Road Trip

We definitely "know the way to San Jose," the capitol of Antique Provence; we travel the 70km  (about 44 mi.) to go there pretty frequently on various errands.  I haven't kept exact count but it's fairly certain that in 26 or so weeks we have been in the Philippines that we have made more than 15 trips, as we seem to average about every week-and-a-half.  There are services  and goods in San Jose that either aren't at Tibiao, where we live, or are enough cheaper to make it worth the trip: health care, grocers, supermarket, "discount emporium" type merchandisers,  large-scale building supply/ hardware/ equipment companies, and furniture and appliance stores. (Wikipedia has good articles about this area; type San Jose, Antique, Philippines in their search box; also, see "Antique, Philippines".)  After awhile you might think the trip would get "humdrum" or just become a nuisance, but for me, up to now, it hasn't.  I thoroughly enjoy riding along and looking at the constantly changing scenery, keeping an eye on how the driver is handling his job, and watching out for the sights which are particular to this area of the Philippines.  The trip by bus or service van usually takes a little over 90 minutes (no super-highway, here) and it is never boring.  It is a challenge to try to show the panorama of changing scenery in a series of snap-shots; also darn hard at times to even get photos from inside a moving vehicle - but I'm going to put up a sampling of what I've managed to capture on the memory-chip, trying to share the travel experience here as best I can.

Less than five minutes from our neighborhood, we cross the first of several 

long bridges encountered between Tibiao and San Jose.  There are more
than 30 various bridges along this stretch of road, and 3 or 4 of them cross
floodplains requiring them to be several-hundred-yards (meters) long.

 These larger rivers nearly always have sand- and- gravel excavation
in progress.  Everything substantial in this area is built of concrete,
and here is the raw material in abundance.

Typical stretch of road, main highway 2-lane 20-feet wide.  Fringes of
trees, lots of agriculture (mostly rice, but corn, sugarcane and peanuts
are seen, too).  Unusual not to have other traffic in the scene.  This trip,
I was in the front seat on the right.  Sometimes the ride is placid, but
it can quickly become more interesting - kind of like a road-race
video game, at times.

 Overarching of trees is pretty frequent.  This area reminds me of some

secondary routes in California.

Getting into an area of houses inside walled compounds, a rambling

bougainvillea vine accents the roadside.  You never quite know what

will be around such a curve as this one - - -

but suddenly you've passed from open countryside to the middle of a 

bustling small town.  This is Bugyasong.  The Suzuki pickup truck

approaching ("flat-nose, bug-eyed") is about 2/3 of the size of a Ford

Ranger or other compact pickup.  These are very common here.

The town-hall expansion project, in progress.    Every single  stacked bag

of sand and gravel will be hand-carried into the site and mixed into cement

for the project.  I did see a couple portable cement mixers here.  The large

machines on display I thought were some type of huge winch.  Turns out

they are fake, commemorative sculptures of sugarcane presses.

At the edge of  town, just before a medium-river bridge, the local

funeral parlor has a selection of caskets on display at the roadside.

A couple minutes later you may find yourself riding alongside the ocean

shore.  We are on the west coast of Panay Island;  this part of the Pacific 

Ocean is  named on maps as "Sulu Sea" and seems to be the ocean area

bounded by our island and the closest islands west and north of us.

  Approaching a road-work project; "your tax money at work for you" 

sign very similar to ones seen in the U.S.

We overtook this load of bamboo and passengers at about the same

rate an F-16 would pass Orville Wright.  At first I thought the vehicle

would be a tricycle; turns out it's a trailer pulled by a 2-wheel "walk-

behind" farm tractor.  These are common here; they look something like

a  roto-tiller on steroids, and are often seen in rice-fields with paddle-

wheels instead of tires, because of extra-muddy conditions.

I mentioned in my posting about Jeepneys that they are often loaded with

top-freight and will have passengers hanging all over outside.  This one

we're just about to zip past is only a fair example, not nearly as piled-

up as some I've seen.  I'll share a gallery of loaded vehicles another time.

A little tin-roof bamboo house glimpsed near the road sits near a few

acres of vegetable crop-land and rice fields.  Very typical scene, amid

other much more prominent establishments.

This tower is near the road, is inside several acres of fenced and

landscaped yard-space . . . 

. . .  with this house, illustrating the contrasts often seen within a few

seconds while travelling here.

I had been wanting to get a decent photo of St. Augustine's Academy
in Patnongan for quite a while.  The vehicles I'm in rarely stop where I'd
like them to for photo purposes; but since I was in the front seat and knew
we would be "setting up" for the wide right-hand corner before the Academy,
I stuck my arm 'way out the right side, took a guess at aiming, and pushed
the button.   Yahooo - -The mirror you see is the right-front-corner of the bus.
St. A's has been around for quite a while; guess it's time for me to research it.
(LATER: online search for info about St. A's got me nothing).

Sign often seen but not observed.  Philippine drivers in general are
much more attentive and courteous than most places I have been.
They have to be so!!  The "unwritten rules" here are different - any
speed that conditions will allow is legal.  Drivers starting out MUST
look first, because in any place another vehicle may be approaching
at high speed.  Drivers already on the road will begin sounding the
horn as a precaution if they see any possible chance of a mishap.
A horn is not an insult here, it is a necessary protection.

I think we stopped just before this bridge, to pick-up or drop passengers.
Otherwise there's little chance that the Coca-Cola truck would ever be
passing us.  In our area there are a lot of familiar brand-names on trucks
and in stores.  There will be a truck blog- post sometime soon - having
been a trucker for so long, I'm surprised I haven't already done one.

Whenever this delivery tricycle goes around a corner, you'd have to
say "The Tide has turned . . ."

Belison Public Market always appears busy and bustling, with many
tricycles and other vehicles out in front.  Its well-worn appearance - -

 contrasts with the sprawling openness of school and church campuses
directly across the highway.

Arriving in SanJo (as I often abbreviate it) I switch to snapping my
photos from the back seat of a tricycle taxi, craning around to get
a shot on the left past the driver's head.  Except for tricycles, street
scenes here remind me a lot of trips we took to Tijuana, Calexico,
and Juarez, Mexico years ago.

This business has a great selection of tools, tiles, and electric and
plumbing  fixtures.  Our coach-type porch lights came from here.

Here's one of my favorite photos.  Philippine Government seems to
NOT have too much regulation, usually.  This may be an exception,
since coconuts grow wild all over the place here.  What needs any
"Authority?"  I've had a lot of fun imagining the Coconut Agents
riding around in dark tinted-glass SUVs, wearing pinstripe suits and
sunglasses but with flip-flops on their feet, calling in the SWAT team
for enforcement and negotiations . . .(smile)
(Please Note:  the foregoing is not to be taken as a criticism of any
person or agency.  It is only my attempt to be humorous about  my 
personal aversion to any perceived over-involvement by any
government in my activities, or anyone else's activities.)

Well, that's a lot of photos but as usual I've had to pick through a lot which I would  like to have included.  I think the count is more than 20 this time so I better quit.  There are all kinds of things I haven't had a chance to post on this blog yet, so I'm not quite sure which topic will grab my interest for next time.   The finishing details on our house are keeping me really busy at this time but I will try to get another posting up reasonably soon.  

Have a blessed and wonderful day, wherever you are.  Life often consists more in how we look at things (attitude) than is what those things actually are.

Tim and Bernadette Larson, Philippines

Windows 2013 (and doors, etc.)

Windows didn't capture my imagination much when I was younger.  You just look through them, open them, close them - nothing much interesting there.  Still, having been through quite a process in building a house recently, I came to have more appreciation for the role windows play in making ANY building complete.  You may have already guessed, there are some things about windows in the Philippines which seem a little different from what we experience when constructing a building in the USA.
The energy-efficiency thing is not much of an issue here.  Temperature almost never goes below 60 F.  If you have air-conditioning (refrigeration) it might be nice to have air-tight windows but in fact little consideration is given to air-tightness or to insulation here. (We have roll-polyfoam insulation above all our ceilings.)  The issues with window-design here are light (illumination), ventilation, and security.  We wanted windows which would allow lots of natural light and ventilation, but which would not invite unwanted intrusion, either by other humans or by cats.  It happened that the existing house on our property had nearly ideal windows, so we found a window company which could replicate those windows in our new house.

The windows of the "old" house are steel-construction casement-type.

The glass is translucent; it lets in natural light but doesn't allow a person

outside to see any inside details.  There's a grid-work of  steel bars which

are arranged into a pattern of "H-es", preventing entry or exit via the

windows.  The four  panels can pivot open, allowing lots of fresh air.
This design eliminates the expense of  additional security bars. Also

note we've added bamboo slats to discourage cats entering.

The window company came out and measured, and sketched, and we

received a very reasonable bid.  Two weeks later, the windows arrived

and we began setting them into the rough openings. Above shows one

window and its rough sill, prior to finished cement-work.

More cement, and sometimes cement-blocks are added around the

window, and it is carefully finished using the same methods as the wall-

finish. The darker cement in this photo shows the contour of the opening.

The front- wall window is installed.  It will be finish-color painted before

the glass is installed.  Molding work is partially complete. I had mentioned

to my Bro.-in-law some cement molding I  noticed on another house nearby.

He said, "I can do that,"   soooo - -

He first sketched 3 outlines on pieces of plywood, then cut them out

to use as templates.  The molding outlines came "straight out of his

head;" - he has a natural "eye" for architectural details it seems.  This

template is for the "window stool" molding, which goes below the window.

Re-bar was added where needed, and "mud daubing" began, with

the template being repeatedly passed along the surface to check

contour as the work progressed,  Here, the stool is nearly ready 

for final contouring.  The fluted side-molding is already done.

The front window, molded, painted, and glazed - a marked contrast

from its appearance 3 photos above.  Later the exterior wall will be

painted  cream/ tan color and the moldings slightly darker.

Meantime, my heavy-duty Skil-saw arrived among many boxes of our

things shipped via ocean container.  I bought a transformer/ converter

which converts Philippines 220v/ 50hz into USA standard electricity,

allowing me the use of my old favorite tools.  Here the saw is inverted

 in a table and used to cut stock for door-frames and trim-moldings.

A couple passes with the router, and - presto - we have molding to put

around the bedroom ceiling. The above molding is actually 2-inches wide.

My mom made a great many quilts for about 30 years.  In the USA it

has become popular some places to put gigantic quilt squares (patterns) 

on barns (there are magazine articles which feature this).  I liked this

pattern, not necessarily the colors, on a barn near Bedford, KY, which

I often passed while on my trucking route.

The barn photo became the basis for the design on our 8-foot wide work-

shop doors which are to the left of the front window.  Here the pattern is

extended with a border, much as a quilting housewife might have done

before adding the inner batting and backing to make her quilt complete.

The entry-door porch lamp is provided with a "missile deflection system"

as many youngsters nearby are handy with sling-shots.  An identical lamp

will go between the window and the shop doors, on the front of the house.

I mentioned being a "fan of electric fans" in an earlier posting.  I still

really like fans; but the above subject, while it may seem plain to folks

in the USA, is a thing of great beauty and a joy to behold, for me!

We still have not moved into the house as of this writing, May 2.  There are interior finishing details, especially tile-work in the bathroom, which continually create more construction dust.  But we're real close!  seems likely we will be able to unpack bedroom items and set up in a few days.  We can enjoy resting with our new "Aircon" (the expression used here instead of "AAY-CEE") while the we complete  last details such as cabinet- and closet- work.

We've traveled back and forth from San Jose on errands more times than I can count, these last several months.  But the ride down there and back has never become mundane or boring.  The constant change of scenery from seashore to mountain to farmland to village constantly renews a traveler's interest.  So perhaps in the next blog I'll try to share with  you, at least in part, what it's like to travel through our area.  Thanks for checking in with us!  Have a great day - -

Tim and Bernadette Larson,  Philippines