the Earth-bound adventures of the Lost and Found

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