mindanao.) In a letter sent to agrarian reform and rural development advocates in the country and abroad, PAKISAMA, a national confederation of farmers’ associations in the Philippines (of which MPC, through its provincial federation PALAMBU, is a member) asked for support for the farmers’ 60-day march that will hopefully “re-ignite awarenes...

May 2007. My first dive in Anilao, Batangas for the last leg of our research expedition last summer got me a video of this baby Plectorhincus chaetodonoides , a kind of sweetlips (you know they're sweetlips because they have very big lips :P). They look very different when they grow up, yellow with black spots like a leopard, but when they're young, they look as if they're wearing this spotted dress and swim as if they're dancing like crazy! One theory is that they try to imitate the poisonous flatworm so that they won't get eaten. I think they're just amusing haha.

April 2007. On our last dive in Tubbataha for our research expedition (three days of uncharacteristically rough seas and few sharks :(), I got my precious gift: close-up stills of a turtle resting on some corals and, when it still didn't move away after so many shots, a video of it gliding in the strong current and finally descending down the wall of the North Atoll.

Start:      Oct 29, '07 End:      Oct 31, '07 Location:      Leyte State University, Baybay, Leyte a get-together of aquatic scientists from the visayas and mindanao to catch up on what other people are researching on elsewhere

Start:      Oct 24, '07 End:      Oct 26, '07 Location:      Punta Bello Resort, Arevalo, Iloilo City my first-ever scientific conference :D

Start:      Sep 28, '07 8:00p Location:      Tapas Bar & Lounge, Crossroads, Banilad, Cebu City The Women in Literary Arts turns Swet Sixteen... Had to write a poem after so long of no practice. And sing impromptu.

Because it was my everdearest mother's birthday last Thursday, I had to come up with a gift idea that would surpass last year's (a scrapbook of her trip to Davao, personally hand-delivered to New York). Especially since she's been asking me to go visit her again, but I just couldn't leave in the middle of the semester :P My mother, you see, is the type who keeps what her children gives her in her bag so she can take it out and show it to everyone she meets until it's all ratty and torn. Thats why I have to give her something I've made every year--poem, story, photo, drawing--for birthdays, Christmas, etc. Maybe this is also why, for me, the most precious gifts are handmade, not bought. Time and effort are the best expressions of love, after all, more than any amount of money ;) (although money's not so bad, either :P). And so, in the midst of "hell month" (because the semester's deadlines are, as I write, crashing down all around me) and the co...

15 to 16 September 2007. My first real field trip as a teacher, and of course, Murphy's Law went into full swing even though I'd called the shipping lines more than a week before the trip and got reserved seats two days before the trip. So half of us got left behind at the pier. By the time we got to the island, the tide was too high for our lab exercise, and some people HAD to go home that same afternoon. No time to do the scheduled itinerary. So I decided to at least let them have some fun after all that stress. I chose Cambugahay Falls, because I had the impression many of them had never been to any waterfall yet. It was also my underwater casing's first time in a freshwater setting (at last! considering that it was a trip to Kawasan last year that convinced me i really had to buy an underwater casing to capture a friend's expression as we rafted under the waterfall). And here's evidence that people tend to have more fun with waterfalls than at sea. (Must be th...

Start:      Sep 15, '07 06:00a End:      Sep 16, '07 1:00p Location:      Siquijor Island with my zoology class. IT: sandugan point for snorkeling, mt. bandilaan, cambugahay falls. then lounge around the resort the whole morning of the next day. don't you wish i were your teacher? hehehehe.

8 and 9 June 2007. When editor Kristin Llerin asked me to write about Boljoon for the Cebu Yearbook, I asked, "Why ME?". I'd just written an article on it a few months before for the Lifestyle page (supposedly, it was what inspired the Yearbook editors to feature Boljoon in the yearbook), and I felt I had written all I had in me to write about Boljoon, after years of yearning for it. I'd explored all I wanted to. It was a closed book, as far as I was concerned. "Because you like to travel!" she said. Fine. It was MY Boljoon, after all, so I thought it might as well be me. When I got there on a Friday morning (the first weekend of the schoolyear, and I was already on another "vacation" :P) to interview some government officials, I discovered that there was an archeological dig going on in front of its historic church, and that there were actually still a couple of places I hadn't been to...which some of the locals hadn't even heard of, eit...

08 September 2007. Finally was able to go up to the famous Twin Lakes, Lake Balinsasayao and Lake Danao (supposedly the craters of an old volcano separated by a ridge), as chaperone of a zoology class. Went swimming and kayaking (anywhere there's water! that's always my motto). I think my love affair with lakes is really growing, the absence of waterfalls and islets notwithstanding. PS and this time, i'm putting pictures of people, because it seems animals and landscapes are not as interesting to others as they are to me :P

Start:      Sep 14, '07 6:30p Location:      CCP Ramp, Manila Dear Friend, The Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) invites you to the launching of ANI 33 (Nature and Environment) on Friday, 14 September 2007 at 6:33 pm at the CCP Ramp. The launch marks the 20th anniversary of the literary journal, one of the longest surviving literary publications in the Philippines today. Contributors and guest artists will read or perform works included in the anthology aimed at focusing anew our attention on the environment which has recently brought about tragic events to thousands of Filipinos. We hope you will join us in making this occasion a memorable one. Sincerely yours, CCP Literary Arts Division ============ i won't be there, so please attend for me and tell me which works of mine are included in the anthology, since they never told me :P PS o, walang ma-le-late ha! 6:33 pm on the dot! hahahaha

Returning to Dumaguete in June was like returning to a new city with new hangouts that (joy, joy!) have free wi-fi--McDonald's, Jollibee, plus some others that charge per hour--and a National Bookstore at the corner of Silliman (joy, joy!) with walls made entirely of glass. As of last sem, there was wi-fi only at two internet cafes. Imagine that. Civilization, as most cities know it, has finally set in in Dumaguete.   But the best news--wi-fi-wise--is that we also have free wi-fi in school (for a limited period) and at the marine lab =D And I hope to hitch on my neighbor's (yes, I have a neighbor now on the second floor) DSL once I get my own wireless router. So work, school, house--I'll have everything covered hopefully by the end of this month. I HAVE been working on controlling the addiction, too. I no longer stay so late in school surfing. Only till 10:30 pm at the latest =D   In fact, for this semester, I have resolved to put on the habits of a new lifestlye altog...