Things Just Keep Going Along

It seemed like a humdrum day as we headed towards San Jose recently.  We do "routine errands" there about once a month, and I was feeling a little bored with everything.  Since Joseph was driving that morning, I decided to try to get a few scenic photos as we rode along.

 We are really privileged to live in a pretty area.  It's not

unusual to see trees completely over-arching a peaceful

stretch of the main highway.

 This area reminds me of the rural roads in northern California.

Very LARGE Acacia trees are pretty common.

This tree house sits about 8 feet off the ground, atop an

Acacia trunk which seems 6 feet across at that height.  Likely

the rest of the tree was destroyed by Typhoon Yolanda

in November of 2013.

Frequent vistas of the ocean are restful to the eye.

I enjoy watching the progress of various projects as I travel along the same road every few weeks.  One quite large project for a number of months has been a church building at Laua-an, about 15 miles south of our place at Tibiao.

THIS is the former building, perhaps over 3 years ago.  The

figure of Jesus (?) standing on the world-globe had caught

my eye several times, and apparently the van or bus we were

in (before we had a vehicle here) stopped long enough for me

to get this photo (slightly blurry).  The building was apparently
damaged by the typhoon, and for a while the figure was gone.

6 months ago, the site had been cleared and this huge

steel-framed structure was begun.  Steel is very expensive

here, so it is unusual to see this; even large structures are

usually formed-in-place concrete posts and beams.

Months later, the structure seemed fairly complete with
conventional concrete block work - -

when (it seemed, suddenly) many truckloads of reddish

clay bricks began arriving.  I have seen no other red-brick

building anywhere nearby; the bricks would have to be

imported from somewhere, at great cost.  

The Jesus- figure was placed in a niche near the

top of the front wall.

The nearly completed structure is about 100 feet long and

50 feet tall, completely faced with clay brick.  Even the fence

has giant-sized red brick facing over its concrete blocks.

A few days ago, my niece Angela who teaches on Semirara

Island (100 miles northwest of here) mentioned that the

owner of the large mining corporation there is friends

with the priest of this parish in Laua-an.  The "word" on

Semirara was that he had been sending materials to

construct this church, and she was quite interested to

see the photos. For me, a small mystery solved.  (The

school year is done, here, so Angela is "home" for a while.)

Well, the church- building project was kind of a side track.  But  watching any sort of "process" has always been interesting to me.  This was a notable and very large project for our area.  My "fair guess" is that the building in the USA might exceed $5 Million.

I got to go to Malumpati Resort last Saturday.  It is where a
cold-water spring comes out of the mountain, and it was first
"developed" with a dam built in the 1940s as a Japanese military
officers' R and R location.  The resort is about 35 miles north
of Tibiao, near Pandan.  (Map-link, shows the resort location)

I had visited this place in 2001, when there were only a few
modest buildings and lots of grass lawn, around the dam. Now,
there are many covered tables for rent by the day, and several
large overnight lodging houses on the site.  I'm an occasional
swimmer - just good enough to swim back to the edge after
jumping off the high-dive, which I did a few times that day.

This photo looks from the center of the pedestrian bridge seen

in the first photo; the diving board is at the right side, and the

dam seems about 100 yards away, just where the water

and trees appear to merge in the photo.  At 8:30 a.m., there

weren't many swimmers.  An hour later and throughout

the day, the water was qute full of people.  COLD water

temperature and lots of shade made this a beautiful and

refreshing place to spend a day.

But for me, life here is pretty much about my OWN projects.  We have had the right coincidence of funding and manpower to get some quality-of-life things taken care of in the last month or so.

For 3- 1/2 years the location of THIS bamboo pole had been

a real nuisance to me.  As part of the roof over our "dirty

kitchen" (that is what an outdoor cooking area such as a

patio is called, here) we couldn't move it, until we could

get around to renovating that outdoor kitchen.  So a dozen

or more times per day I was twisting and ducking to avoid

banging into it as I walked around the corner of the house.

Meanwhile the bamboo structure of the outside kitchen was

gradually deteriorating.  It was built for temporary use 8 or 9

years ago. We were just too busy with other projects to do

anything about it until recently.  Despite its rustic appearance,

we have kept it in constant use, as this keeps cooking heat

out of the house and is also more cost efficient.  So  the

replacement "PATIO" must be built while leaving this in use.

This shows the location of the "old kitchen," at the back

corner of the house.  Putting a larger roof over this area

also gave us the opportunity to extend forward along the

entire west wall of the blue house (also providing a car-

port).  For years, we had wanted to screen the afternoon

sun from that cement wall - - finally, our chance!

Details of steel-rebar fabrication, and forming and pouring the

cement posts, are in several older blog-postings.  This photo

shows the location of the new line of posts, about 16- feet from

the house wall, plus the beginnings of the steel roof frame.

 An innovation for us with this project: all-steel roof structure.
Wood is getting scarce and expensive here.  It was even cost-
effective for us to buy a small welding-machine, which has
proven to be a reliable and much more capable unit than
I thought it would be.

ANYONE can buy materials and weld trusses, here.  No
inspections/ regulations.  Here is a detail of one of our made-
on-site trusses, attached to its base with an anchored loop
of heavy re-bar.  Our water-reservoir tower  happened to line
up with the new roof-project, so that we were saved pouring
some posts by tying- into the tower structure.

This shows completion of the front part of the project.  The 

back area of the roof extended above the old "dirty kitchen,"

which was left intact during this phase of construction.

Meanwhile, a last remnant of the "OLD dirty kitchen" is still
in use while the new counter top is poured.

This shows near-completion; a nice 14 x 14 space with a heavy-

quality 2-basin stainless steel sink which Bernadette brought

from Hong Kong years ago.  The inverted wash-basin plus

cement-block weight, at center, likely is "cat-proofing" some

fresh fish which are waiting to be cleaned and prepared.  I

have plans to put an outdoor oven at the left end of the sink

area, as soon as I can.

One recent morning, the "catch of the day" included this

swordfish.  These have nice, juicy white meat.  He was

"right on" 4- feet long.

But he didn't last, long.  I kidded sis- in- law Gina about her

artistic ability after she had "shortened" him.  Seemed to me 

that her "interpretation" of the fish was Picasso-like.  (He

didn't last "short," either.  He was lunch!)

Once I "get rolling" with a blog-posting, it seems like there's always more to add.  I have left out photos of  several things, which perhaps I'll manage to work into the next posting.  

I am learning to adapt to this place - -  but beginning to realize that it will probably NEVER be "I have learned."  Maybe a bit like patience; you never learn it, you are always learning it.

That "little rant," because there are at least 4 or 5 things at this moment which are "stalled" for lack of materials or whatever.  MAYBE I'm learning where the "line" is, between realizing that things often aren't as URGENT as I think they are at first, AND just "folding up" an intended project for lack of enough continuing motivation.   

"One day at a time" seems to be a good answer.  I'm blessed with plenty of time to "call my own" now and I hope that from the perspective of some future point, I will turn out to have made fairly good use of it.

We hope that you are all enjoying the Spring season there.  Take time to "smell the roses!"

Have a great day!

TJ and Bernadette Larson

LATER note:  There always seem to be odd little things that happen in the published posting, and they WILL NOT go away.   Double-spacing of text after the last "church photo," and shifting from black text to blue text- color intermittently seems to about sum up the funny stuff this time.  Guess it doesn't hurt anything.