Marching Along

The last few weeks (February, and now  March) have seemed to alternate between hectic and DULL.  But we did a fair amount of travelling in between other things.


You never know what you might see, when travelling:

Travelling near (link) Barotok Nuevo in  Iloilo Province 2 weeks
ago, my "sidekick" suddenly said"SNAKE!"  I said, "Where?"
and reversed a few yards, to get out of the car to look at this
MONSTER.  
For reference,the  large stones are 3- feet  from his head
(which has been crushed).  This makes his total length  
somewhere between 16- and 20- feet (= 4.5 - 6 meters).
His body diameter seems to be about 9- inches = 23 cm,
= about dinner plate size.   He lived in an area of small
family compounds, where there are many small livestock
around, all the time. I tried to research how large a "prey"
such a snake could handle, but found nothing definitive.
I've watched NatGeo videos, and based on them it seems
pretty reasonable to say that chickens and small goats
(+ other KIDS?) would be pretty easy for him to swallow. 
He had "the good life" and grew to be HUGE.

It 's been a while since I put up views of our Malibor neighborhood property.  I was sitting in our roadway, across from the houses one morning and decided to try to make photos.  The street is narrow, less than 16-feet wide, the 8- feet in the middle being paved with cement.  SO, it is difficult to get away far enough for the camera to capture approx. 80- feet of front property line.   The "fish-eye lens" gimmick wasn't any help, either.  So 3 frames is the easiest.

Sitting in a chair facing the property, the "yellow house" to the left is mostly screened by foliage.  This is the west side of the property (I'm facing north- ish)  and this house was completed in 2013, within 8 months of our arrival in the Philippines.  We "moved in"

on July 4th of that year.

Using the mahogany tree and cement sack for reference, directly in front of me is the small building currently under construction with its front windows visible through the foliage.  This will eventually end up being 2-story with an "A- frame" roof and side-dormer windows (dormers maximize ceiling-space).  The downstairs is mostly complete, enough to be functional;  We think it will end up as a "parlor/ work room" with a small bedroom behind.  Completion is not urgent, which is good, as everything happens in slow- motion here.  This building is attached to the water-reservoir tower, and is the "replacement" for our bamboo-hut "parlor and sleeping space" built in Dec of 2012.

This link shows the project beginning last August, and there are several references

in more recent postings.

Panning a little to the right, (carport post for reference) shows the "blue house" which

was built in 2006 - 2007;  this was the only building on the property when we arrived in November 2012.  We have upgraded it, and built everything else, since then.  (Including also a cottage about 2 miles away on our small farm at Alegre, + a storage room and large saw- shed on the detached "chicken yard" 30 feet beyond us at the rear.)  The 16- by 16-foot space behind the car is our "outdoor patio-kitchen"  referred to everywhere in the Philippines as a "dirty kitchen."

To my right about 50 yards is the school entrance gate at the end of the road (see last month's posting) and to the left about the same distance is the intersection with the

National Highway.

  At a seminar- meeting in mid- February, the Suzuki car was parked in the only available shade,  which these several young ladies happened to choose as a break-time venue.  Not posed, they were just  like this when I clicked the shutter.

  

A little while later they were  occupied with washing the lunch

dishes, at the hand-pump just left of the car photo above.

Another attendee was wearing this T-shirt.  I especially

liked the quote on the back.

NOT BAD, for a computer- science major!

The Suzuki gets a "cargo workout" from time to time.

We had a rice harvest  soon after that meeting, and this is 

half the proceeds, 14 sacks weighing a total of around 900

pounds.  I can fairly easily move this amount of load, and 

on this occasion since I would have to make 2 trips anyway

it made sense to divide the weight fairly equally instead of

loading heavier on one trip.  Transporting only about a mile. 

Suzuki has had a series of issues with performance (fuel

mixture) and keeping the brakes in adjustment (aggravation,

not a safety issue, fortunately) plus other minor nagging-

little-items which were never quite "right."  Here, we are

close to finding the "magic solution" with replacement of

the power-brake booster unit, which by leaking under

some conditions (intermittent?) has affected several things

that all seemed unrelated.  It is quite BURIED under the

dash-board, and in fact I never knew it was there.

"Vehicle mechanics" (not motorcycle) are scarce around

our immediate area, and parts are sometimes hard to track

down. In San Jose (45 miles away) or certainly in Iloilo (110

miles away) this lengthy process of fix- then- re-diagnose

would have been much shorter than the many months it

has taken.   We live where we live!

Some signs just "look weird" to me.  "Barber Shop" + a word

that suggests "Italian artist/ gigolo," + "Elephant's Nook."  

THIS sign might have been OK, except that it was immediately

next door to the Barber Shop sign.

Our daughter Thea and husband Joseph are having this house

built 200 yards from where we live, hoping it will be finished in

the next few weeks.  THIS view interested me because there

would typically be THREE roof-trusses.  Lumber is VERY hard

to get here, NOW, given a building boom and the reconstructions

since the typhoon 5 years ago.  THIS innovation should work -

using angled braces to connect ONE truss at the center to the

adjacent rafter-sets to pick up the load;  but I've suggested that

they continue trying to get enough material to complete 3 sets.

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 Giant styrofoam letters were part of the decorations at a 60th birthday party.  The novelty + how they were assembled + wondering HOW MANY HOURS went into the project, all fascinated me. 

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Just passing through Kalibo recently, I saw a bamboo-vendor with 

THESE pieces in bins nearly side-by-side.  Same outside diameter,

 but the stuff on the left is immature and will soon rot out in any

structural use.  The mature pieces on the right are about 5-years

growth (I hear) and will last for about 5 years in a structure.  BUYER

BEWARE when buying the pre-fab gazebos, etc. widely sold here.

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There is considerable Talabahan activity in some places 

that we go, especially around restaurants and market-

places.  I don't suppose it could be considered sharialistic;

Muslims mostly don't eat shell-fish.   

End of jest:  the word

Talibahan means "clam"  in the local language.  I have

sampled steamed clams here, and they are about as I 

remember them from childhood (when we lived 2 years

in a beach area) - taste OK, kind of "mushroom + meat-

like,"  and rubbery-chewy so it's hardy worth the bother.

Here, the price-per-weight is quite high, and the weight

turns out to be 95% shell, but lots of people like them

well enough to pay the premium price, apparently.

The Tibiao municipal festival is officially in the last

weekend of February each year.  Schools and other

groups practice for weeks to participate in parade,

local beauty pageant, and cultural dancing contests -

among other activities.    Streets around the plaza are

blocked with vendor and game booths for 2 to 3 weeks.

 We went there the next-to-last day, just to look around.  

Most of the vendors had "moved on" to the next adjacent

municipality about 15 miles away, whose festival was just

beginning.  Daughter Thea bought a balloon for Timmie

from the first vendor we found - - and later discovered that

he had nearly doubled the price, apparently since she had

been walking with a foreigner (ME!)  I occasionally run into

this phenomenon,  and refer to it as the "'Cano disount."

(Abbreviated americano "'cano" can refer to any foreigner,

more-or-less "European- looking.")

 I really appreciate living in an area where I can get out into
lush, scenic places within a few minutes anytime I want to.
This is the road about 200 yards from our Alegre "farm."
.  
  

We expect to get pretty busy in the next few weeks.  There will be several camp- sessions at Batonan  where we meet on Sundays, so there's some preparation to do for those,  and we also anticipate a trip to Nasidman Island for our semi-annual business meeting.

This road-trip of nearly 200 miles has proven in the past to take nearly 7 hours

of actual rolling-time to accomplish.  There are no east- west roads through

the mountainous interior of Panay Island, so we will go from upper-left Tibiao 

area to Nasidman Island area (flagged) passing around the south through San

Jose and Iloilo City.  My passengers will stay the night before at our house,

as we will need to get away around 3 a.m.

There were no sunsets in my current "batch" of photos, but here is one of my 

favorite "effects" taken perhaps three years ago.

We hope that all of you are having an agreeable 2019, with only enough challenges to make life a little interesting.

TJ and Bernadette Larson

Tibiao, Antique Province, Philippines

February already?

(Edited between Feb. 5 and Feb. 8, 2019)

Seems like I spend a lot of time just "spinning my wheels" but little by little some things get done.  There are construction projects here at home, at Bernadette's family compound 200 yds. from us, and at the Elementary school 50 yds. from us.  Renovations continue at Camp Moriah, the conference center where we meet on Sundays.  This hasn't been as BIG a travel month as the last several months, but that's soon to change with several trips coming up to Iloilo, to Ajuy in Iloilo province (more than 200 miles, the farthest possible point on Panay Island from us), and to Kalibo in Aklan province.   This link  should show you Panay Island, with Tibiao (that's US) on the west, Kalibo at the north, and Ajuy (pronounced "ahoy," amusing)  on the east.

(Accidental "rant" warning)

I found a Henry Mancini movie-music collection on You Tube earlier this morning and I'm really enjoying it as I edit this.  I have it downloaded for future playing.  Here's the link,

and I note that there's a second collection listed in the side-bar.  I can pretend that I'm in an elevator somewhere (well not really, the music they play in public places today is often "enhanced interrogation" sound effects with female vocalists apparently alternating between the electric shock and the waterboard.  I can hardly stand to be in a department or grocery store, here - - and even WalMart in the USA was getting that way by around 2010.)  

(I didn't plan the rant - - the paragraph ended at the word "side-bar" and Oliver Sudden the rest just jumped out onto the page.)

I started uploading and captioning photos about 2 weeks ago, but I got sidetracked AND several of the sequence photos have progressed farther.  I'll have to see what I can do to keep this succinct - - 

Early one morning Timmy wanted to go walking, and we headed

to the Malabor Elementary School gate.  By  about 7:30 the larger

gates are closed and only this small portal is available.

I joke with some of the teachers about hearing everything more than once, in their "eco-friendly" school - -and I think most of them get it - -  

Maybe I WON'T refer to their  planter mascots as "pot heads" although that term would pass by unnoticed here, I think.

I hadn't known anything about the building project at the school
until we got to the "left rear corner" of the property and found
this large site fenced and excavation beginning.

(Side-question: If it's an excavation, what is it NOW?)

The OFFICIAL signage was back in that corner, instead of out
at the main highway where they usually post such things.  It will
be a 2-storey (sic) building of six classrooms.  10,601,000

Pesos = about $204,000.  Largest school project I've seen here.

Fast forward about 2 weeks and there is a lot of progress. You

can tell when a project is "government"  or deep-pocket because

the entire scaffold system will be made first, instead of  ½ or ¼

being built and then recycled as the project continues (to cut

costs). The building looks like it will end up being about 40-

 feet by 100- feet when completed. The posts are about

18 x 18 inches, and the re-bar size is about 1-¼ inches. 

Quite massive, but  the actual design is basically the same

as any other structure I've seen here.

 Part of the cement-block wall was torn down along the side-

road to allow for truck deliveries, but all of the material on

the site is shoveled and hand-carried in re-used cement

and grain sacks.  I'll be watching with some interest,

because this project is large enough to use commercial

"ready mix" cement, although I have never seen a cement

pump in use here, to distribute cement from the mix-truck

to the more-distant forms.  ALSO, I think that the only

cement "batch plant" I have seen around here is run

by the Highway Department for its projects, so there may

not be cement available for other uses.  (BUT, I THINK,
"Surely they won't mix and hand-carry ALL that huge
amount of cement in buckets - like a fire brigade?")

In the late afternoon, kids are running around everywhere that I walk - - lots of people have T.V. sets, but there is still a strong "culture" of active kids here.  Sometimes it's hard to shoo them out of the way so I can get a picture of something, like the basin behind them.

This basin was half-full of tiny fish, about the size of

bean-sprouts, which are often sun-dried into "patties"

for later use,  or made into omelettes and other fresh-

use meals.  I saw an article somewhere recently which

identified these as the tiniest fish that people consume.

Above, the "net boat" is launched, and it will be towed in a large arc as the net is deployed.  These cooperatively-maintained nets seem to be 200 or more yards in length; the far end of the net that these guys are working was too far for a clear camera shot, but it is where tiny figures are standing at center of the photo, seemingly more than 100 yards away.  This net hangs like a "curtain" in the water, between floats on top and weights on the bottom  and it is gradually pulled by hands (and legs!)  to the center-point of the arc on-shore.  ALL kinds of fish may be in the catch.  The tiny fish shown above are not scorned, however.  In omelette-form they are pretty tasty. It's not too unusual to net a few hundred pounds at a time.

This year there are three salt-makers working on the beach about 
100 yards away from where we live.  Last year, only ONE.  This

one is the largest, with its primary evaporation space about

20 feet x 40 feet.   This link  should take you to a description

of the local salt making process, posted in 2014.

The middle photo is of the final evaporation "pans" a couple

evenings ago, with heaps of fresh salt piled in each corner

after being skimmed.  These will be sun-dried and then

delivered to customers - -as our delivery arrived - about 

12 pounds this time.

U.S. brand names have been common here for years - - McCormick, Del Monte, Coca-cola, and Chevrolet have manufacturing facilities here, as do many other familiar companies;  and of course the fast-food segment offers MacD's, KFC, Dunkin' Donut, and more.  Still, I get surprised once in a while:

This is the first I've seen of Purina here; half-a-dozen large other-

  named companies (possibly originating in the USA) have pretty

well got all the agri-feed business.  EVERYWHERE here,

people raise small livestock, so even in cities agri-feed is

a large scale business. 

Bernadette brought home these Doughnuts (full and proper

spelling!) from Manila recently, the first K- K- that I have seen

here.  They are a BIG DEAL in the midwest and south of

the USA;  to me they are fine but nothing to get quite  so

enthusiastic about as many folks seem to.

7-11 has been on a building and expansion "boom" for the last

couple years and has built stores in every place that I pass

through.  This large new store is in the main bus-and-van 

terminal area of San Jose, and should thrive there.

You might be in Tibiao, Antique Province, if a hen with

chicks can calmly walk across the main National Hwy.

at 9:00 a.m., without traffic in sight from either direction

to excite her.

The OLD vs. the NEW:  the top row are the NEW coins which
are gradually being introduced.  The three larger coins are
one-,  five-, and ten-peso.  They are all of similar size and
silver-colored appearance.  The older coins below are silver
one-peso, yellow five-peso, and yellow-insert ten-peso.
It is now much easier to confuse especially the fives and
tens, which has caused much useless complaining
(it is a DONE DEAL).   What I call "baby coins" are the
ones to the left; still available in several 10- 25- 50?- 
cent fractions of pesos.  As the peso is only about two
U.S. cents, local businesses and small businesses in
cities don't bother with the fractional coins.  Only larger
stores (with computerized pricing?) use them.  I never
accept them in change, I just "donate" them back.

Goofy Little Projects Division Entry

This ceiling fixture utility box is on the underside of our 2nd-

floor cement slab. When the cement was poured around it,

  It came out crooked and rough. I considered several ways

to take the socket-fixture down, and try to form and "make nice"

some kind of filler material to dress out the edges, while not

getting the wires inside all messed up with whatever "goop"

I would be using.  Nothing seemed very hopeful.  I don't like

doing "arms-over-head"  daubing jobs anyway.  Some
people are pretty good with it but I always make a mess.

I caught a break when I found this plastic paint-can lid lying around.

I cut the hole in it plenty large to make lining things up easier.

Five minutes with a screw driver and at-a-glance it looks

like an escutcheon plate (that's the fancy word for such a

cover plate) that I might buy for such a purpose, except

that I wouldn't really expect to find one for sale, here.

Maybe we will put a simple milk-glass globe over it, later.

"Putting a Lid on the Can" **

Adding additional C-R- (restroom) stalls at Camp Moriah has

so far been a three-year project.  Things just don't happen

real fast, here.  Last year, available funds went for badly

needed cement steps, to replace a rickety flight made from

a variety of organic materials.  ABOVE, the wooden forms

are in place for the cement roof to be poured on the left

end.  These forms will be recycled to do the right end  in

a few days. 

**(American slang: "put a lid on" can mean finish a project.

"The Can" is one way of saying C-R- or restroom.)

 Cement roof = zero maintenance.  Looks fine with the forms

removed.  There is a waterproofing compound added to

the cement, usually used for water tanks, etc.

We expect to get the finish-work done in the next couple months,
before youth camps start in late April.  Need to replace some
wooden door-frames with cement work.  (see last month's posting

for a quick look at cement-sculpted door-and-window frames.)

Clichés  become clichés because they work pretty well.  I really like my sunsets.  I guess if I were spending for film and developing I would be more penurious with ALL my picture-taking.  That's one of the wunnerful things about these little pocket cameras!

 

There's also kind of a "freebie" sunset among the fishing-net photos.  They were just moving the net, not deploying it, as the boat is only a few yards from shore.

The "preview" feature is showing me that there are some weird things up above in the final copy, like the LONG blank space after the fishing segment, which isn't in my edit copy and I can't make it go away. 

We hope that you are doing OK so far in 2019,  and that the Polar Vortex hasn't caused those of you in its path TOO much inconvenience.  I'd enjoy having some moderate winter weather here, but I don't miss having to be out-and-around in THOSE conditions. My favorite temperature range is about 25° F. to 65° F.  The lowest temperature I have observed here in six- plus years was two different years' January at sunrise,  67° F., very rare for it to get that low, it seems.  I have a photo of the thermometer, in my files.

Have a great day!  See you in a few weeks - -

T.J. and Bernadette Larson

Malabor, Tibiao, Antique, Philippines