the Earth-bound adventures of the Lost and Found

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.