Various Vehicles; (the "rundown" on them)

Commercial vehicles just aren't photogenic.  They pretty much all look the same, unless you have some particular interest in them.  It has seemed a little odd to me, that I haven't put much up here about commercial vehicles, since that aspect of the economy was literally "my life" for so many years.  Maybe it is "photographic challenge" (a little worried that it won't be interesting) which has caused me to procrastinate showing you some of the oddities of commercial transportation in our area of the Philippines.   You've already heard it before, from me - - Things are different, here.
First, the "culture" of driving is different.  There aren't as many regulations, nor speed limits per se, so in general the "professional" drivers (and many of the "civilian drivers") just plain drive faster in given circumstances than we're used to seeing in the USA.  Mostly, in "residential" or "congested" areas,  if there is no obvious obstacle - you get used to seeing vehicles roar through such an area at 50-plus mph, instead of the 25 - 30- mph you'd see in the USA.  The key difference here, is people are used to this.  They are more alert to approaching traffic.  Any driver or pedestrian entering the roadway just "naturally" allows that any approaching vehicle is moving fast.  And, any driver approaching a situation where he can see that someone may move unexpectedly, begins to honk his horn - - not a "mean, nasty blaring" honk, but just a tap- tap-  to alert everyone, just  in case.  There's really no reason to slow down, because nobody expects him to. It works out just fine.
We use buses and vans pretty interchangeably, when we're travelling here.  Any time after about 5:30 a.m., we can step out to the highway and expect to find buses and service vans coming along every few minutes.  Whichever one comes first, is usually what we ride.

This nearly-new service van was at the end of our street one afternoon,

so I snapped a photo.  Nearly all service vans are white - it makes it

easier for prospective passengers to see them coming and "flag" them

by waving. A placard in the windshield will indicate the destination.  Most

of them around here are the same model  Nissan "URVAN" with 5 rows

of seating in a medium-sized van body.  1.8 liter diesel, 5-speed, air-

conditioned.  Nearly always more banged-up looking, and often with

well over 100,000 miles on them.  Fare is the same as for a bus, usually.

 

You would NOT see this collection in a commercial passenger vehicle

in the USA!!  I made a list of the "critters" in my pocket notebook:  9

assorted plush toys, 2 bobble-head doggies, 6 dangling plush toys,
Virgin Mary, Buddha,  2 "Asian Deity" gods,  2 rosaries (all "religious
bases" covered), shoe, 3 air fresheners, 2 "waving rose" solar toys, 2
tassels, and a border of plastic flowers and leaves.  This van is apparently
privately owned and contracted to the transportation  company.

Technical stuff about vans:  Occasionally you'll see a Toyota, Kia or other make than Nissan.  One China-made van I rode in was a rarity - and apparently a never-to-be repeated purchase (clunker!).  Nearly always 1.8 liter diesel/ 5-speed; top speed about 100 kph = 62 mph. "Sardine act" inside at times with 18 passengers.  Less likely than a bus to have many-many stops because fewer passengers = fewer destinations.  Air conditioned, but often not real cool and hardly better than open windows many days.  Different companies have different standards, for maintenance and driver quality.

Ceres is the largest passenger-transport company in the Philippines.
Their yellow coaches are iconic, here.  They keep a high standard of
maintenance and are always respectably clean and decent (for a
commercial vehicle) though seats may be pretty worn and patched.
Fare for 45-mile ride to San Jose is US $2.00; they generally run
20 to 30 minutes apart, both directions, depending on day-of-week.

 "Buck Rogers spaceship accessory" styling of the ceiling light amused
me;  the buses are generally crisp-modern looking.  The lights around
the rim are LED-bulbs, and in the center is a mini-florescent tube.

Drivers are uniform-shirted and usually wear closed shoes (maybe
COMPANY policy?).  So this driver's flip-flops were unusual for CERES.

Technical stuff about their buses:   Their current crop of buses is Hino-manufactured (easy to find on-line, a BIG Japanese   company).  They are about 26-feet, 40-passenger,  4.5 liter diesel w/ 5-speed; equipped with engine "Jake" brake; very good low-end torque for lugging;  drivers tend to upshift pretty low-RPM (under 1700 often) though they are governed to about 2650.  Top speed also 100 kph.  Drivers will jump on the brakes and slow to 20 mph or less, then try to "lug out" in 4th or 5th gear .  THIS COMPANY has drivers who appear to have had some  professional training.  The passenger next to me smiled one morning when I tape-measured the seat-back in front of me - 13-inches wide.  I have ridden in one bus which picked up a crew of National Guardsmen - we were FULL-plus-FIFTEEN-standees in a 9-row bus.  I have ridden as a standee for 15 or 20 minutes at a time;  I call it "road surfing" because the motion of the bus and my inability to see ahead on the road (too many bodies in front of me) make for a lot of "footwork" trying to keep balanced.

The Agares have 2 vehicles.  CERES started out with one, in 1968.  This

bus (see "Cement Delivery" posting) is old but very carefully maintained,

as is their jeepney (more recent vehicle).  Several other bus companies

run through our area, often with "contractor" buses, and widely varying

standards for maintenance and driver proficiency.  These smaller companies

usually have cheaper fares than the "majors."

High-end luxury buses are also common here.  These are sometimes

tourist-transporters;  Boracay, a major resort island, is nearby and

these make the link to airports. Some buses, which have both recliner-

seats and "sleeper rooms" are for the Manila-transportation business.

The bus will board an ocean-ferry bound for Manila, and its passengers

will have accommodations instead of trying to live-on-a-bench for a day,

as less affluent ferry passengers do.  This service costs less than 1/3

of what airplane  travel to Manila costs. 

 Trucks look the same, everywhere.  I have only seen semi-trailer trucks

here on TV in Metro Manila traffic newscasts.  This is typical for a

heavy freighter here.  Tarp or "hard-shell" open sides are most

common -  better access to everything on-board.  Docks and fork-lifts

are not expected-as-usual;  "digital handling" (Digits = fingers, plus hands,

arms) is the norm.

I've seen only a couple of these old Isuzu conventional-cab (got a "nose")

dump trucks around here.  Everything else is cab-over-engine type.

Medium-size box trucks are also quite common.  This one is pretty

clean-looking; often they seem to be older than the guys driving them.

Fancy mechanical system folds and opens the aluminum sides of

this freight truck.  I've only seen a couple like this.

Really long tail-sections (behind the rear axle) are pretty common

here; when the truck turns, the tail swings the opposite direction

and can "clobber" things in its way, if the driver isn't careful. This

one seems like it could take out half a city block

Weird looking setup I've seen several times:  TWO steering axles and

ONE load-axle.  This would allow more weight to be towards the

front of the truck - but "why?" I don't know.

One reader asked me how the load stays in the Coca-Cola truck

(featured in "Road Trip" blog).  There are no roll-up doors on the

load-bays.  As in the USA, the floor is tilted so stacks are leaning

towards the middle of the truck; and, there are metal bars and

chains which fasten between the posts  

Technical stuff about trucks is hard to get - there's the language barrier, and drivers are pretty busy guys. Nearly all trucks here are Japanese: Isuzu, Nissan, and Mitsubishi mainly. Every vehicle I've seen here seems to be manual transmission, mostly 5-speed, except a few very "high-end" luxury pickups and SUVs.  Most of the trucks seem to be conservatively-powered (fuel economy, no 12 or 14-liter "hot rods") with everything super-durable long-wearing.  The sheer physics of keeping a heavy truck on the type of roads here, means that they are driven noticeably slower than buses and vans, in general.  These guys are usually very commendably cautious - they like being alive, I guess!

"Overloads:"  In the BLOG postings "Jeepney" and "Tricycle," I mentioned that quite often these vehicles are piled high with people and freight - but I hadn't caught any examples with the camera at that time.  (It's a constant challenge for me to have the camera ready as it takes 2 seconds to "turn on" and 1 second to re-set between shots - plus a lot of what I see is from inside a moving bus or van.)

Over many months, I've gotten a few good "shots" of heavily - or just bulkily - loaded vehicles:

I often see ten standees on the back bumper of a jeepney.  This
shot is a little tame - there's room for at least 4 more on the
lower part of that rear bumper- rack.

A mixture of freight and roof-riders? - no problema!

Refrigerator

Would you have believed me, if I had told,  but not shown?  The

pig was leashed on both sides, so he could move around, with

limits.  Loading must have been interesting - - agitated livestock

often make messes.

Group charter.

Tricycles get their share of large loads, too.  Here are high school

students on their way home.  Next photo in the camera showed

at least three of these tricycles loaded just like this, in a "convoy,"

but the photo was too blurry to publish.  The blur in this photo is

a combination of shooting through a tinted-film van window, and

being in-motion about to pass on the left.

Marching group members heading towards the parade staging area.

A load of bamboo passing through Bugyasong one afternoon.  We

had passed him a few minutes earlier, so when we stopped to let out 

passengers, I was waiting with the camera to catch him.

When we passed this guy en route to Culasi one day, I also took

the opportunity to wait on the road for him to catch up; here

he is,  coming - -

and going.  His cargo is rice-drying mats woven of lath-like

material;  they are about 6- feet by 12- feet, and often are

spread in the road with rice drying on them.  Rice growing

and processing is soon-to-be-posted here.

There are always more "things to see" in any photo- topic that I post, but this seems to me like a fair selection.  I'm glad that I managed to catch the various examples shown above, as it is pretty much a daily occurrence to see such things here.  In the next few posts I  plan to update some about our projects here, and to begin looking at some of the occupations seen in our area, which aren't so familiar in the USA.

Meantime, don't forget to count your blessings, and have a great day!

Tim and Bernadette Larson,  Philippines

A Bunch of Stuff

Actual published date, Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2013,  11:40 a.m. Philippines time

I usually try for a "straight topical" subject in each of my blog posts, but quite a few photos have accumulated which are either "singles" or "just a few," which are of things I see here that strike me as ODD - you wouldn't expect to see this (whatever) in the US of A.  So, this time I'm just going to start putting up "odd photos" and see where the posting ends up.
Things for sale:

This box of all-purpose white flour contains about 2/3 of a cup-measure.

I can barely think of how to use that small an amount; one-time breading

meat to fry (?) or whatever.  Poor people here often can only buy what

they need for immediate use, and very small sizes of everything are either

sold or re-vended everywhere.   But flour isn't poor-people food, here - -

and neither is meat,  or frying oil .

Very large sizes of things are also for sale, mostly for the purpose

of re-vending.  Here, approx. 10- gallons of vinegar or soy sauce

is costing (USA) $9  to $11.  These will very likely be re-vended

in small "sachets" - plastic bags - of 8- to 12- ounces, and the

mark- up could be several times what the vendor paid.

Here are re-vended vegetable oil in sachets, home-made coconut

vinegar in rum and brandy bottles, and nearby was flour, sugar, lard,

and many other "staple" items repacked and marked up.  One reason

why "the poor stay poor . . ." 

 

Small blister- packs of shampoo, baby-oil, dyes and conditioners, 

and things too numerous to count, hang everywhere.  "Travel-size"

or "hotel-sample" size seem to be the normal sizes here.  Eggs

sell "per each" here. about 13- 15 cents (U.S. money) - -

- - and often, so do cigarettes.  Here, you'd have to buy 4, in order to

spend exactly seven- pesos (20-cents US). They are also available by the

pack.  I don't buy, but the idea of buying one-at-a-time is odd- seeming.

Laundry detergent is most often sold in bar-form;  most people wash

by hand.   The white powder in upper-left is either  flour or sugar.

Soda pop - usually poured into a plastic bag (sachet - pronounced "saa-shay")

"to go" since the bottle deposit would cost more than the contents.

Many U.S. brands are manufactured in the Philippines, too.  These

Pringles were on a "two- fer" bargain special.  But notice the flavor.

I was used to seeing home-made fluids sold like this; when I asked

if the pink fluid was another type of vinegar, "they" laughed and told

me "it's gasoline."  The price, bought like this, is about a one- dollar

per gallon markup above the "gas station" price.  Current price here

at stations is above 6- dollars (converting pesos, liters, etc.).

This motorcycle- load of chickens was outside the market one morning;

they were blinking and turning their heads - alive.  I counted 6 on the

left side.  Don't know if they were headed into or out of the market.

Smaller birds nearby, had stalks of rice to snack on pushed through

their cage-wire.  These will be pets, I think.

The (sometimes) shocking truth: 

Racks of electric meters are a common sight on main roads.  Separate

wires run from each meter to its customer, sometimes quite far away.

Ours is here - its height of 10 ft. means we can't read it without a ladder.

Often meters are simply attached to the utility pole.  Note the "free-

form" routing of wires, very typical here.  (By the way, our electricity

costs USA 30-cents per KWH here; it was about 9-cents in KY)

Fish:

Piles of dried fish, many varieties, are always available at the market.

 You can get yours from a crate, if you didn't want to buy it off a

plastic tarp.  It is a national  favorite food of Filipinos;  an "acquired

taste" for westerners, as both its flavor and its smell are very strong.

 You're likely to see fresh fish just about anywhere.  Here, I was riding

the rear seat of a tricycle - as usual - and the rider behind the driver

was casually holding this large fish as we rode along.

Bro.-in-law Malon is often successful in his early-morning fishing.  This

was an above-average catch, though as the reddish fish is a particular

delicacy.  My flip-flop is for size- reference; the big fish is over 26- inches.

 Another morning he caught this spade-fish; again note the "shoe'" which

shows the fish as 5-1/2 "feet" long.  This is also a very mild flavored

fish which isn't too bony.  I can't find the photo of his 2-spade-fish

catch, which was about 2 weeks ago.  We eat lots of fish.

The photo turned out to still be in the camera.  A little hard to see, but
Gina is holding 2 spade-fish here.  Nice catch!  Note: background, there
is home-made coconut vinegar in-progress. Often they put a dozen or
more "tabasco" peppers in it  - a flavor "eye-opener!!"

Cooking:

The terra-cotta pottery stove replaced an older metal stove 2 days ago.
The old stove, like the cement stove on the left, had a fire-box sized for
charcoal, and the ladies are using more firewood lately.  This new stove
can easily fit pieces of firewood, not even cut to length but
pushed forward into the fire as they burn.

We have a 4-burner "apartment size" (Playskool size) stove with an oven.
The ladies still heavily use the "outdoor kitchen" because it is cooler (barely)
and the fuel is cheaper.  The B-B-Q size fuel bottle shown costs US $21-
dollars to fill; we use about one per month even being careful; that's nearly
a week's wages for a Filipino worker in this area., so most can't afford it.
The outdoor kitchen will be re-modeled/ expanded some next year, we hope.

Finally,  I only sent the next photo to a handful of people, by e-mail.

I saw our puppy, "Smarty," playing with one or our cleaning tooth-

brushes one day, and just waited a minute or so to get the photo

I wanted.   The "Hygienic Hound."  He got sick a few weeks later;

there are no veterinarians here and he didn't recover with the medicine

we were able to get at the feed store.  Glad we have a couple cute

photos to remember him by.

There are still quite many "miscellaneous" photos in my collection, so from time to time I may do this again; especially as I only hit 4 or 5 subjects this time, and not too heavily on any of them. I will get back to some of our "project progress" as things move along here, and I have quite a few "Philippine Occupations" photos, and a handful of other topics mentally sketched out.

Meantime we hope that you all are doing well.  Life isn't so much what happens to you, as it is what you make of what happens to you.

Have a great day!

Tim and Bernadette Larson,   Philippines

Filipino Pharm

Our farmland has been undergoing soil preparation and planting of a rice crop for about a month now.  We live "in town;"  barely 100 meters west of us is the seashore; beginning 100 meters east of us is a wide rice-land several hundred meters wide, extending a couple kilometers between the "settled" area we live in and a range of hills.  We follow a secondary road through these rice fields, and wind our way into the hilly area for perhaps 1.5 km. to reach our farm.  I can walk there in between 15 and 20 minutes.  Our plans are to rehabilitate land which has not been farmed for a generation or so, other than some occasional small "convenience" plantings around the fringes; bananas, pineapples and perhaps a few other things through the years. We will grow rice in the areas which have prepared terraces, and try to grow garden-vegetable crops in mostly-sloping spaces around the rice-fields, and on the "other side" of a stream which passes through the property.  Here are some photos to show you  a little of what the area looks like, and the process of getting the farm into production up to now.

It was a pretty morning recently, and as we walked through the rice-land
area I decided to try to catch the mist on the hills with my camera.   Fields

in the center are being replanted with the second crop.  The road continuing

is visible just left of center; it begins to climb just after that point.

A short distance of  upgrade, and to my right is this view of terraces 

downhill for about 200 meters. (meter = 1.10 yard)

On the left is this impressive residence; its owner was  M.D. practicing

in the United States for many years.  His place could be just the other

side of Clampett's from Drysdale, the banker's house, in Beverly Hills.

This is his fence-line for about 75 meters, along the road.  Some of the
rice-fields adjacent to this 3-or-so acre compound are his, and he has
tenant farmers working them (as we do, with our smaller property). The
cement part of the road has ended just before this, and it is another
3/4 km to our place from here.

 Arriving at our property, we find the plow-man already hard at work.
The early part of the rainy season has allowed the terraces to be
flooded, so that the soil is somewhat softer  than if it was dry. His
ergonomically correct, sustainably biomass-fueled "tractor" enables
him to plow and to fertilize (random-cycle only) in one operation.

  Junior "trainee-tractor" follows mama for much of the day, and receives
on- the- job- training in the business.  The plow is very similar to ones
in the U.S., designed to "cut" and roll-over the soil.

 This shows the 2 "upper" terraces  plowed while I was on-site that day.
They  seem to be about 20-meters on their widest ends, tapering to about

8-meters on their narrow ends, and 50-meters long. I'm looking slightly up-hill
at them from a point where the terraces all "change direction" cross-way, because
of the way the land slopes. The "lower ones" were also plowed later that day.  

Looking downhill from about the same place, gives sight of 5 "lower"

terraces which roll downhill towards a seasonal stream behind the  small

bamboo house which can be seen upper-center.  We have other fields
beyond that stream. The area viewed here is approx.100- x 75- meters.
All of this terraced  land  will be planted  in rice   (for now,"Monsanto-
Cargill-ConAgra" types but LATER, we shall see) to provide a basis  for
living to us and to our "tenant farmers" who depend on the harvest for
their livelihood.  This is the land in "BEFORE" condition.

This is the same terrace in the above photo, 4 days later.  The land has
been plowed and flooded, but the dirt-clods are still too large.  A walk-
behind tractor (common here) with a harrow is used to break them up.
I thought, "He will NEVER get up out of that bog - the way that machine
is sunk in, it looks like a mud-wrestling pit -"

but here he is a couple minutes later; he easily harrowed to the end
of the terrace, and this is his return-trip coming towards me.

Close-up shows the metal "paddle wheels" used for this type of job.
These can be replaced with "tractor tires" for other less muddy tasks.

Walking 30 meters to the right, from the bamboo house 3 photos
above, takes you down a rough-sloping path to this part of the road.
One of our early tasks (a different day from the plow/ harrow days) was
to run the water-service line from the "main," on the opposite side of
the road,  under the road to our side.

The "saddle-tap" had been installed with the pipe angled downwards; we
had quite a hassle hooking up because our line is parallel to the ground.
We finally managed to bend our pipe enough to thread the two together
with a "pipe union" fitting, which uses a collar to secure the pipe threads.

Nearly 3 weeks after the "harrowing experience," this view is nearly-same
as the BEFORE view several photos above.  The terraces have been plowed
again after harrowing, and kept flooded.  meanwhile, a 20 x 20 meter area
was direct-seeded with rice, which is now about 16-day seedlings.

To the left the above view, workers are gathering the rice seedlings
and tying them in handy bundles for re-planting.

Here, the seedlings are quickly set into place in several inches of mud.

The replanted rice is set on about a 6- or 8-inch spacing.  The reason?
My guess is that this is the most productive spacing for the plants, but
near-impossible to achieve by "scatter-seeding."  Automatic seed-drill
machinery would be impractical - cost far too much, for one thing.

 Here are the 2 "upper" terraces, on planting day, the same ones shown
from their other (20 m. wide) end on "plow day."  These, and the 5
"lower" terraces shown  4 photos above, were completely re-planted
by the workers before 4 p.m. on planting day.

"Mama tractor" looks pretty content on planting day.  And why not?
(thinking) "If they're PLANTING, I'm not PLOWING . . !"

This is just one side of our farm.  The fields beyond the stream (see "BEFORE" caption above)  are just now being plowed, a couple weeks after "rice planting day."  They will have more "garden-type" vegetables growing in them.  We're learning as we go along, what will grow here, and how to grow it.  Local types of produce will need to be a "mainstay" for a while, but we hope to grow some additional varieties more familiar to us later on.  I'll add a couple photos of the "other" side, so you can see what it looks like.

I'm in the stream-bed behind the bamboo house; my right side is towards

it.  The road bridge over the stream is about 4 m. (13 ft.) high, and the

field-level at that house is another 4 or 5 m. above road level.  It's less

"scrambling" to walk out to the road, than it is to go down, then up, the

paths on the stream banks - going from "one farm" to the other.  This
is the stream-bed where our "lumber" was cut,  (see 5th BLOG)

This looks towards the road, from one of the "other side" fields.  The 

clump of trees upper-center hides the road-bridge 20 m. beyond it. 

This level and fairly open space could grow a lot of vegetables.  Behind

me, a steep hill goes up abruptly, covered with trees and brush.  At

the sheltered base of the hill is a permanently-shady place which I

think would be good to build a partially-underground "cool room" 

for "dairy" and other food-processing work.

Turning right from previous photo, and scampering about 10 m. between
some large rocks (and one "mini-hill," house sized) brings you to another
field, about the same size (acre?- plus) as the previous.  Again, a good
location for garden-crops.  On this side of the "farm" we will also try out
dairy-goats.  Dairy products are not a mainstream part of the culture here,
and imported milk, cheese, etc. is expensive; so we will try to find the means
needed (goat, and cow) to make our own milk, cheese, ice cream, buttermilk,
sour cream, cream cheese, yogurt (which will substitute for several of the
others) - quite a few items you would just run to the grocery to get.

Last-minute addition!  I haven't tried scanning and transferring to this program before - - here's a
sketch-layout of the farm, not to scale and I'm not much of a draftsman.  But it may help you to
picture in your mind what I've been trying to describe in the photos and captions.

That's about what it looks like for now.  The garden-crops which we CAN grow at this time of the year will soon be in place.  For some crops, the rainy-windy season we are entering is destructive (corn, for example).  Some crops will be planted more-like November, when there isn't as much rain and Typhoon Season is past.  We will learn as we go along, and rely quite a bit on our care-taker tenants; I think that they have the knowledge of this area and should pretty much do what they want to, since they have a "stake" in whatever comes from harvest.  I would like to grow things organically (there's a HUGE amount of soil amendments of all sorts available, much of it unused it seems to me). I'd like to have more than the 2 types of tomatoes common here, and more varieties of onions, some zucchini and other squashes, some berries and other fruits - - but I don't know what the growing conditions here will allow.  As I find out in the next couple years, I'll keep you posted.

Meanwhile, we hope that you are noticing the blessings and "minor miracles" which punctuate EACH of our days.  "Every good and perfect gift comes down from Above, from the Father of Light . . ." and His influence molds each and every event to our benefit - - if we only stop to really see.  (Another way of putting it, "It's ALL good;  only our perception makes it seem "good" or "bad.")

Have a blessed and peaceful day - -

Tim and Bernadette Larson,  Philippines