Salt and Sulu

Salt and Sulu?  In this area, at least, the two have a lot to do with each other.  The part of the ocean which our part of Panay Island borders is called the Sulu Sea - - who knows?  maybe Gene Roddenbury  was perusing a map and happened on the name before he created the well- known helmsman of the Starship Enterprise 50 or so years ago.  The Sulu Sea is separated from the South China Sea by the long skinny island of Palawan to its northwest; the islands in our vicinity hem it in on the east, and Borneo, Malaysia, is southwest. (link,  Sulu Sea 
move a little west and north on the map and you will see our relation to Vietnam and Taiwan). Our island- name is Panay, just above and right of center.  Sulu Sea is notable for being very calm, nearly always;  This is apparently because it is surrounded by land masses which shield it from the  action of the larger seas beyond its basin. Well, that's enough of "Sulu" for a while.

Salt relates to "Sulu" because of course it is a saltwater ocean.  Salt also happens to be a "cottage industry" here, as several families nearby create evaporation systems each year to take salt from the seawater.  In our household, we cook almost entirely with pure, natural sea-salt  which is produced within easy walking distance of us.  I have not interviewed any of the salt makers, but over a period of time I made photos of their process which generally show how it's done.

Making salt requires a lot of concentration.  A large area of

beach is cleared of rocks to a depth of several inches - in this

case the space appears to be about 30- x 30- feet.  Considering

the rocky nature of our beach, this is a lot of hard work.  Sand

is gathered from the tide-zone of the beach, which is mostly

swept clear of rocks by the ocean's action.  This sand is carried

up to the site 50 or 60 feet away,  and carefully sifted through

hardware-screening so that is is uniformly smooth and fine, 

then spread out over the area.

For a period of several days sea water is carried up to the site

and distributed over the sand from a "sprinkler jug."   The water

evaporates in the heat from the sun, and more water is added

until several cycles of sprinkling and evaporation have been

completed. (The jug was apparently one of the containers which

have vinegar,soy sauce, and such liquids, which are measured

into smaller portions and re-vended.  These re-used jugs are

everywhere, here; we have cut them in half and added re-bar

"handles" to make cement buckets out of them.  See August, 

2013 "A bunch of Stuff" via the archive navigation at right.) 

The top layer of sand will have accumulated salt as the water

evaporated.  This layer of sand is collected and carried to

a large basket (4- feet?), which has been elevated on a

bamboo platform a couple feet above the ground.  Salty

sand is deposited in the basket, and water is poured through

it for several cycles.   This water is carefully collected in a

plastic bucket as it drains through the sand and the basket

material. The resulting water probably has several

times more concentration of salt than plain seawater. 

The hyper-saline water is  poured into carefully leveled "pans"
created by lining the nearby ground with plastic sheeting.  As
it evaporates, it leaves behind it a residue of pure salt crystals,
which above may be seen gathered in the corner of the pan,
to later be collected and packaged.  Bernadette recently
bought 5 "gantas" (scoops) of salt, and was given one extra.
This figures to about 17 quarts volume, and the price was 
about $3.50  USD, which is the "low end" of a day-wage here.

Sulu Sea provides a constant backdrop for our activity here, as we are seldom more than 100 yards away from it;  Our house is  just about that distance from the water; it is less than a 2- minute walk.  The main highway here follows the coastline, so on our travels we pass for many km. along shoreline vistas which remind me a lot of Pacific Coast Highway in California, except that the sea here is usually much more "pacific" than the Pacific Ocean.  The wave-activity is often only 4- to 8- inches in height, and it is not uncommon for the water to lap up to the shoreline without actually "breaking" into a curl.

This is the view looking southwest from the beach, if you walk

from our house to the end of a path which passes between

the mostly-bamboo houses on the west side of the National

Highway.  Our neighborhood ("barangay") of Malabor has

about a mile of ocean frontage;  the shape of the shore is

a gentle curve, with the hills in-between Malabor and the next

municipality to the south, which is Barbaza.   I walk along

this stretch of beach nearly every day.  (I invent nicknames
and other devices to help me remember names;  "Barbaza" reminds
me of "Barbasol" shave-cream - - so I remember - - -)

Sometimes I have company while I'm walking; this time, I think
Bernadette is who took the photo.  It shows the almost pond-
like calmness of the ocean.  I often stop and pick up rocks that
have different colors, or patterns which are interesting.  The 
beach at a glance looks mostly gray, but it surprises me how
much variety of colors seem to catch my eye when walking.

Contrasting the usual appearance of Sulu, this photo is from
a period of heavy storms last October.  The wave appears to be
about 5 or 6 feet tall.  Oddly, there never seem to be any long-
travelling breakers here - the ocean may be quite rolling and rough-
looking, but the curls don't form until about 20 yards from shore.
This is about as rough as I ever see it, and it happens pretty rarely.

Sometimes when I walk, there seems to be nobody out on the
beach - but it's a pretty unusual day when I see no sign of activity.
This sand sculpture seemed pretty recently abandoned one late
afternoon; often there are a large number of all ages of people,
socializing and tending to various tasks.

Lots of the fishing boats now have lights extending over the
sides to attract fish during darkness.  These are all 12-volt
florescent lamps, readily available here.  The lights are powered
by heavy- duty vehicle batteries, and there is a small industry of
providing battery charging service to the fishermen.  Nearly every
day in late afternoon there will be a number of people out installing
batteries, tinkering with boat motors, mending nets and doing other
chores associated with fishing.   Some boats go out at dusk,and
some wait until after midnight;  if there is a successful night, early
morning will come with people vending fish in the neighborhoods,
loudly shouting their wares as they pass by.

Any time there is a surplus of fish, people will be spreading it
on mats, tarps and roofing-tin, to dry in the sun.  Almost any
sunny day will be long and hot enough to thoroughly dry a batch
of fish;  early in the year, the entire beach would seem to be
covered with fish drying - - a necessary provision for other times
of the year, when harvest is 2 or 3 months away and the fishing
is poor.  The dried fish are suspended in sacks from rafters
inside houses, where cats and other creatures can't reach.

Walking 300 or 400 yards south along the ocean shore, I
encounter the mouth of the Sabai river; it is rainy season,
known because this exit into the ocean is a "dry wash" for
about 8 months of the year.  With the sea  on my right, the
National Highway is about 40 or 50 yards to my left, around
the river's left curve from the person walking.  This "S" bend
of the Sabay's mouth is very distinct on the  GoogleEarth 
satellite photo's of this area; in fact it served as a landmark
for me when I was poking around trying to see if our house-
roof is visible.  The Sabay and other features of the area stand
out quite well if you use the link below, and do a little 
"panning  and zooming."

You can see our house, from there! Here is a link to the Google Maps satellite photo of our area.  ( Malabor neighborhood )  Until recently, the file photo was before the "older" house on our lot was built; the current  photo shows our older house- roof, but not the current one-year-old house; also lacks three other  houses on the street which are more recent than 3 years.   In the photo, note the Elementary school, a large narrow building upper-right.  The "V" sidewalk in front of the school points out its gate and onto our street.  The third roof along the street ("above" the street in the photo) is our place.  The opposite side of the street in this photo has only one house; now, it is completely filled in.  Panning south a little distance from the elementary school brings you to the next large building plainly visible, the rice cooperative's warehouse, which is on the edge of the Sabay river.  Slightly west of that is the "S" curved channel where the river enters the ocean.

Meter people enjoy kicking around in the fresh water where

the Sabai enters the sea.  (Meter people?  yeah, I call them

that because they're about one-meter tall.  Smaller ones are

half-meter people.)

 When a fishing boat comes in, almost everybody nearby grabs
hold and helps to skid it ashore, over the hump of the tide-line.

 Seems like this afternoon is one of several when the day-
fishing has been good; so lots of people are gathered waiting
for boats to come in so they can help drag them ashore and
sort out the catch.

I never know what I might see when walking on the beach; the
cow and calf being walked along the shoreline was an eye-
opener, but logically explained;  a good swim and soak in
salty ocean water persuades all the undesirable insects
to leave mama- and- calf alone.

I see lots of sunsets in my late-afternoon walks, and every
single one is different from the others.  If you're ever in our
area, be sure to drop by and I'll show you the latest sunset.

Meanwhile we hope you are enjoying your part of the world as much as we enjoy ours.  We seem to stay covered-up with things to do here, and we have hardly begun to try to do the "homestead" style gardening and other food producing which we hope eventually to accomplish. (We would like to "feed ourselves" as much as possible, with fresh and home-produced foods, to eventually include home-made breads, cheeses, meat products, and of course all the usual "garden" vegetables and products.  This will be quite a while happening, as the learning curve for this place seems pretty steep.)

For now,  we'll get this issue "salted away. . ."

Have a blessed day!

Tim and Bernadette Larson, Philippines

Rice is Nice (2)

I only got part-way through the rice process in my last blog before the typhoon - and the resulting communication blackout - of early last November.  I think that just a few photos will be enough to get that finished, and then perhaps I'll look at some of my "miscellaneous" short topics.  (The Blog Archive  navigation just to your right will take you back to 2013, Oct. 25 "Rice is Nice (1)" so you can review if you want to.)

So far in the rice process, I've shown you plowing, harrowing, planting and seedling re-planting, reaping, threshing, and winnowing.  At this point the rice is out of the husks in separate grains, but there is still an inner hull on each rice grain.  The rice is purposely harvested before this inner hull is dry enough to remove;  if the rice were on the stalk for a longer time and got drier first, the grains would fall off the stalk and be lost on the ground when the stalk was cut.  When cut, the rice grains must stay together in seed-heads so they can be carried in bundles and threshed.  Then, the separated grains must be dried enough for the inner hull to be removed.  At this point the rice is called "palay," (I remember it with the word "Malay" as in Malaysia) and it is often sold to a rice cooperative or other commodity producer who will continue the processing.

Solar rice drying is the only method I've seen used in this area.  The rice

is often spread on the roadway on a hot day, for the sun to dry the grains.

Traffic goes around it out of respect for food in a poor, often-hungry place.

Sometimes, if there is enough room, it is put out on tarps or bamboo mats

on the road-shoulder.  A few large-scale rice-processing businesses have

large concrete-paved areas for drying purposes (often dual-purpose, with

basketball goals).  In all cases, the rice is carried out in bags, dumped, and

raked and turned over by hand until dry.  All this work would be done in

USA by fuel-powered equipment, possibly even all one giant machine in

the field, reaping, threshing, winnowing, drying and bagging.  Dried palay

can be stored in bags for a number of months or longer, until it is needed.

Lots of households keep sacks of  palay, and call a portable rice-

polisher to come out and mill it for them a bag or two at a time;  The

owner of this mill laughed and called his vehicle a "Bora-Bora car,"

but most of the others I've seen aren't much newer than this.

Bags of rice are handed up to the man on the roof, who dumps them

into a hopper . . .

. . . and the grains fall through a series of rollers covered with coarse mesh,

which "scuffs" the hull off of them.  Nearly all the fiber, and most of the

vitamins, minerals, and other nutrition are removed in this process.  What

remains is the polished white pellet of nearly-useless starch which most

Filipinos and Americans prefer to cook and eat.  If ONLY the fibrous

part of the hull were removed, leaving the bran and other nutritious parts,

the rice would have much higher nutritional quality.

Quite a maze of belt-driven pulleys and shafts drive all the various rollers

and blowers which polish the rice.  Power comes from the vehicle's

engine via a geared power take-off.

One stream of material, the white rice, is collected from a chute near the

vertical post above.  The other barely-visible stream of material, just

above the word "collected," is the hull and bran material.  THIS  is

kept - or sold - and mixed with water to form a nutritious gruel for

poultry.  We were formerly buying it for our geese, but now we have

enough from our polished rice to feed them.  We get the rice, THEY

get the nutrition.   I haven't found a way yet to "partially polish" the rice

and keep some of the good "brown stuff" on it for myself. 

A view of the vehicle's strictly functional retro- interior.  Driver rides in

"solid comfort" on a 2 x 12 plank.  I have  never seen a rice-machine vehicle

moving faster than 25 or 30 miles- per- hour; likely for good reasons.

That's about all I know to share about rice growing and processing.  Here, they usually cook it differently than Americans do, preferring it softer and more mushy.  Rice is often eaten nearly plain, but with whatever is available to put over the top and flavor it a little.  In our household I notice that the others lean much more towards "plain" than I do, perhaps using less than 1/3 as much "sauce" and vegetables or meat ingredients compared with what I cover my rice up with.

I have in mind a recipe, actually more like general make-to-suit-yourself directions for a Filipino "national dish" called adobo.  The sauce combines vinegar, soy sauce, and water in "cook's preference" to make a flavor that ends up tangy with "just a hint" of salt, plus garlic, onion and 1 or 2 other ingredients.  "Balance of flavors" is the goal.  This is just enough different to be interesting to American's taste, but not so different as to be unacceptable to most.   It can end up in the  flavor-range  of a pot roast cooked with Worcestershire sauce.

As to quantities of ingredients, these are cook's preference, too.  To make for 4 people:

        Brown some onion and garlic in the bottom of a cooking pot. (1/2 c. onion and 3 cloves                     crushed garlic?  -  how much do you like?).

        Brown 1-1/2 pounds of meat - either cubed pork or beef, or cut-up chicken pieces.

        Sauce -  only the first time, mix in a bowl 1 cup water, 1 T. each of vinegar and soy sauce.

              Taste and adjust for "strength" and for proportion of salt to sour.  This sauce will "cook                 down" to half its volume so I usually start out with a total of about  2 cups because I like                  plenty of sauce.  After the first time, you can just add the ingredients to the cooking pot                and adjust as you cook.  As it "cooks down" it will get stronger flavored.

         Simmer all ingredients in the cooking pot, adding about 20 whole black peppercorns (I                  personally would use a large pinch of coarse-ground pepper instead - be cautious                         about the quantity!), and a couple bay leaves.  Cook 30 to 45 minutes until sauce is                     thickened and reduced and meat is tender, tasting and adjusting occasionally with                      water, soy sauce, or vinegar  (small adjustments are best).  Serve over rice.

         There are no "set rules."  Strikes me that some bell pepper might taste good in there,                    so I may try that some time.  This "guideline" recipe will be enough to get you going                      and you'll pretty much make it to suit yourself.

I haven't posted a recipe before this because my blog is mostly photos, and up above this line is now a real big expanse of text with no photos.

-  -  MISCELLANEOUS  -  -

Ice is nice, too.  (Yes, look up at the "Main Title" of this issue) About a year ago, we bought a freezer.  We thought we would use it to help store garden produce (not!) and home-grown chickens (not!) so that we can be more self-sufficient.  A freezer needs to be filled up with something always, so that it will stay colder without using so much electricity.  Someone suggested that we freeze ice bags and sell them as a "sideline" until the freezer could be filled with food, instead.  We thought, "OK, why not?"

 4-inch x 12-inch plastic bags are filled with about 20 ounces of water, then tied - - about like making a water-balloon.  Our municipal water here is pure, from the nearby mountains.

The bags are frozen, and the next day they are available for many

uses:  home-use, fishing boats (our largest volume) and various

vending operations such as fish and  chilled drinks.  These little

bags of ice seem to be for sale everywhere here.  Very few

households have refrigerators here; and any vendor needing ice

usually buys it - cost in our area is 3 pesos, about 7 cents U.S.  At

this rate, we found that our ice sales gross enough to pay for a

freezer in a year; always pay 2x to 3x the cost of the electricity; 

and provide a convenient "put and take" fund for incidentals.

Not bad for an unadvertised business we got into by accident.

Signs of the times?  I'll get away from "food" subjects and take a look at one of my personal "fun" subjects, signs.  I've always enjoyed even the most commonly seen signs, whose intent gets muddled up by their wording.  "EMPLOYEES ONLY - - NO ADMITTANCE" is seen everywhere, but it seems to actually be saying that only the employees may not enter - everyone else can go in - get it?     

Nearly all signs in the Philippines are in English; Philippines is by their constitution officially an English-speaking country and it is taught in all schools.  The exception to this is in advertising slogans, which often use local languages.

 This seemed just beautifully logical.  WHY can't an outsider go inside?

Because he's an outsider!

Management must go somewhere else to smoke.  Everyone

else, OK.

 No playing with words for these two - my attempts to capture the  Wright  Tech campus sign in San Jose are frustrated by trees in the way.  But every time I pass I think about good friend Jerry Wright whose technical skills have helped many people.

Little bags of stuff are for sale everywhere.   "Hotel courtesy" sized products are usually a few pesos (nickel or dime) but they are the size which a lot of people can afford.  I never saw toothpaste or shoe polish sold like this.

Smile the next time you hassle with quickly ironing something

just before you have to rush out the door.  This "iron" is a hollow 

aluminum box;  first, you build a charcoal fire; then you use tongs to

put some hot coals into the iron (OK, it's an "aluminum"); when it

gets hot, then you "press" your clothes (I didn't say "iron" that time).

I smiled when I saw the "decoration" dangling near the ground

on this motorcycle ("tricycle") taxi.  The kickstand it's wired to

isn't used because the bike is bolted to a sidecar for passengers.

(see archive navigation, top right of this page, for February 2013

"tricycle" posting).

 I guess it's a great side-line - - - I just wouldn't usually be looking

for a key-making machine in a "beauty" business.

One joy of retirement.   Ever since high school I've had a
white "untanned" stripe from a watch-band on my left wrist.
Now, that stripe is gone, replaced by "V" stripes on my feet
from wearing flip flops!  Our bodies change as we grow
a little older, they say - - -  this particular change is great!

We hope that you are enjoying your changes and challenges as they come along in your life - whether physical or circumstantial.  I still have several topics scribbled on my "blog" scratch list and I frequently see other possible subjects developing.   My little camera is getting near 4,000 exposures I think, and that may not be the grand total as I've switched memory chips back and forth some.  So there's plenty left for me to share here.

Have a fair and blessed day!

Tim and Bernadette Larson, Philippines

Takeover II

I didn't get finished with all the "typhoon" items that I have on-file, when I posted the last issue.  Actually, there's far too much to ever get it all covered here. And of course there's the "redundant factor," where another photo of a tree blown over or a house flattened  just doesn't have much impact (unless it's YOUR house - - -).  But there are still a few more items-not-covered which I'll put up, maybe half- a- blog's- worth, then I'll try to work in another "short topic."

The main road into "Tibiao proper" turns off the National Hwy. about a mile from our house, and it goes about 1/2 mile from the hwy. to the town square area.  The typhoon had been from about 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Friday; as of mid- afternoon on Saturday,  there was still a lot of debris and downed wires to be cleared out.   Only the smallest vehicles could make it through the area until sometime on Sunday.

In Tibiao, the multi- purpose covered area, where tricycle taxis gather on market days, was one of many structures which lost parts - or all - of their roofs.  Six months later, this one still awaits repairs.

Through the whole swath cut by the typhoon, communications were knocked out; some, like the main fiber-optic cable for TV and internet, were not replaced for months.  But 3 days after the typhoon, someone discovered a good "hot spot" for cell-phone reception near Barbaza, about 10 miles from Tibiao.  Overnight, on a deserted stretch of Highway, this tent village of cell-phone vendors sprang up, perhaps about 30 tents with portable gen-erators and chargers; food vendors, access-ory vendors.  We went there on Tuesday and were able to send text messages to a few people  in the USA; our first contact since the storm.  "Tattoo" which you can see on the tent-canopies, is the name of a wireless "air-card"  and cell-phone provider here.  Their service doesn't work very well in Tibiao, our area, for lack of enough towers or whatever infrastructure. 
(NOTE tricycle-taxis in foreground; article about them is available from February 2013; the archive navigation at upper right will get you there pretty quickly) 

Six days after the typhoon, on Thursday, I rode with missionary Mark Moses, heading north along the National highway for about 50 miles to evaluate  the immediate relief needs of people there, and to look at damages to church buildings and plan for reconstruction materials.  Here is the link to the Google Map of our area.  **(see below) From Tibiao, we passed through Culasi, Sebaste, and Pandan to a place near the Libertad border, just where the coast of Panay island turns and heads west.  All of these places were in the hard-hit 


swath, but west of Pandan there was almost a "line" where the damage was suddenly much less.  The photo above is near the main square in Pandan.  At left, the family was in their house during the typhoon when the entire roof blew off.  Mark and the team left relief food supplies at each place we went, and made lists of needed repair supplies and plans for how to deliver them.

This small church building at Pandan was one of the places we went that first Thursday, Nov. 14.  This photo is from one week later, Nov. 21, as the needed lumber  is out in front of the building.  On that day, we visited all the same sites as the week before, and we made contact at one point with the "jeepney" vehicle which was chartered to haul the supplies from San Jose.  (see  posting from January 2013 about jeepneys.  Blog archive navigation is at your upper right.)

Back at Tibiao, this 30-foot tree had fallen at the beach near our relatives' place.  The bend in its trunk, resting on the ground, created a 15-foot springy-pole for the kids to bounce on; the little guy nearest is about 8-feet off the ground. I have a too-blurry photo which shows more than a dozen kids all at the same time, riding on the tree.  It was there for 5 or 6 weeks before someone got around to removing it.




I was quite impressed with this man's  skill, as he balanced between the ladder and the roof and managed to make powerful, accurate hits with a machete left-handed for about 15 minutes.  I noted later when he was working on the ground, that he is right-handed.  There was very little special equipment to work with, but the people here are expert improvisers who do amazing things with simple tools, routinely.  Note that even the ladder is home-made from bamboo lashed together.

Long-term effects:  one of the long-term effects of the typhoon will be its impact on bamboo usage and availability.   At left is an example of mature, good quality bamboo.  Note the thickness of the "walls;"  this solid bamboo takes perhaps 5 years to grow, and in use it may last a number of years before termites and rot destroy it.  Bamboo is a vitally important material here; many people can't afford any other material to provide their housing.  



Here is a comparison which shows immature poor quality bamboo of perhaps 3 years' growth.  Before Typhoon Yolanda, there was already a shortage of mature bamboo in our area; since then, a lot of immature bamboo has been cut of necessity to build housing. Big problem: this immature bamboo will rot out much sooner than mature stuff, and it also will not be available as mature bamboo  2 or 3 years from now - a "vicious cycle" of shortage.

The same kind of supply problems will occur with other vital materials.  Many thousands of trees were destroyed, which would have provided lumber and fuel for sometime in the future.  I could include photos of firewood stacks and slabs of tree-trunk stacked, but I think you already know what those things look like.   In our post-typhoon cleanup we generated lots of these materials and we are blessed to be able to save some of it for use in the next year or two; many of our  neighbors a few hundred feet away have no such opportunity.
Relief supplies were in very small quantities for the first couple weeks - but about 3 to 4 weeks after the typhoon, government and NGO  trucks began arriving quite regularly and distributing goods at "barangay" (means neighborhood) halls to residents who were listed by the barangay officials.  This huge "straight truck" had been chartered by an NGO to deliver relief goods; this occasion seems to be in January, and such distributions have only recently tapered off.



Meantime, life had gotten pretty well back to "normal" for us, with a fairly constant flow of daily routines mixed with small projects to hopefully improve our situation in a little at a time.  Our poultry flock increased, and we had small successes with vegetable raising. We waited what seemed like forever  for the main communication cable to be repaired - but I did sometimes find a use for the internet cable which runs between houses on our property.

Quick flashback look: About January 1, 2013 I was standing about 6 feet farther to the right, from where the above photo was taken. The bamboo post that the screen- door leans on is the same corner post of the bamboo house above - - barely started in construction then; and our house, shown above, is not even begun; its excavation work began about January 14, and we "moved in" on July 4, 2013.




There's room here to cover a few other short topics.  I've made quite a few photos of various occupations I see nearby, and will post a few of the ones which I think will seem novel to American readers.

In a farm-field surrounded by woods and brush, a mysterious structure is built.  It's            circular, about 12 feet in diameter and 5          feet tall, and resembles photos I've seen          of the "Hogan" which some Native American tribes build.  But it isn't a house; it's a tightly-stacked pile of hardwood branches, tightly covered with large green leaves like banana leaves. This is set on fire and controlled carefully for several days to prevent too much oxygen from getting to the fuel - so that it will smolder and slowly be converted to charcoal. The process seems to be a mixture of science and art;  I don't have the language skills to get much detail, but this is another vital material which is used in our area.  Charcoal burns slower and  puts out a much steadier heat than firewood; and, it doesn't require a special stove or tanks like propane.  Our household uses quantities of firewood and charcoal daily for cooking which would otherwise consume lots of much-more expensive propane.  Charcoal production is banned at the moment because of over-harvesting of hardwood, but this ban was apparently overlooked for a while after the typhoon, as lots of downed hardwood was available, so on several occasions I saw charcoal being produced in this manner.


Hand-made equipment is in use at a lot of businesses here.  I've made photos of quite a few improvised production machines, and here are a few.

Huge wire coils apparently salvaged from some industrial site are set into a rack and seem to be adjusted up and down with a "peg through hole" setup.  This is an improvised arc-welder; industrial made machines use an adjustment jack-screw to move coils.  The size of those coils suggests this would be a an immensely powerful welder, despite its rustic appearance; I would think keeping its
output DOWN enough to be useful would be the main concern in operating it.  I've seen more than one welding machine like this one nearby.
The location of this switches- and- plug combination amused me.   It was on the public office- wall of our local electrical cooperative utility company. 

Quite a large band-saw is made from galvan-ized water pipe for framing, with 24-inch wooden main-wheels made from laminated thicknesses of plywood.  Standard industrial-machinery parts are used creatively for blade-guides and drive- train.  

A heavy-duty wood lathe features a vehicle transmission as its headstock.  The "rails" are made of heavy 2 x 10 lumber and it can turn pieces 8- feet- long.  The project in place appears to be some sort of large hardwood pulley, like on a ship's rigging.  Just beyond the lathe are two hand-made table saws, which have 12-inch and 16- inch blades.  All of these machines are turned by a long shaft which runs on the floor behind them, and power is supplied by a 12- horsepower diesel engine of the same sort which powers the walk-behind farm tractors here.

An occupation in our area is whatever a person can find to make some pesos ("bucks" would be the USA expression.) When Bernadette was offered our house- property 12 or so years ago, one reason she immediately "grabbed it" is that it is located on the elementary school road. She saw the potential of snack-vending to the kids and other pedestrians who pass by in great numbers daily.  When daughter Thea visited for a few weeks near the end of school- year, we happened on a supply of jicama ("hick- uh

muh") - which is pretty familiar now in USA groceries - radish-like flesh, "puckery" sweet grapefruit- like flavor. We got many, many sacks in a 2-week period.   These were cleaned, sliced thinly, and placed in plastic vending-bags;  with a little sea-salt on the side, they sold in hundreds of units per day, at our front gate. Thea's income from this short-term venture was some days near-double the working-man's wage in our area!  Imagine living in a place where "free enterprise" is not quashed by regulations - - - -  Thea's fingerprint ridges were dissolved by her handling the acidic tubers - - which made me wonder if some useful "free enterprise" could be found for a temporarily fingerprint-less person  (insert here, smiley-winky face.).

I've tried a few new things with this posting.  I thought the left-side/ right-side format would look more interesting than a straight vertical row of photos. However, the photos must be much smaller to make this happen, so details are harder to see, and I also had a very difficult time getting the text to wrap around the photos - the word-processor part of the program was extremely resistant to doing that.  I welcome comments as to whether the finished result is any improvement over the previous format; right now I'm pretty much inclined to retreat to the single-column of larger photos.  Sometime later I'll experiment with putting comparison photos side-by-side - but the photos would have to be quite small;  this program doesn't allow custom-sizing photos and inserts, but offers 4 or 5 "stock" sizes to choose from.  

Another new attempt is that it's the first time I've tried to place a webiste "link" in the blog - the link to the Google map site.  As this that I'm working on is only a "draft" blog, the link is not operable; I'm eager to get this actually published so I can see if it works OK.  (**NOTE After publishing, I found that the link given opens the map near Pandan, not Tibiao.  You can "drag scroll" the map up, to get to Tibiao, or click the "search " icon which is at the upper left of the map and that will also get you to Tibiao).

In the last blog posted before the typhoon, I showed about half of the rice-harvest-and process which puts food on peoples' tables here.  I expect to show the rest of the rice process sometime soon, plus several other topics that I have planned on a list here, and a large number of "miscellaneous" photos from time to time.

Meanwhile we hope that your days are blessed and prosperous, and that you occasionally have time to reflect on the wonder of simply being alive and passing through all of life's varied experiences.  

Have a great day!

Tim and Bernadette Larson,  Philippines